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International Audio (including Voice-Over Translations) — Page 7

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So I’ll admit it–I don’t actually listen to the dubs in my collection. I’m a collector, I like to help others, but, well, I don’t actually know all of these languages so I don’t listen to them.

Which goes to explaining how the Czech dubs have been the way they are for so long. The Star Wars Czech dub is actually in very good shape–it has some clicks, pops, and it only falls noticeably out of sync a couple times. But the dubs for Empire and Jedi? Yeesh. Omlouvám se.

There are several Czech dubs–one early nineties dub, one mid-nineties dub, and a Blu-ray dub. The mid-nineties dub, although it was supposedly done in 1995, is AFAICT only available as despecialized SE dubs. So since I always favor authentic OOT dubs, and also because Harmy likes the early nineties translation best, the early nineties dub gets most favored dub status. But the audio quality (and here I’m mostly talking about Empire) is pretty poor. And worse yet, the sync is godawful (the overall good sync in Star Wars notwithstanding). Not only the sync in the edited-to-sync-to-the-GOUT files we’ve been working with, but in the original dub, the voices were just put in wildly inaccurate places, so you can choose to sync the voice or sound effects, but not both. And they’re so out of sync that trying to sync halfway between SFX and dialogue often doesn’t work, which sometimes works well for small differences.

A handful of Czech users have logged in to complain about the Czech dub, asking why we don’t use one of the later dubs. I always thought it was the audio quality they were complaining about. It turns out at least a good portion of it was the sync, and when I finally checked (thanks Tomalakis!), yuck, I wondered why we used these too.

I’ve been editing these audio files for the past few weeks and I finally finished my first pass on all three films. A little more finishing work still to go, but these new files are now much, much, MUCH better. They’re still mono VHS captures, of course, and because of how the voices and sound effects are synced differently, sometimes there’s still a fairly obvious problem (score, SFX or voices are noticeably off, because I chose to sync something else). But they’re now the exception rather than the rule, and they’re all pretty tolerable IMO.

I think the worst bit was that the score in the scene where Luke meets the Emperor was way off, so if you synced the elevator noises at the beginning, and the voices at the end, there was this long (over ten second) audio gap while Luke walked up to the Emperor. The original files worked around this by repeating the elevator noises a second time, which was pretty crappy. I patched in some Emperor-appropriate music from the isolated score, which is still pretty crappy (it’s not even pretending to be authentic) but at least you’re not hearing sounds for things that aren’t happening onscreen, and you’re not hearing dead silence. Actually there were a lot of bad things, and you can still hear some of them. But that was the thing I was least happy about. I’m gonna have nightmares about these files.

I’ll probably be making these available in the next week or so.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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I actually have the 1995 THX VHS set for which the 1995 dub was made but I currently have no means of capturing the audio.

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Oh, interesting. The 95 Star Wars track floating out there is definitely despecialized, I never really checked to see if the others were despecialized or original–could be either. But frankly if you like the 92 translation better, that’s the one for me. Someone else may want the original 95 track though.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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It also occurred to me while editing these files that there’s always someone here who’s after a “clean” voices-only or voice-free soundtrack. Well, the quality of these original files isn’t great, but the sync is so bad that often you can hear the plain score+sound effects that happen when someone is talking. I suppose you could reconstruct a voice-free soundtrack if you had enough badly-synced dubs like this. I thought it was pretty weird how they didn’t dub C-3PO talking in alien languages at all in these dubs, and you just hear the score+sound effects of him waving his arms around, like he’s miming.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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Yeah, those dubs are pretty terrible in terms of technical execution and quality but the translation is indeed better than in the 95 one, especially for Star Wars.

I would actually love to have the 2011 dub despecialized because while I have no nostalgia for it (and the guy who dubbed Luke in the first two dubs plays Han in the 2011 one, which is a really odd choice and sounds supremely weird for someone used to the old dubs) it has the best audio quality, translation, and pronunciation (in the 92 one jedi was pronounced [yeddy] and in the 95 dub it was closer but still not quite there with [jeddy] and there are plenty of misspronounciations like that in both) so for introducing new people to the trilogy, the 2011 dub would actually be ideal. Preferably in 5.1 with the parts with no dialogue replaced with some superior mix, like hairy_hen’s for example. I’ve been planning to do something like that ever since I showed Star Wars to my little brother last year and found how bad the audio quality of the subs currently in despecialized is.

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Empire is still gonna be a little rough, but Jedi cleaned up surprisingly nicely, aside from that one Emperor scene.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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Harmy, when you talk about mispronunciation, I assume that you’re referring specifically to words from Star Wars and that the people involved in the dub(s) are native speakers. Is that right?

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Okay, I’ve completed the whole Czech trilogy (first dub, early nineties) and they’ll be available in the usual places shortly. This is the first time I’ve effectively “despecialized” soundtracks that weren’t Special Edition tracks to begin with. But the tracks were so problematic that simply adjusting the sync offset wasn’t good enough. So it’s authentic in the sense that it’s all based entirely on OOT material, but it’s not the original badly-dubbed VHS experience, if that’s what you’re looking for. It’s patched together from multiple sources, spliced and diced and heavily adjusted. It how the early nineties release might have sounded if they’d done the sync right. Artistic license was taken, not every problem was fixed, yadda yadda.

I’d rate the Star Wars track as very good, the Jedi track as very good with one major hiccup (the aforementioned Emperor scene), and the Empire track is… eh, let’s just give that one a “most improved” award, shall we? It’s still pretty bad, but it’s watchable now IMO.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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What’s the history on these Czech voiceover dubs? Do they pre-date the first regular dubs? Are they trilogy-complete? One-speaker voiceover or male/female voiceover? Do many Czech fans like to watch the films that way, or is it more of a historical curiosity?

Just asking. I kinda like the concept behind voiceovers.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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Oh God, I remember that version 😃 One of the bootleg VHS tapes which I had before the first official VHS release. I’m glad that the times of voiceover dubs is long gone and I hope it will never come back.

History? Well that would need a bigger history lesson. Short version - we (Czechoslovakia) used to be a typical communist country, a satellite of the USSR. Between the end of the second world war and 1968 we were officially a communist country, but at the same time we were pretty “open”, In 1968 we were invaded, sorry, I meant “rescued from the contrarevolution” by our friends (mostly Soviets) who were so kind and left her “protective armed forces” in our country to steal our property and rape our women, sorry I meant “to protect us”. Our regime changed into a full tyranny, but started to be more open during the 80’s, thanks to Gorbi’s perestroika. From a cultural point of view it meant that suddenly we could watch ideologically correct American movies, but only if they were approved by a censorship commission. For example we could watch Raiders of the Lost Ark, because Indy fought the Nazis, but at the same time every, and I mean EVERY religious reference was taken out, which left us with a totally nonsensical plot, but at the same time we couldn’t watch movies like Star Wars, I guess the censors didn’t like a story about a group of rebels fighting a dictatorship. In the late 80’s I had a pretty nice collection of bootleg VHS tapes of American movies, and all of them had the voiceover, so called “rychlodabing”, usually done by one person only, or one man doing all men characters and one woman doing all women characters. This was kind of “semi-legal”, I mean it was pretty often done by people who already were or later became known actors but you won’t find any information about that work on their official bios.
Communism fell (at least officially) in November 1989, and we started to transform to capitalism (and to splitting into 2 countries in 1993), which means that first private TV stations appeared. These TV stations needed stuff to air, so they bought cheap “western” movies and TV shows and because they needed it quickly, they pretty often used “rychlodabing”, this was of course official and the era was something like 1990-1995 if I remember correctly. Because most of the people hated it, the TV stations started to do “proper” dubbing very soon, it was pretty normal to see the same movie first with the voiceover dub and 6 months - 1 year later the same movie on the same station with a normal dub.
By the way dubbing was in 90’s normal on VHS tapes, but not included on DVDs of the same movies, I think the first Star Wars release with czech and slovak dubs was the release of ROTJ.

And yes, there are different fora where people search for these voiceover dubs, but only as a historical curiosity

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I kinda like the voiceover concept, as it preserves the original actors’ performances, and doesn’t even try to “perform” the part, just translates like a… well, like a translator would. I like the way the Polish one sounds, although I think that was done on a much better budget in the nineties. I imagine some low-budget, unofficial, garage voiceover might not have quite the same quality. And also voiceovers are just weird, whether or not I like them.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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Hi everybody im from Spain and i detected a pair of errors in the Castilian dub. both in V2.5.1 and in V2.7. It was because the source that they use for the (de)re/construction was 1993 THX Laser Disc edition. That source has the errors since the beginning. I fixed it and includes in an V2.7.1 .mp4 file that includes the rest of audio and subtitles tracks as the original V2.7 .mkv file. Also i includes the Castilian scrolling and Greedo Castilian subtitles from Martineus V.2.5.1.

My AKA is Gri"Yo"84 if that matters. I Want to send the V2.7.1. Version in the .mp4 file. How can i do?

Thanks a lot.

Gri"Yo"84

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Can someone please send me audio files for GOUT-synced (4K83 for ROTJ) Japanese dubs.
And SW and ESB each had two Japanese dubs: a theatrical dub and a home video dub while ROTJ only has a home video dub, both dubs are on the Japanese GOUT.
I only have a Complete Saga Blu-ray from Japan and I am planning on making my own custom Blu-rays for the TN1 4K Trilogy that will match my retail Japanese Blu-rays.

And I’ve loved every pixel of it.
(Clarissa Darling, Clarissa Explains It All)

You’re so right.
(Kylo Ren, Star Wars: The Force Awakens)

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I only have the later home video dubs for the trilogy, but I’ll send what I have. They are all GOUT-synced, not 4K83, but depending on the dub, that may be good enough.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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I really hope you (or someone else) can do a 4K83 sync of the Japanese dub of ROTJ.

And I’ve loved every pixel of it.
(Clarissa Darling, Clarissa Explains It All)

You’re so right.
(Kylo Ren, Star Wars: The Force Awakens)

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I’m more likely to do a GOUT sync of the 4K83 video and solve lots of compatibility problems simultaneously, but ATM I don’t have much free time at all (and my priority is the next Project Threepio).

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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Please send me .ac3 files of the French and Japanese dubs of the OT.

And I’ve loved every pixel of it.
(Clarissa Darling, Clarissa Explains It All)

You’re so right.
(Kylo Ren, Star Wars: The Force Awakens)

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PM sent. There’s more than one Japanese dub for Star Wars. The home video one is (I think) a little better and it’s trilogy-complete. The theatrical one doesn’t have a dub for Jedi.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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Thanks to laozi, we now have complete trilogy dubs for Basque, and will soon have incomplete dubs for Galician. Both of these are OTA recordings of TV broadcasts.

It seems incomplete dubs (dubs with a few chunks missing here and there) are likely to become more common as we rely on sources like this, losing audio due to aging videotapes, badly-placed commercials, hitting the record button too late, and so on. On the plus side, Project Threepio will have subtitles for all of the missing Galician dialogue in the partial dubs (but, sadly, no complete-film subtitles), so we’ll effectively have a complete translation of the trilogy into Galician.

As a linguistics nerd, I’ve always been interested in Basque. What does it sound like? Now that I’ve heard a lot of it, to me it sounds like a Spanish person speaking nonsense words. Most of the sounds and inflections seem very much Spanish, but the words? Aside from a few loanwords, no similarity at all to Spanish or anything else. And the written language is like nothing else I’ve seen, again aside from a few loanwords. All in all, it’s pretty cool.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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Thanks to CatBus for taking the time to synchronize these dubs.
And sorry for their state, but unfortunately nothing better has survived until today.

Always will be a pleasure to contribute to this forum.

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The Galician dubs are now ready, with the caveats mentioned earlier. These are also from recordings of TV broadcasts, but they aren’t in nearly as good condition as the Basque dubs, and Star Wars and Empire are both missing small bits of dialogue. The good news is that we do have translations for these missing parts, so the next version of Project Threepio will fill those gaps.

More to come, and yes I’m saving the best news for last.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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And here’s the “best news” I referred to earlier – we now have a complete set of Catalan dubs.

So what’s so special about this? Isn’t it just another dub? No, not in my opinion. Not at all.

I don’t often wax poetical about dubs – I’m a subtitle guy myself – but I’ve found they fall into certain categories, at least in terms of audio quality. There’s your high quality dubs from Laserdisc or DVD of the unaltered trilogy. German, French, Japanese, and so on. Great sound quality, no Special Edition nonsense, the way Star Wars dubs ought to be. But there are only a certain number of these, and the list never grows. Then there’s your variable-quality captures of TV dubs – at best, never nearly as good as your high quality dubs, and at worst, pretty bad. Then there’s your Despecialized dubs from DVD and Blu-ray, which can have good audio quality, but you get the Special Edition material, which puts them dead last in my estimation.

And then there’s the Catalan dubs. Star Wars and Empire are made-for-TV dubs, Jedi is a theatrical dub, but all three were TV broadcasts, and that’s how we have them. In terms of translation quality, I have no idea how they rate. But in terms of overall audio quality, these equal the Laserdisc tier in my opinion. Mono, but top-notch mono. And no, they don’t use the mono mix, they’re just a mono fold-down of stereo mixes.

They’re not perfect, of course. There is some tape damage at the beginning of the first reel of Jedi that I was sadly unable to correct. The lip sync comes and goes but is usually pretty solid. And there’s some crazy made-for-TV business – I don’t know all of the sound effects that Lucasfilm made for these films and rejected, or only included in certain releases, but I have the distinct impression that some sound effects were added by the dubbing studio or TV station. And they are occasionally quite weird. In Star Wars, in the shootout immediately following Obi-Wan’s death, there’s… I dunno… EXTRA laser blasts. But not really extra Star Wars laser blasts, extra laser blasts made by some guys whacking a metal cable to achieve something one cut above yelling “pew! pew!”. And in the mission briefing, there’s extra robot noises. Are they from the robot next to R2? Or from the projection screen? I have no idea. But whatever they are supposed to be, they are now preserved in very high quality, and these strange moments are the rare exceptions to an overall excellent presentation.

So, if you or someone you know speaks Catalan, this is great news, because Catalan just jumped the queue to become a top-tier language for the whole trilogy. If you’re curious about some of these unusual dubs we’ve been collecting, but are put off by that lo-fi VHS sound, this is the one you want to try. Either way, you can PM me for links to the dubs or download them from the usual places.

And to top it off, Laozi has offered to produce full Catalan subtitles, which will be included in the next version of Project Threepio. These subtitles are still a work in progress, as he’s taking extra time to ensure the best translation from the English.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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Could I be a pain to anyone who has a copy of the Japanese dubs, and request the audio for ESB, RotJ, AotC, and RotS?