So, Germany's given up on Heroes. :( Options

[GoldSeven]

I was just getting ready to tape tonight's episode of Heroes ("The Eclipse I") on German TV for my hubby, who has to work late - and contrary to what the TV programme said, what came up at a quarter past eight was not Mohinder's "Zuvor bei Heroes...", but Stargate. Accompanied by a minuscule bit of scrolltext informing me that a new Heroes episode would air at 11 pm.

I can hear that swan song getting louder and louder.

[Begemot Geroi]

Eh, I still wouldn't go ringing the death knell right now. It still seems to be doing all right in the states (I think).

[Leek]

Listen GS I love you and all but if your country starts blaming Heroes for all it's problems or anything...


I'm just saying we might have to chose sides lol.

[Raekon]

I can think of a few reasons why this happened:

- some grannies whined about having to watch a murderous sylar slicing heads open at SUCH a early time(8:15pm)

- the ratings couldn't do well because at the same time desperate housewifes is airing on(earlier Greys Anatomy until season 5 ended) PRO7

So they had to push it on a later time trying to get more viewers for the prime time through stargate which obviously is airing for a way much longer time as also has obviously more viewers than heroes has.

To be honest I can't watch the german version of heroes because compared to the original, the voices and the fact that hiro/ando/kimiko and anyone else of a different language ALWAYS talk in german leaving out the japanese or other languages we have in the original. To me it makes a difference because it destroys the feeling I had and still have for these characters. Most of all when hero is sounding like a 5 years old. x_X

So I prefer watching the series on PRO7 (Desperate Housewifes, Lipstick Jungle, Harper's island and earlier before the seasons ended, Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice) at wendsdays which are also the one and only day I'm watching TV in overall.

[dalbrin]

Is it at least the new Stargate, Universe? That show's been quality so far.

[Viola]

Is it at least the new Stargate, Universe? That show's been quality so far.

LOL, no. SG:U will make it to Germany within the next 1-2 years. They rerun SG-1 as a lead-in to the "new" SG:A season. Yes, we are way behind you.

The move to 23:15 has increased the ratings of Heroes, though:
[link in German]

There is some good news, too. RTL 2 has finally decided to air Volume 4. They originally planned to pull the plug on Heroes after 3x13. At least Germany will now get the entire season 3.

[GoldSeven]

Wow! Ratings boost AND the whole of season three? Yay!

Thinking about it, the 11 PM time slot was Torchwood previously, right? And that managed to survive as well...

I don't have any problems with the dubbing (besides the aforementioned giggles I keep lapsing into when I hear the synchro-voices of Peter and Nathan, close my eyes, and imagine Frodo Baggins and Janitor from Scrubs arguing). Plus, my hubby flatly refuses to watch Heroes in English, so... *shrug*

[Viola]

Wow! Ratings boost AND the whole of season three? Yay!

Thinking about it, the 11 PM time slot was Torchwood previously, right? And that managed to survive as well...

I don't have any problems with the dubbing (besides the aforementioned giggles I keep lapsing into when I hear the synchro-voices of Peter and Nathan, close my eyes, and imagine Frodo Baggins and Janitor from Scrubs arguing). Plus, my hubby flatly refuses to watch Heroes in English, so... *shrug*

Torchwood did really well, IIRC.

I hate the dubs. They are very low quality .
What ever happened to all those quality dubs that used to exist on German television?
But, I guess, a half way decent dub is better than not understanding much if your English vanished for the want of practice... *grins*
And considering that most subs I've seen leave out huge chunks of dialogue, dubs are probably a good solution, even when they lack quality.

I wonder if we get season 4? When they already think loudly about not airing the entire 3rd season, I mean.

[GoldSeven]

To tell you the truth, I'd be surprised if we got season four. Very pleasantly surprised, but I don't expect it.

Is there precedence for a TV series that was dropped by German TV, but still appeared on DVD? I'm by no means a TV buff, so I'd have no idea.

I'm probably the biggest oddity in that I'm an English teacher, speak English well enough to pass for a Brit even in England, and still like my serieses dubbed. I can't really see where the quality is low. The sentences match (as well as English and German ever match) and there are no glaring mistakes - on the contrary, there have been a couple of truly ingenious translations in the German version in the past.

Nothing like the Simpsons, where you hear a sentence that totally makes no sense, translate it back into English, and then get the joke that the translator apparently didn't...

[HERΟ]

I'm probably the biggest oddity in that I'm an English teacher, speak English well enough to pass for a Brit even in England, and still like my serieses dubbed. I can't really see where the quality is low. The sentences match (as well as English and German ever match) and there are no glaring mistakes - on the contrary, there have been a couple of truly ingenious translations in the German version in the past.

So, I got on the tangent of seein' what all you've said about watchin' dubbed shows, 'cuz mostly, for me, I like hearin' the original language and then just readin' the subtitles (like in the movie, "Hero", w/ Jet Li):

We get all our movies dubbed, and my husband doesn't like watching DVDs in English, so little chance there either.

I remember when I started my England year, we had just picked up the Star Wars radio drama on tape and had listened to hours and hours of a lot of American English - and that jumbled up my English accent so much that for the first few weeks, several people said I sounded like someone from New Zealand. I couldn't reproduce that accent today, but apparently, German speaker + British school English + Mark Hamill = New Zealand accent.

Which I found rather hilarious.

*cough* I'll buy the DVDs as soon as they come out anyway. Uhm, in German, that is. Hubby likes his Heroes dubbed. With Peter being spoken by the same guy who did Elijah Wood as Frodo.

I'm of two minds about that. The thing is - everybody who knows the original ALWAYS complains about the dubbing, but the other thing is that you don't get any foreign languages on TV here normally. Okay, not any is an exaggeration; but it's far less common than on US shows. On shows in English, everyone talks in their own language. When you dub Heroes, of course you dub the English dialogue - and then I can understand it if the rest gets dubbed too.

In the case of Heroes, I agree that a lot is lost in translation, but my best example of a great translation (a Peter example, since those are the ones I pay the most attention to, I'm sure that there are more) is when Claude eyes Peter's apartment and asks him, "What's a rich kid doing living in a place like this?" and Peter says "I left the family business; I'm a nurse now." In German, Peter's reply was (re-translated), "I'm a nurse by profession, not a son." I really liked that.

Actually, the strangest thing about the dubbing are some of the voices - it was strange to hear Grunny with a different voice than the one he had on ALIAS (though this one was closer) and I can still laugh my head off whenever I stumble onto The Lord of the Rings in German - they gave Milo the (well-known) dubbing voice of Elijah Wood as Frodo.

What I find much weirder is that you run into the same voice actors again and again. There seems to be a rather limited set. It's fun to close your eyes while watching an episode and to imagine that you have Frodo Baggins arguing with the Janitor from Scrubs, when it's Peter and Nathan Petrelli.

All part of the fun.

In all of that, maybe the voice is distinctive enough, but it's funny that ya recognize and mention the person who voiced Frodo's part so much - I wonder how many folks do translations for shows and such?

Oh, and about Mark Hamill's dialogue - one thing I noticed a long time ago, which Luke says, is after his uncle tells him that Luke is needed for the harvest and he can go to the academy next year. Luke's response, even though this is set a long time ago and in a galaxy far, far away, is, "But it's a whole 'nother year!"

Not that folks from such a distant time and place would even know English anyway (and why is "Luke" the only recognizable name - was that short for "Lucas"?!? < Rhetorical...), but "a whole 'nother" is a tmesis for "another whole". 'Cuz no one would ever say, "But it's a whole another year!"...

Oops, non sequitur off of a tangent.

[Synch]

Regarding your tangent HERO- I, and a bunch of other uber-geeks, had actually thought of that.

We arrived at the conclusion that Lucas pulled a Tolkien. The concept is that the story came to him in the original language, whichever that was. (In Tolkien's case, he said the LOTR trilogy and The Hobbit were both manuscripts he "found" in the language of the Shire, for the most part.) They then interpreted it into English, making substitutions as needed. (For instance: Tolkien substituted the names Samwise and Hamfast, Sam and his father, for what the names originally were- Banazir, meaning "Half-wise' or "simple" and Ranugad, meaning "stay-at-home". He went with the other names because they are simplifications of ancient English words with similar meanings.)

Basically, Lucas was a genius with language, and took the original manuscript and translated it entirely into English, save where he left some non-human life forms speaking their own language.

This post has been edited by Synch: Nov 6 2009, 12:13 PM

[GoldSeven]

Argh, HERO, you made me sound like I'm repeating myself. I'm not repeating myself! Oh God, I am repeating myself.

In all of that, maybe the voice is distinctive enough, but it's funny that ya recognize and mention the person who voiced Frodo's part so much - I wonder how many folks do translations for shows and such?

I know that hubby and I always do that, hunting down voices. There does seem to be a limited set of well-known voices, and they're just everywhere. So, just as we often watch something, recognize an actor and then spend half a movie racking our brains about where we know him/her from, we often rack our brains trying to remember where we know a voice from. And once we think of one, that usually opens a floodgate of several shows or movies where we've heard him/her before.

Mostly him, funnily. Women's voices tend to be similar. Or so versatile it's harder to pinpoint them. The only two female voices I know I keep recognizing are the voice actors for X-Files' Dana Scully and Olga Vukavich from Seven Days (does anyone remember that show?)

[HERΟ]

Argh, HERO, you made me sound like I'm repeating myself. I'm not repeating myself! Oh God, I am repeating myself.

Oops! I just thought it showed your consistency in your thoughts about dubbing.

I know that hubby and I always do that, hunting down voices. There does seem to be a limited set of well-known voices, and they're just everywhere. So, just as we often watch something, recognize an actor and then spend half a movie racking our brains about where we know him/her from, we often rack our brains trying to remember where we know a voice from. And once we think of one, that usually opens a floodgate of several shows or movies where we've heard him/her before.

Actually, I've done that for the voice actors of Avatar: The Last Airbender... It's fun to notice all the work that Grey Delisle (cool name, btw) and Dante Basco do (if ya happen to watch cartoons, at least)...

So, does Frodo's voice actor have a name? Just curious. imdb.com comes in handy when lookin' for other work, and it's fun to see what else folks have done. And I saw some episodes of Seven Days; thought it had a cool premise to it.

[GoldSeven]

His name is Timmo Niesner. And they've all got faces too! lol, I never know what they looked like. It's funny somehow.

I think I've linked this one before - if anyone ever wondered what Heroes sounds like in German.

The English Hiro/German Hiro is amusingly pointless. It has already been criticised that Hiro and Ando are translated into German when they're talking Japanese, too; remains to be said that in "The Eclipse Part 1", where Hiro speaks Japanese and Matt doesn't understand, the voice actor did a quite remarkable job of speaking Japanese.

[Raekon]

If you heard the samples of all the females, they all (except claire) sound almost the same. -.-
That's what bugs me the most. They sound as if only one and the same person did the voice over.

When it comes to the males, mohinder, ando, matt are SO off that it's not funny anymore. x_X

In general only rarely voice actors are catching the voices to make a character be like it's original or it matches at least the looks/voice of a character that good that it can be acceptable.

This post has been edited by Raekon: Nov 10 2009, 02:20 AM

[aussiebattler16]

unfortunatly Australia's given up too
you can only watch on that new channel 7 station that started up last wednesday before then though there's a 2 season gap between episodes aired in Oz

[GoldSeven]

I really think you're being too harsh, Raekon. You can't expect a voice actor to sound exactly like the actor whose voice he does. I don't find anything jarring about the German voices.

[Leek]

I wish I spoke another language

[ZaxNeon]

I'm sorry to hear that. Stargate (all of them) is the lamest thing ever created. I would look into emigrating to another country if they did that to me. Simply embarrassing for the whole nation!

[Synch]

Umm...too bad a few million people feel otherwise.

[GoldSeven]

Well, since there are still ways to satisfy my Heroes craving, I'll stay in the land of well-insulated houses and licorice snails.

[Raekon]

I really think you're being too harsh, Raekon. You can't expect a voice actor to sound exactly like the actor whose voice he does. I don't find anything jarring about the German voices.

I don't mean them to sound exactly like the original voices but the least someone can expect is that they at least sound or act differently from each other and thats in the most cases unfortunately not the case.

Recheck most of the female voices and you'll see what I mean(Except Claire and maybe Angela). :/

[GoldSeven]

But I actually think that's a cultural thing, and it's part of the culture of every country I know (and am able to judge). There's always a type of voice that's "fashionable" at any given time. There are a few female voices that don't fit that description, but I can't really think of any but the two I mentioned above. Take any of our daily soaps as an example of "hip" voices (not that I watch them); can you tell apart Yvonne Catterfeld and Jeanette Biedermann? I can't!

Same goes for many male voices, but that's not just here. I listen to 1Live every day but I can't tell any two moderators apart. They've all got radio moderator voices. British radio moderators all sound nearly the same too (with the notable exception of Chris Moyles). In German commercials, you get those deep, sonorous "brandy voices". And good-looking women are apparently expected to sound the same as well. It's not really surprising that this applies to voice actresses.