"Doubling Bad Banks Even Less German On TV"

The public broadcaster returned the case once: we let's get a German TV show dubbed in Dutch. With the added attraction that the Dutch actor Barry Atsma has a lead role in the series and could now double his own role. Bad Banks talks about a couple of reckless bankers who cause a crisis.

"It's an incredibly fun and funny experience, but of a serious background," says Frans Klein, director of the NPO video. What is funny is that the Germans are known for their dubbing, and the Dutch despise him. But the NPO wanted to see how the dubbing would fall in the Dutch public. The fact that Barry Atsma participated provided a good opportunity "to celebrate a Dutch hero in the experience". If it's a success, the NPO wants to do it more often.

According to Klein, dubbing makes a series more accessible and Bad Banks thus attracts "other public groups" for whom subtitling is difficult. People with low literacy, for example. Klein: "We also do TV for the silent majority, which we would like to surprise with an experience."

This is how the "Bad Banks" sounds in Dutch:

Giselinde Kuipers, Professor of Cultural Sociology at the University of Amsterdam , think that the experience of the NPO is strange. She has studied the different ways of translating television programs. "It distracts people from television, the resistance to dubbing is huge, it's also very expensive, and the NPO has had to cut costs." According to her, you do not have either the tradition and experience in the Netherlands as the major foreign dubbing industries.

Klein argues that: "A lot of children's TVs are dubbed here, so the industry is there." According to him, it is not expensive at all.

The serial purchase is much cheaper than producing them anyway.Doing your own series costs about two tons per delivery. A series costs about ten thousand euros per episode.An additional amount is added for dubbing.Thus, the NPO receives an hour of Dutch television for only 20 000. While the six-part German series cost 8 million euros

The cultural sociologist Kuipers says that subtitling is actually the only elm in the world. "Dubbing is a hobby of Western Europe. It is only in the four main European countries that this happens: Germany, France, Spain Italy. "In Eastern Europe, a translator speaks through the original language." For a doubled television and movie culture, you need enough money, from a large linguistic area and an active language policy. You do not have that here. "

The disgust that the Dutch have against dubbing, is reflected in countries with a different system:" Everyone thinks that his own system is logical, and the other ridiculous. "

The German series are not much more on Dutch television.In the past you had the Krimis: Derrick and Tatort and sometimes a great historical series: Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980), Heimat (1984), and last Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter (2013) On Netflix, you now have Dark ] a series of German scifi that we can see in dozens of countries, usually doubled.

Synke Hotje of the Institute of Germany in Amsterdam regrets the Dutch dubbing of Bad Banks precisely because German programs are so important for language acquisition.It thinks that the NPO has a "Bildungsopdracht" to put viewers in touch with languages ​​and foreign cultures.

According to Hotje, there are so few German and on television. In the seventies, the Dutch from the eastern provinces still watched German television: Die Sendung mit der Maus and Die ZDF-Hitparade with schlager. This generation speaks reasonable German, Hotje's states. After the arrival of commercial television, this was replaced by American programs.

The lack of German programs on Dutch television is due to a general lack of interest in German culture. "The animosity is no longer there, but there is no knowledge." According to her, it is harmful because Germany is an important trading partner and a culturally close neighbor.

The Originalfassung klingt so:

The linguist Marc van Oostendorp not only sees German, but all foreign languages ​​disappear from the Netherlands. Low. Except one: English. According to him, the Netherlands is becoming a bilingual country. "I'm not worried about the state of Dutch – this language is pretty strong – but the other languages ​​are being replaced by English.We are becoming a kind of Americans who speak Dutch and find all of the other strange languages. "

Van Oostendorp points out that Germans and many others also have a strong emphasis on English. It is not for nothing that the Scandinavian, German or French series often have English titles, such as Bad Banks . About this series, he says, "As long as the public broadcaster will not double the German series in English, it's not too bad."

Television director Klein finds the sound exaggerated. "We offer a lot of series in the original languages, only one will be doubled, it's very modest." For viewers who would like to see Bad Banks in the original language, Originalfassung arrives simultaneously on the NPO 1 Extra digital channel Both versions come on the NPO Start online video platform