The reunion episode of “Friends” will be available this Thursday on HBO Max in the United States, and on Salto in France.
To watch this "meeting" in the French version, you will have to wait a few weeks before it is broadcast on TF1.
In which language do you watch “Friends”?
Fans of the series are torn between the original version and the french version.
Attention, dilemma in perspective. Like any self-respecting
Friends
fan
, you probably already know that this Thursday, HBO Max will air "Friends reunion", the special episode of the series that celebrates the reunion of Chandler, Monica, Joey, Phoebe, Ross and Rachel, after 17 years of absence. To see it in France, you will have to go to Salto, where the platform broadcasts it the same day, but in the original version ... Because it will be necessary to wait a few weeks before TF1 does not offer it in the French version (the exact date is not still known), with the "original" voices of dubbing, advanced at the beginning of the week Puremédias.
But in the end, in which language do you watch it
Friends
?
The debate on the original version and the French version has been dividing fans for a long time, torn between authenticity and nostalgia.
New dilemma to date: should we rush this Thursday on the special episode, or take some time to find the voices that rocked our childhood and our adolescence?
Voices "madeleine de Proust"
"Personally, I prefer the French version," says Aymeric, 27, a
20 Minutes
reader.
who responded to our call for contributions. Not only for a question of understanding but also because it is in this version that I discovered the series and its characters during my youth. It would therefore be a real nostalgic pleasure to hear them again with those voices. "A point of view shared by Clémentine, 26, for whom French voices are" associated with her childhood ". "They have a side of Madeleine de Proust which I never tire of", she confides. And indeed, for many fans of the series who discovered it at the end of the 1990s on France 2 (after a first broadcast in VOST on the pay channel Canal J), these voices are engraved in their memory. Inseparable from their own experiences, they thus act as a formidable time machine.
Among these voices, there is in particular that of Mark Lesser, the so identifiable French voice of Joey. He played the vocal double for Matt LeBlanc until season 9 (and repeated it more recently in the series
Episodes
), before being replaced by Olivier Jankovic following a strike of the actors to protest against their salaries in 2003. He remembers his voices of
Friends
with great nostalgia too. "We must not forget that when we were recording, the six of us were all the time at the microphone, we spent the day together, we knew each other well and there was a good atmosphere", he often said. A "troop phenomenon" and a complicity which participated in this success of the French version according to him. "For this kind of series, and a lot of dubbing from that time, if people are attached, it is also to this atmosphere that should be reflected in the dubbing", he analyzes.
Will he play in the French version of the special episode?
Whether for Joey or for all the other characters in the series, no information has been revealed for the French cast.
"If someone calls me I will gladly do it", however replies Mark Lesser with gusto.
“I think Matt LeBlanc has aged particularly well, he fully assumes this clownish side he had, which made Joey a funny character, a little childish, who always put his feet in the dish.
He fully assumes as he gets older and he does it really well, ”he says.
Mechanical laughter and jokes that fall flat
If some do not consider for anything in the world to give up the French version, for others on the contrary,
Friends can
only be watched in English. "It's in the original version or nothing!" Thus estimates Joseph, 31 years old. French dubbing voices sound "fake" and lack spontaneity. "" I do not like watching in French because it loses all its charm and its comedy ", adds Eve, 38 years old. What do we blame the French TV for? The question of the voices, which can denote with the original ones, and the absence of the real acting of the actors, necessarily. There is also the problem of laughter that punctuates the gags of the series, recorded in French, captured live in original version.
"It was played in front of an audience, the reactions were true," explains Marie Telling, co-presenter of the AMIES podcast, entirely dedicated to
Friends,
on Slate.fr. You really feel it when you listen and the French version really has an irritating side to that ”. His sidekick Anaïs Bordages, who rediscovered the series for the podcast, also agrees. “It brings something to the experience, I loved hearing people who were moved or were shocked, it was great! »What about the special episode? Like all of its content, the mystery remains about the sound system.
Apart from these laughs, it is more generally the translation of the series that can pose a problem for the fans.
Some people deplore jokes that are poorly translated, or sometimes translated so literally that they lose all their meaning in French.
Some subtleties of language may also have been overlooked in the translation.
Differences such between the two versions that for Marie Telling, going from French to Original “is a bit like seeing the series again in adulthood.
In French, there are a lot of things that escape us because they sometimes imply, and when we see it in English, we understand ”.
Sense of humor and time
It must be said that the exercise of dubbing is particularly complex for the humorous field. “It is not easy to convey humor,” admits Laure-Hélène Cesari, author of subtitling and dubbing. When it's visual comedy, we see it, but when it's puns, it has to be funny also in French. And the problem with sitcoms, too, is that it bursts, really, it's a ping-pong of words and you really have to rack your brains and see if the lines answer each other well. Sometimes we get stuck because the two languages are really very different, or the puns are very difficult to render. "
It's all in the art of translation, precision work for which the watchword is "adaptation", explains the author. "The languages are not alike, the phrasing either, just like the tonic accents ... There are things that have to be adapted". And sometimes you have to know how to move away from replicas and original references to find images that speak to viewers. From where the possible shift with the initial direction of the VO. But unlike a time when authors had greater freedom of translation, now they are asked to stick as closely as possible to the original version. "Sometimes clients even ask English translators to take the text of the French version and translate it back into English to compare," says the author.
Language-related complexities of translation, but also time constraints.
“The more time we have to think, the more possibilities we have to review the episode and let the first translation we did settle a little.
If we are in a hurry, it is not easy, ”explains Laure-Hélène Cesari.
However, time and resources are increasingly scarce in its field.
“The working conditions are deteriorating because the prices are really falling dramatically.
Sometimes there are drops of 25-30%.
We are also increasingly shortening our deadlines, ”she laments.
Just like the original version, the quality of the French version and the OST comes at a price.
An inner conflict
The special episode of the
Friends
reunion
should not escape these issues, to which may be added another parameter: feverishness.
How can we be patient, when we have been hoping for this return for years?
“It all depends on when TF1 will broadcast the episode.
The impatience is so great that it is difficult to wait and resist going to watch in original version, explains our reader Anthony.
Second weight in the balance, social networks… Everything will leak the next day, the critics will fuse and it will spoil the wait… ”A problem that the fans did not know from the first hour.
What if the solution was to look at both?
The One Where They Get Back Together
on Thursday, and
one where they meet
later on TF1?
Series
"Friends": The reunion episode reveals its first images, and it feels weird
"Friends": The special episode will be broadcast on TF1 and Salto
TF1
Series
HBO
Friends
French language