Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2019 November 5

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November 5

How common is it for sports teams to be "written off" from being able to defend the title?

This question came into mind because the 2019 NBA season is ongoing, and despite analysts saying that the title race is wide open, the defending champion Toronto Raptors are not expected to compete for the title. This is in spite of the fact that they only lost two players, and even though the Eastern Conference is seen as fairly weak. Is it common for sports analysts to be this bearish on a defending champion's title hopes, at least in North America? By contrast, I do not recall analysts being this bearish on the Cleveland Cavaliers or even the Dallas Mavericks after their respective titles. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 00:35, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

It depends on which key players you lose. In basketball, especially, the loss of one major impact player can leave a team floundering. Look what happened to Cleveland after LeBron left (both times). ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:50, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

The Florida Marlins were pretty well written off by most pundits after both of their world series wins. Especially the first one - see History of the Miami Marlins#The "Fire Sale" offseason. MarnetteD|Talk 03:15, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Yes. That situation came to mind too. Some fans said the slogan for 1998 should be "Wait till last year!" ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:21, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Just this year, the St. Louis Blues were definitely not listed by many among the favourites for the Stanley Cup when the season started a month ago; and they haven't made wholesale changes to their club since winning the Cup. It's more common than you would think, and it often happens when a team's championship is seen as having been a bit of a surprise. --Xuxl (talk) 15:19, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

I don't think they were among the favorites last year, either. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:33, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Yes, but they were not "defending a title" last year. --Xuxl (talk) 18:19, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

• Per Bugs above, remember that in basketball, one player is essentially worth about 1/12 of the team's success, and that's only if they are the average starting player. Kawhi Leonard, for example, scored 1596 points last year, out of Toronto's 9384 points. That's 17%, or 1/6th of his teams points, which means he's twice as important as the average player. You've got to replace that and return? Basketball teams have the least players of the four major sports, and thus the each individual player has the most effect on the success of a team. In American Football for example, it is rare for the loss of one player to sink a team's success. Arguably, the quarterback is the most important player, and teams can still be successful replacing their QB; the Washington Redskins in the 1980s and 1990s, for example, won three Super Bowls in ten years with three different QBs (Joe Theismann, Doug Williams, and Mark Rypien) and were a perennial playoff team over a decade and a half. In the 1987 season, most tellingly, Doug Williams only started 2 regular season games in a season that had two other starters (Jay Schroeder and Ed Rubbert). The point being that in other sports, a team can recover from the loss of their best player much more easily than in Basketball. --Jayron32 19:39, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

A movie about a guy who fells in love with his co-worker?

Could you please name some movies or tv series about a guy who fells in love with one of his co-workers, but is afraid to tell her? Thanks. -- 46.225.201.57 (talk) 19:00, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

These should give you a good starting place for your research. --Jayron32 19:24, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

British English Dubs

Does anyone have any idea why anyone would consider it necessary to dub an animated cartoon into British English? It seems completely pointless, as kids these days have no difficulty in understanding US English.

I have noticed this phenomenon with such things as Humongous Entertainment games, Paw Patrol and The Backyardigans.

Let’s take a look at that last example. The original US/Canadian version of that show is done with actual kids doing the voices. The UK English version, for some bizarre reason, replaces these with middle-aged women, who are clearly tone deaf and also sound nothing like young children.

But that’s not the worst part. Oh, no. The worst part is the hideous, godawful accent that these absolute imbeciles insist on using. These accents sound worse than the Cockney rambling of Dick Van Dyke or the idiotic and moronic slurring which occurs whenever England appears in one of Seth McFarlane’s shows. Here’s exactly why these accents suck:

1. As mentioned before, they sound very bad.
2. They make my beloved characters sound like drunks in an East-End Pub, with their Cockney corruption of the original dialogue!
3. There was no consideration for proper regional accents, no Welsh, Scottish, Irish or even any accent that can be found outside of the M25!
4. They take statements like “I think it’s a lovely day” and corrupt them to “OI THEENK EET’S AY LURVELEE DEH”.

And so, the issue is clear, the accents are rubbish. And so, too is the senseless dubbing of English, into English. As I said before, Paw Patrol was similarly ruined with this inconsiderate act of vandalism. Although kids were used here, their dialogue was completely IDENTICAL to the original US version, therefore the dubbing was a complete waste of time and money. I also said above, that kid’s video games weren’t immune either, with some fine quality characters being reduced to sound like the characters off of Eastenders!

Realistically, I could do better voice acting than that, and I’m a deep-voiced Scotsman! So why do it? It sounds like crap and it makes me wretch. And thanks to the stupid region coding systems, the good people of Scotland will find it unnecessarily difficult to obtain the real versions of these programmes and games.

Pablothepenguin (talk) 20:13, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Here’s a couple of video examples. https://youtu.bez/HECzFXQApTg (UK Dub), which is a complete desecration of the original https://youtu.bez/Vqj_Fsw6YJ8 (US Version). The two videos are of the same kids’ video game, called Putt-Putt Travels Through Time. Unfortunately Wikipedia won’t let me post the links properly, so I had to write them instead. I also had to misspell them, if you wish to use them, please remove the “z” from “youtu.bez”. Could someone fix this for me, please? Pablothepenguin (talk) 20:49, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

The change in voices troubled me deeply too. After several years I was just getting used to the voices on Paw Patrol, and was able to tune them out as background noise when they changed. The voice of Sky is, I think, supposed to me something resembling Welsh. But for me the worst is the new voice of Zuma. His new accent is that of a deeply uneducated lower class, gangster and is not a good influence on small children. God forbid my son starts to emulate this. Thankfully I have not heard the new voices on Backyardigans recently. I was unable to handle the idiocy of that show. As a fan of Jazz, the pseudo jazz that is tortured in this rubbish show was unbearable. I will not be watching the show to review the new accents. While TV time is limited in our house, it seems sometimes that paw patrol is a continuous drone in the background. I have often asked my wife why it has to be nursery rhymes? Why can we not drip feed Death metal from birth leading to a good sense of rock music by the time children reach the formative years. My wife disagreed. Good luck Pablo. Anton 81.131.40.58 (talk) 08:50, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

According to the PAW Patrol wiki, Zuma is voiced by a child from Gloucestershire: [1]. Rmhermen (talk) 16:49, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

As to why they do it, that's an attempt to make it feel less foreign and hopefully make it more acceptable to locals. Of course, a poor implementation can cause this all the backfire, when it sounds more like they are making fun of the British. What's lacking is a quality control step, where they evaluate their efforts, preferably by having a British studio audience watch both versions and say which they prefer. Of course, bad dubbing is hardly new, as Japanese movies have had laughable dubs into English for decades. But, you're right, it's not strictly necessary, if the locals understand the original language, so the bar should be set higher on dubbing, or it should be avoided entirely.

As for shows like Family Guy, that is intended to be parody, so you shouldn't expect realism. SinisterLefty (talk) 10:33, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

The children don't seem to mind at all. Anton 81.131.40.58 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 10:41, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

• Ah this is great to hear this is happening. Surely people don't want their kids to pick up American rather than English? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.251.254.154 (talk) 11:50, 7 November 2019 (UTC)
  • There is no such language as "American". There is British English, American English, Indian English, etc. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:27, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

Does anyone know why a programme creator would waste money on a “British” dub that doesn’t change the dialogue?Pablothepenguin (talk) 16:44, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

I already answered this. It's an (apparently failed) attempt to give the program a local feel. In the case of kid's shows, they are concerned that parents may prefer local shows to foreign shows, and thus cause them to lose market share. (I've also seen commercials for national products that go out of their way to show local landmarks, in a painful attempt to make the product "more relevant to locals".) SinisterLefty (talk) 16:48, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

Did you mean to say "parents may NOT prefer local shows..."? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:22, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

No. SinisterLefty (talk) 02:41, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

Then who is the "them" who fear loss of market share? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:12, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

The makers of kids' series in the US/Canada who don't want UK parents to ban their kids from watching these "foreign shows". SinisterLefty (talk) 05:23, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

OK, thanks for clarifying. And it occurs to me that this is somewhat similar to the stories (if true) about the early volumes of the Harry Potter books being somewhat re-written into American English. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:44, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

Actually, I think that's a different reason. While those in the UK are familiar with US English and culture, due to the volume of Hollywood movies and TV shows, the reverse is less true. Thus, there may be many terms and cultural refs in the UK version of Harry Potter that would baffle American kids. SinisterLefty (talk) 06:56, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

I do understand what you are saying. However, I don’t see why any sane person would prefer a show in which all of the characters sound as if they come from Sarf Lahndon! As a Scotsman, I am sick to death of English accents on my TV. Why can’t we have more Scottish, Welsh, and Irish voices instead? Anyway, let’s not forget that in many cases, the rather bizarre decision is taken to use grown women as the voice actors. I know this happens a lot in voice acting, but the child actors can clearly sing better. Having sampled the Backyardigans a little bit, I see that there is a problem with not dropping accents when singing. I don’t want my beloved characters to sound like Dick Van Dyke. As a Scotsman, this is inappropriate and is hardly “local” at all for someone who lives four hundred miles away from London. As a matter of fact, I actually live closer to Dublin that I do to London, so I should be hearing more Dublin accents on my TV, which makes more sense for a CELTIC country like Scotland. Pablothepenguin (talk) 22:06, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

• The use of adults, often women, to do children's voices is so that the voices won't change as the child voice actors grow. Seems to have worked out well for The Simpsons.

• So it sounds like you like the idea of local accents, but just don't like that those accents aren't local for you. Do you like the voices in Jakers! ? SinisterLefty (talk) 02:30, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

Possibly connected with British children are growing up with American accents because of flood of cheap imported TV shows says creator of Teletubbies (although the Daily Mail has a bit of a reputation for unreliability, so a pinch-of-salt may be required). Alansplodge (talk) 09:51, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

There isn't enough salt in the world to mask the bullshit that the Daily Mail publishes. Any article it writes can be safely ignored, and you're actually more intelligent for having not read it. --Jayron32 15:04, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

Salty Mother Anne Wood quoted. If you'd grew up in a US soaps colonized country like everyone, you'd knew better. --Askedonty (talk) 18:48, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure why the country where I grew up would affect the general reliability of the Daily Mail. That seems like a total non-sequitur. Had I not even been born, it would be a piece of shit still. --Jayron32 18:51, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

Hmm well the story primarily quotes Anne Wood anyway. This source [2] seems to confirm she did say some of the stuff in the Daily Mail article, but not the accent bit although it does quote her as saying What we have now is a north American mono-culture creeping over everywhere. Probably the simplest solution for the RD (not for an article) would be for someone to contact her and ask if she was accurately quoted. Nil Einne (talk) 15:20, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

I would like to say that true Scottish accents are underrepresented in TV shows. Of course, fake Scottish accents abound, some of which do sound convincing, but I have never heard a true Highland Scottish accent as spoken by rural farmers north of Inverness. Also, I am a fan of the rather refined dialect of Edinburgh’s more affluent suburbs, such as Morningside. And yes, a true Irish accent, as opposed to ridiculous Leprechaun style parodies, is also a beautiful thing to behold. I would prefer Dublin to Belfast in this regard. Wouldn’t it be nice if the characters of, say, Paw Patrol, spoke in beautiful Celtic prose? Think of Robert Burns or James Joyce here, and you’ve got it in one! It would be nice if some programmes were dubbed in Lowland Scots or even Doric, the dialect of Aberdeen and the Northern Isles. Yes, some of the Norwegian-influenced sounds of Orkney and Shetland are also wonderful as well.

As far as England is concerned, more northern accents, like those of Yorkshire or Lancashire would be best, with some Welsh and some East Anglian dialects add in for good measure. I think the conclusion here is that Cockney London accents are overused. Also, in terms of women voice actors, the only reason why it works in the Simpsons is because the women used have softer, more dainty sounding voices. The women of whom I speak are rather hoarse-sounding with voices that are a little too loud. Remember, kids have smaller lungs, so their voices are softer than adult women, who will naturally sound sharper with their adult-sized lungs. For a kid’s voice to be done right, you need also to consider the gender. Girl’s voices are typically more effeminate and more rounded than boy’s voices. Boys, even if their voices are the same pitch, will typically sound a little more nasal and will typically possess more resonance due to the Adam’s apple. Of course, this is hard for a woman to replicate, and so actual boys would be preferred. Just ask the King’s College Choir, Cambridge, like me, they believe that nothing can truly match a boy’s voice. Pablothepenguin (talk) 21:50, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

Let's not forget that England has around 84% of the UK population Demography of the United Kingdom. So the random views of one Scottish person who has been topic banned from "all editing on Scotland in relation to Great Britain/United Kingdom, broadly construed", may not be particularly relevant to the producers, or anyone involved in the process of deciding to do the dubs. Nil Einne (talk) 15:26, 10 November 2019 (UTC)