I realize how easy it is to shoot at the dubbing actors, considering the situation in which they are forced to work. Ever since, last year, the Fox Italia channels started airing American shows even before the end of the original season, translating and dubbing episodes must have become a frantic job.
Such premise cannot be an excuse for the way in which, when dubbed, characters lose depth and often become ridiculous.
One example is Lost, one of whose most notable features is the treatment of characters. The whole show – and particularly its season one – is founded on cultural differences, which are in good measure manifested in the different accents in which the English language is spoken: the California “standard,” the New York, Australian, Scottish accents and so on. These are all nuances that will necessarily be lost when the show is translated and dubbed.
Since it would be ridiculous to associate each original accent to a specific regional cadence of the Italian language (which would definitely not help the characterization), I don’t object to the fact that all these differences have been smoothed down in favor of a more or less standard version of Italian.
The only exception to this rule is in case of characters who, originally, are not native speakers of English, which becomes pertinent in dubbing. Here I’m forced to talk about the sorry fate of Sayid Jarrah. Naveen Andrews, who plays the character, turns his own British accent into a generic Middle-Eastern one, compatible with that of someone who has learned English as a foreign language. Nothing strange so far. What is remarkable about Sayid, however, is that he speaks a very correct language, often even quite refined – definitely more so than that of native speakers such as Hurley or Charlie.
Listening to the Italian dubbing, I noticed two things. First, that the dubbing actor makes no effort toward any kind of cultural localization, and turns the character’s language into that of the stereotypical (I apologize in advance) “poor Negro.” He’s this close to using all verbs in the infinitive (which would be much more noticeable in Italian than if the same thing happened in English). Second, he makes evident mistakes, above all by not using subjunctives.
Now, I know that subjunctives in Italian are progressively going to hell. (I will not launch into a tirade against this.) But because of this fact, considering how carefully the character was built, also in a linguistic sense, it would have been right to maintain his peculiarities. Sayid is not a barbaric torturer who can barely express himself; he is, on the contrary, an educated, refined communication man who resorts to torture only when forced by his role or by events.
Lost is not The Bold and the Beautiful, and would have deserved better than this.