The Vietnamese dub (Vietnam)

Walking around late one night near the train station in Nha Trang, I stopped at a small street-side drink stall.

A group of people huddled around a television, engrossed in a movie. Someone kindly cleared a bit of space and handed me a small plastic chair. As I settled in, I realized the film playing was an Indian movie.

On Vietnamese TV, the same voice talent is used to dub all the actors. It’s less a traditional dub and more like a voiceover, narrating individual dialogues and occasionally adding context.

I could still hear the original Hindi soundtrack faintly in the background. Because the voiceover lagged slightly behind the actual dialogues, I found myself laughing at jokes moments before the rest of the audience. Before long, it became a ritual—my laughter would cue theirs, and they’d burst out laughing with me every time.

Update (2019):

While watching the documentary Chuck Norris vs Communism, I remembered the above experience.The documentary tells the story of Irina Nistor, a Romanian translator hired by black marketers to dub Hollywood bootleg videotapes during the communist era. From her makeshift studio, Irina provided the voiceover for every character in over 3,000 films. It’s said that her voice became the most familiar in Romania after that of the dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu.