Reception of songs in dubbed versus subtitled animated movies

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to compare and evaluate the reception of dubbed songs and subtitles in animated movies. To achieve this goal, thirty-one freshmen students majoring in English literature and English translation were recruited as participants in this study. Eleven of them took part in the subtitling group and twenty of them participated in the dubbing group. They were asked to fill out an online questionnaire after watching five songs selected from five different musical animated movies. There were two questionnaires dedicated to two groups of subtitling and dubbing which consisted of fifteen memory-testing questions and twenty-five comprehension questions. The participants were requested to give scores to each song at the end of each part. The collecting data were analyzed and compared through an independent sample T-Test. The findings of the study showed that there was a significant difference in the comprehension and memory of the subtitling viewers. In fact, the reception of the subtitling group was significantly higher than the dubbing group but there was not a significant difference in their satisfaction level.