Here's a thread I've wanted to do for quite a while, so here I go :

Doctor Who's French dubbing : from Cushing's "caramels mous" to Bill saying "motherf*cker", a thread

1/way too many

But first, a little introduction, because France has a special relationship with dubbing. If you're from the english-speaking world, you might not be that familiar with it, but in France almost every piece of media in a foreign language is carefully dubbed. And France actually...

...has a tradition of really good dubbing. Unlike in many other countries where the original voices can still be heard, french dubs (what we call vf) are lip synched to the original video. If France is so careful about dubbing, that's bc it's the way French people consume media..

..., most cinemas show movies in vf (= version française, french version) and most people aren't used to reading subtitles, because from childhood on, we see media almost exclusively in french. Also, the phrasing of titles can be very different from a language to the next...

..., which can explain some translations that aren't 1 to 1, but close enough. For example, the episode "Listen" was translated to "Jamais Seul" (=never alone) because a single-verb title just doesn't sound good or natural in french. So... about Doctor Who in France...

I) The Oddballs (1969-1996)

The very first pieces of Doctor Who to be exported in France were the two Cushing movies, "Dr Who contre les Daleks" and "Les Daleks envahissent la Terre", which both saw some limited releases (1969 for the first one, couldn't find a date for the 2nd)

...These are known for having a... funny dub. Let's just say the voice actors sound... completely mental, and, if the first movie translated Dr Who to Docteur Who, the second one calls him Docteur Nour (which isn't even a french word) for no apparent reason. I absolutely love...

...these dubs, they're incredibly charming, but you don't wanna take them too seriously, I especially love the way Cushing mysteriously says "Caramel mous..." when he sits on Ian's box of chocolates. Sadmy I can't find dubbed scenes on yt, so here's a 2001 preview for a french...

...broadcast of the film (well it's up there now). But what about the main show ? While Classic Who was exported, it was never really dubbed... until 1974. The BBC sent copies of several episodes of season 12 to Japan, Italy, and... France ! Only problem : the audio tapes...

...contained both the dialogue and the sound effects, so they all had to be redone by the dubbing team. The episodes sent were Robot, The Ark in Space, Revenge of the Cybermen, and Planet of Evil, we don't have the french dubs of Ark or Revenge, but they were made. Once again...

...this dub is a bit strange, and definitely dated. It's noteworthy for adding a voice saying "Docteur Who who who whooo" to the titles, translating Time Lords to "Temporels" instead of Seigneurs du Temps, and, most brilliantly, translating Cybermen to Cybernators which is...

...perfect. On original broadcast, these were out of order and, bc no one knew the show, no one watched it. They were broadcast again in 2013 for the french 50th celebration. The last piece of Doctor Who to be dubbed before 2005 was the TV Movie, which saw a change....

...of title, from "Doctor Who" in english to "Doctor Who : Le Seigneur du Temps" (note how the translation for Time Lord has changed again, it's not the last time). This one is a pretty standard dub from what I've heard, nothing great but nothing terrible either.

II) New Who (2005-now)

If Doctor Who dabbled in France in the 20th Century, it's New Who that'll give the show a name for a french audience. From the first series on to now, the show has been broadcast on France 4, one of the french public channels, which allowed it to be...

...discovered by a brand new french audience. I won't detail every single episode, so here's a compilation of the weirdest title translations from series 1 and 2 (series 3 is... complicated)
-Aliens in London : L'Humanité en Péril (mankind in peril)
....

-The Empty Child : Drôle de Mort (Strange/Funny Death)

-Tooth and Claw : Un Loup-Garou Royal (A Royal Werewolf)

-The Idiot's Lantern : L'Hystérique de l'Etrange Lucarne (The Crazy Woman in the weird small Window)

-Doomsday : Adieu Rose (Farewell Rose)

We also see a trend...

...in the translation of the titles of 2 parters : instead of giving it two different titles, we have way more part 1/part 2, probably to warn the casual audience of the serialization. But here we get to series 3, and it probably deserves a thread of it's own. On first...

...broadcast, the episodes had perfectly fine french titles. And then came the dvd, which decided to randomly change half the titles to, ahem, questionable effect. So welcome to the freak show, the worst, most ridiculous translations you'll see (a mix of original and dvd)...

-Evolution of the Daleks : DGM Dalek Genetiquement Modifié (GMD, Genetically Modified Dalek)

-The Lazarus Experiment : La Jeunesse Eternelle (Eternal Youtt)

-42 : Elvis ou les Beatles ?

-Human Nature : Quand l'Alien devient Humain (When the Alien becomes Human)

...

-Family of Blood : Retour dans le présent (Back to the Present)

From then on, title translations stopped being so... original and were a bit more faithful, anthough we still see some weird ones, like Hungry Earth/Cold Blood, translated to : La révolte des intra terrestres...

...(the revolution of intra terrestrials). But we also got some really good title translations, my favourite being Robot of Sherwood, translated to Robot des Bois (Robot Hood), I legit think it's better than the original. The translations for series 11 and 12 do feel very...

...one to one, which I'm not that big of a fan of (I like it better when you take the original title and rephrase it to make it sound nicer).
But what about the dubbing ? Well for the most part, it's really good ! My favourite piece of trivia about this dub is that David Manet...

...,the voice actor for 9, is also the voice actor for 10, because, well, it's the same character, why not give him the same voice (that was Manet's argument to the production apparently). Before we continue, I will say that I haven't watched everything in french, I started...

...watching the show in english with series 9, so I'm not that familiar with the dub of the series after, I've heard a few scenes, but never a whole episode. The dub also gives us yet another translation for Time Lords, in Series 1 they're called "Princes du Temps"...

...(Princes of Time) before going back to Seigneur du Temps in series 2. If most of the dubbing is good (Matt Smith's voice sounds uncannily like him), we still get a few duds, especially the early Dalek and Cybermen voices, which are just... just listen and you'll understand...

I'll continue this later, but it's mostly done