As mentioned briefly in section 4.2, the training a new dubbing artist receives include the more superficial aspects related to “standard” pronunciation, and beyond which, more expressional details related to performance. The resulting styles from different individual training programmes also differ greatly, which are favoured in different studios and production companies. However, almost every studio claims its
own style to be standard and natural14.
There is nonetheless an observable general tendency in the training to which the characteristic of dubbing performance can be attributed, and they very well represent a myth of standard and natural language that is causing and strengthening the situation discussed in the previous two chapters, namely the state of dubbing performance being unfavoured and its acoustic differences from daily speech. Firstly, it is of utmost importance to pronounce each character completely with its boundary clear. This originates from a tradition back in the days when the illiteracy was higher than today’s, and a certain proportion of audience of foreign shows who was not able to read subtitles had to rely on dubbing to understand the contents. Under such a requirement, it is a dubbing artist’s responsible to clearly pronounce each word, making the lines as intelligible as possible. Contraction, although an extremely natural phenomenon, is therefore undesirable because of its potentiality to impede comprehension.
In addition to clear execution of each character’s pronunciation, it is also crucial to have variations in pitch and duration. The requirement is referred to as yiyang-duncuo (抑揚頓挫) in Mandarin. It appears as an elusive idea for new dubbing artists to grasp, and is sometimes understood mistakenly as a general, rough exaggeration in expression. However, from a phonetic point of view, it is actually quite simple and straightforward, as yiyang (‘fall and rise’) means pitch variation and duncuo (‘pause and transition’) requires duration variation. Like the exact pronunciation of each character discussed above, yiyang-duncuo also have a functional origin. In the industry, it is said to go back to the Peking opera tradition of
14 At least 3 studios I have been to, including one that produced many notorious Korean dramas, all claim to belong to the so-called ziranpai (自然派), which means naturalistic, realistic branch of performance.
youshengjiege, wudongbuwu (有聲皆歌，無動不舞) which literally means singing every line and dancing every move. It is actually an amplification mechanism back in the days when there was no means to expand the reach of audiovisual performance on the stage. The actors had to expand the emphases in the lines to ensure they are heard, and also move in an expansive manner so that the actions can be clearly seen.
The way of emphasising gradually evolved into a sophisticated system of vocal and bodily performance, which became the convention of Peking opera acting.
Of course, the training of dubbing performance does not involve turning a line into musical phrases; it however inherits the idea that it is an art to place emphasis on a certain focus in the line. (21) and (22) is a pair of lines used in training of dubbing for beginners.
(31) 他 還是 第一名 呢
ta haishi diyiming ne he moreover first place particle
‘what’s more, he got the first place!’
(32) 他 還是 第一名 呢
ta haishi diyiming ne he still first place particle
‘he got the first place again!’
The two utterances consist of entirely the same characters, but depending on the semantics of haishi, they have different meanings. The difference is self-explanatory for even non dubbing artist speakers and would be easily understandable in
appropriate context, yet an important training for new dubbing artists is to achieve the difference by placing intonational emphasis on necessary parts of the utterance.
In (31), diyiming (‘first place’) is supposed to have higher pitch and longer duration whereas haishi would be swiftly slurred through. In (32), it is haishi that receives intontaional emphasis, thus turning into an adverb meaning ‘still’. It is considered an art to be able to achieve semantic distinction through phonological manipulation. (33) is a more advanced example.
(33) 他 剛才 坐車 回家 了
ta gangcai zuoche huijia le he just now take care back home particle ‘he just went back by car’
Dubbing artist trainees are required to perform (33) in different ways, with intonational emphasis placed on different parts of the line. Where the emphasis is placed depends on a dramatic mechanism called “subtext”, namely a line that is implied but not explicitly spoken. For example, (33) would have ta (‘he’) in higher pitch and longer duration if it means ‘he just went home by car, but she’s still here’, with the underlined part as subtext. Alternatively, if the subtext is ‘he just went home by car, leaving his bike here’, zuoche (‘take car’) would have the emphasis.
Communicative functions of intonation have also been widely studied in both Mandarin and other languages (Ho, 1977; Xu, 2006; Prom-on, Liu & Xu, 2011; Daneš, 1960; House, 1989; Matsumoto, 2003; Asatiani, 2005; Ma, 2006; Singer, 2006) as a phenomenon often occurring in natural speech. However, the point in the above-mentioned practice is for dubbing artists to deliberately manipulate the
intonation as necessary, thus achieving foregrounding function. Below is an example where a dubbing artist explicitly elaborates on such a manipulation in an interview on how dubbing artists brings out the emotion in their performance.
(34)
(34) is an excerpt of interview of dubbing artists whose names are hidden. The first dubbing artist gives another example where the intonational accent affects the focus of a sentence. The example is transcribed below as (25) and (26).
(35) 你 很 忙 嗎
ni hen mang ma
you very busy particle
“Are you busy?”
(36) 你 很 忙 嗎
ni hen mang ma
you very busy particle
“Are you really that busy?”
The dubbing artist in (34) points out that when the accent is placed on ni (‘you’), (35) is a mere question asking if the addressee is busy. However, when the accent is placed on hen (‘very’), the focus of questioning is directed to the intensity of the adjective. Interestingly, they claim that the way of speaking is both expressive and natural, although from my experience in training programme and the industry, the performance would definitely yield a result that has a pitch and duration variation much more dramatic than those occurring in natural speech.
After mastering the pitch and duration variation, dubbing artists are encouraged to perform with as much expression as possible. As introduced in section 3.1, a common problem dubbing artists have to deal with is the mismatch between length of the given text and the onscreen oral movement. Besides altering the texts on the script, which may or may not be allowed depending on the commissioner, a way to make up the difference is to put emphases on parts of the lines. The presence of variations makes the durations of the lines much easier to manipulate, and it is also regarded as more desirable because it gives dramatic sense to the lines.
Indeed, even when the length of a line on the script and the character’s oral movement is compatible, it is still deemed necessary to perform with emphases15. It is even more obvious with original shows or radio drama works where there is no need to match the length of lines with visual material. In these cases, many senior voiceover supervisors still consider it important to place intonational and durational accent on specific parts of the lines, believing it is the more expressive and better way to perform. Each voiceover supervisor has different idea concerning the degree of accents that should be given, but most of them would definitely require the
15 Commonly referred to as qingzhongyin (輕重音), which means literally light and heavy tones. When and how to perform qingzhongyin is one of the important issues that dubbing artists have to master.
presence of accents.