>>>>Maybe this whole thing is an overblown tale of a couple of attempts to dub? I know of a similar case, when they subtitled a Serbian film in Croatia, and a serious war drama turned into a laughingfest, because nobody paid any attention to the movie, everyone was looking into the differences between the "translation" and the original... which were tiny, few and a matter of inspiration. Everybody had great fun, and the newspaper critics had a field day. Nobody paid too much attention to the movie :).
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>>>I was told that in Italy, where, I think, all English lang films are dubbed, rather than subtitled, each famous actor has his Italian counterpart who always does him, in all films. So they assoc. a particular voice solely with each actor.
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>>Makes you think... what do they do with the dubber when the original dies?
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>Or worse still - what do they do about the actor's voice when the dubber dies?
>
>"Geoge Clooney sounds a bit effeminate nowadays, don't you think?"

I once read somewhere that years ago it was a shock for Italians when they heard the real actor's voice (can't remember which actor but I remember that it was one whose voice was highly recognizable here) and it didn't match the dubber's... In Mexico most everything is subtitled, not dubbed because they prefer to hear the actor's voices and emotions and especially the background sounds in the original version (or at least that is what I was told). It must've become 'habit' because most newer films have the background sounds on a different track so that should no longer be an issue. Movies in theatres were usually subtitled, not dubbed. The same tv stations aired in Mexico (HBO, HBO West, etc) were all subtitled in Mexico but here in the states they are dubbed for the Spanish channels (at least in my area they are). When I was in Spain, foreign films were all dubbed. The same for Germany. I only saw one or two movies in France and they were both dubbed. I wasn't there long though. However, other than Europe, just about every other country I've lived in or visited, the foreign films are more often subtitled, not dubbed. In most of the latin american countries I've been to, the local stations used dubbed versions but the cable channels were subtitled. Interestingly though, I don't recall ever seeing a cartoon with subtitles - they were always dubbed.