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I truly do not understand the way this site use "Original language". I've seen in previous forum post that the original language of a movie is made to be the languge spoken by the country of production without taking in account the spoken language. But, as a viewer, how is this information relevant at all ? Let's take an example, the movie "Bones and All" by Luca Guadagnino, a movie shot exclusively in english, with a script wrote in english by an american sreenwriter, with american actors and with a mostly american crew has "italian" as his original language.

As a viewer, if I'm looking for the "original language" of a movie it is to see the original version, the vision of the director, opposed by the dubbed version. Wikipedia (and I know it's not the best source but it's the only one I found) define the original language as "the language in which a film or a performance work was originally created" wich seems, for the case of our exemple, in english, not in italian.

To know the language the producers of a movie spoke, does not seem to me a very relevant information when you watch a movie, especially when the country of origin is already specified. Now, for the distinction between "spoken languages" and "original language", it is, as I've seen on this site, that every language spoken during a movie are refferenced in "spoken languages" and it suffices that more than one language is spoken in a movie to be incapable to say, in wich it was created.

I know this issue is a niche one but it was bothering me recently and I'm open to learning if I'm totally wrong. Thank you for your response.

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Am I imagining things or has the "Original Language" field been renamed on the edit page to "Original Movie Language"?

@superboy97 said:

@Rich Wannen said:

The original language should be the language(s) spoken in the film before any dubbing. The country (-ies) of origin should be the home-base nation(s) of the companies which made the film, regardless of either the spoken language in the film or the nation in which the film was shot. Where the film was first released should have nothing to do with either of these.

No.

  • the language(s) spoken in the movie before any dubbing should be in the spoken languages field.

The film "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" was originally shot with the actors speaking their native languages, i.e., English (Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach), Italian, and Spanish. It was first released in Rome, Italy, with the 3 lead actors' voices being dubbed into Italian.

Going by the criterion "language(s) spoken in the movie before any dubbing", the "spoken languages" for that film should be English, Italian, and Spanish. But in TMDB, both "original language" and "spoken languages" are locked to Italian. For "spoken language(s)" to be "Italian" alone, it needs to be redefined as "language(s) spoken in the first released version of the film, even if that first version is dubbed". Sadly, the Contributor's Bible doesn't quite address this, since it doesn't envisage a situation where the original version itself is dubbed into a different language from what was recorded by the actors. It says: "Only the main languages spoken in the original version. No translated/dubbed languages."

  • the home-base nation(s) of the companies which made the film should be set in the Production countries field.
  • the original language field should contain the main language spoken by the production companies.
  1. Isn't this redundant, as all the other posters have noted?
  2. This isn't what the Contributor's Bible actually says.
  3. The purpose of the "original language" field, as per the Contributor's Bible, is "to be able to have meta data around the "original entry". It's kind of like setting up a default translation." What should be the default translation for a film like "Bones and All" where the spoken language is English and is released with an English title, but is made by an Italian production company? The Contributor's Bible provides an answer: "One other notable exception are English-language movies produced by a non-English speaking country such as France, Germany, Italy or Japan. In those particular cases, the original title is usually the title used for the first non-festival release in an English-language country. More often than not, the original title is different from the title used in the (dubbed or subtitled) local version."
  4. Thus adopting a purposive interpretation of the Contributor's Bible, the "Original Language" for an film produced by Italians, but shot in English with an English title ought to be "English", since that would be the "default translation".
  • the origin country should contain the production country where the movie is first released.

I invite you to read our rules.

Those who have responded on this thread have read the rules. It's just that the rules are being interpreted very differently by different people, pointing to a lack of clarity in the rules.

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