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Friday, March 13th, 2026

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Recent voice actor dubbing feature appears to be very hard to apply

Dear staff,

I see a number of problems with the new voice actor dubbing feature which appear to be extremely hard to overcome - though I agree that many credits for especially animations and video games have become a huge mess of scattered various language credits and many 'uncredited' roles.

  1. What is the 'original' version? For Japanese anime movies, the original language to me would be Japanese, or does the international English release qualify? Similarly, animated features like 'Les Triplets de Belleville' (2003) and 'Persepolis' (2007) would be French originals, just like the adventure video games created by French companies like Cryo Interactive, Microïds, France Télécom and Kheops Studio I believe would have original French voices, and 'The Witcher' (2007) is in fact a game series from Poland. I suppose Pyro Studios (Commandos games) would be Spanish in origin.
  2. There are possible further complications when actresses like Charlotte Rampling or Jodie Foster record their voices both in English and French. For instance, for the international release of 'Persepolis', Catherine Deneuve and her daughter Chiara Mastroianni redubbed their French voices in English. Chiara Mastroianni even went as far as recording her parts in French, Italian and English for the game "Atlantis III: The New World" (2001). Still another complication: her 'avatar' in the game is closely based on her likeness  and her motion capture. Does IMDb allow this, and how?
  3. What about international co-productions like TV series with Italian, French, German, Spanish etc. actors? Which is the original? Italian productions in general (film/TV) have been known to dub almost everyone, even their own actors when they didn't have the required 'standardized' accent! 
  4. Dubbing actors, I would say, are quite often simply listed without specifying the characters they voice, or would typically voice a number of (minor) characters. Does IMDb allow such listings without roles? Or with multiple roles, separated by slashes? And what would count as 'proof' when no end credits are given in full? A reliable magazine article? A press release? An interview with the actor(s)? An (often?) reliable website like www.behindthevoiceactors.com?
  5. What should be done with all the old, haphazard and messy cast credit entries? 

So, a potentially very useful feature to me, but very hard to straighten out in practice.

Regards,

Richard

 

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Introducing: New Credit Categories and Professions

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44 Messages

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4 months ago

To put my issues into context, for instance for the French game China: The Forbidden City (1998), in spite of the character credits listed on IMDb, just the US voice actors' names are listed in the end credits of the game, no roles. In the same format, I have actor credits from files on the official releases, localized for French, German, Italian, Spanish (also Dutch and Swedish, currently not allowed by IMDb). See below.

Quite easy to add to IMDb, even some credits for casting and dialogue direction, but again, hadn't it been for the fact that no roles have been specified. To me, it would be a pity to have to leave this out.

Samples:

French

#Studio d'enregistrement

Studio 1

#Casting et Direction de plateau

Jean François Vlérick

#Comédiens (actors)

John Arnold

Pierre Baton

Luc de Goustine

Scali Delpeyrat

Eric Etcheverry

Xavier Guitey

Charlotte Lévy

Christophe Kourotchine

Mado Maurin

Léon Napias

Dominique Rozet

Marie Viart

Jean François Vlérick   

German

#Ton

Creative Studios GmbH, Hamburg;

Hermann Prinz, Stefan Wabnik, Anja Zurawski

#Dialogregie

Antje Roosch

#Sprecher (speakers):

Ingo Abel, Monty Arnold, Volker Bogdan, Jan Fischer, Lothar Grützner

Konrad Halver, Michael Harck, Katrin Jeakel, Frank Jordan, Wolfgang Jürgen

Gerda-Maria Jürgens, Micaele Kreißler, Ela Nitsche, Wolf Rahtjen, Reent Reins

etc.

(edited)