dubbing

Pluraldubbings

1. 1
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The replacement of a voice track in a film or animation, often with a translation in another language.

   The studio's dubbing replaced the original Japanese dialogue with an English track.

   Audiences often complain when dubbing fails to match the actors' lip movements.

   Note

   Translation studies pairs this sense with subtitling as one of the ways a film or cartoon crosses into another language. In that field it is freely countable. Scholars write of foreign dubbings in the plural, each one a distinct version, and even of new genres and original cartoons built on dubbings of foreign work. Keep it apart from the sound-mixing sense: here a voice is replaced, not added to.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The process of mixing additional or supplementary recordings with the original production sound to create the finished soundtrack.

   In post-production, dubbing blends sound effects, music, and dialogue into a single mix.

   The sound team spent weeks on dubbing to balance every recorded layer.

   Similarmixing

   Note

   Post-production gives the word a second, quieter job. Nothing need be translated or revoiced: the sound recorded during shooting is kept, and supplementary recordings are laid over it and balanced into one finished track. Effects, music and extra dialogue all meet at this stage. When film people speak of a picture being in dubbing, they usually mean this assembly of the final mix, not a change of language.

3. 3
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The copying of recorded music onto a different medium or format, such as from master tape to cassette.

   The studio charged a small fee for dubbing master tapes onto cassette.

   Careful dubbing preserved the album when the original reels began to decay.

   Similarcopying, transfer, duplication

   Note

   A music and recording term for copying sound across formats: master tapes onto cassette, or aging reels onto something that will last. The word works as a mass noun for the craft and as a count noun for a single transfer. In practice it is about moving and preserving a recording. A new performance is never made, which is what separates it from the film senses of the word.

4. 4
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The conferral of knighthood, or more broadly the formal investment of a person with a title.

   The dubbing took place in the great hall, with the monarch's sword resting on the kneeling man's shoulder.

   After years of service, his dubbing finally granted him the title he had long earned.

   Similarinvestiture, knighting, accolade

5. 5
   verb

   Present participle of dub.

   The company is dubbing all of its anime releases for the European market.

   Critics grumbled while the studio was dubbing fresh dialogue over the originals.

   Note

   The -ing form serves every sense of dub, not only the screen ones. A critic can be dubbing a band the next big thing, a carpenter dubbing timber with an adze, a cloth-worker dubbing fabric with teasels to raise its nap. As a gerund it shades into the nouns. In the knighting sense it is hard to tell from the noun for conferring knighthood, since both name the same act.

6. 6
   noun

   Alternative spelling of dubbin.

   The hikers coated their leather boots with dubbing before the wet season.

   A thin layer of dubbing restored the cracked harness to suppleness.

   Note

   A different word that happens to share the spelling. It names the leather dressing, a mixture of tallow and oil that softens leather and keeps water out. It has nothing to do with knights or soundtracks. The usual spelling is dubbin, and that word also works as a verb: you dubbin your boots. With this spelling, only context tells the reader which word is meant.

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