Research proposal
The research I propose to do for my paper is a questionnaire which will be addressed to
my colleagues from every year. The focus will be on the debate of whether films should be
subbed or dubbed and which option is more spread among students. The questionnaire will aim
to find out what genre of films students prefer and how they watch them – subbed or dubbed –
and why. The study will consist of multiple answers that can easily be filled out in approximately
5 minute – there are both close-ended and open-ended questions.
I chose to address this questionnaire to students because, from my experience, we have a
lot of free time and even if we do not, we still watch a lot of films and series. I am interested in
finding out if they watch the films subbed or dubbed, taking into consideration that the majority
of them knows English. My question of whether we should dub every film or stick to dubbing
only the kid’s animation ones was raised when I visited countries like Italy and France, where
every movie or series on TV is dubbed in their language. It made me wonder: what are the
advantages and the disadvantages of this? Should Romania also take into consideration adopting
this practice? I wanted to debate this with my fellow students via the questionnaire.
I presented my questions and waited for as many answers as I could receive. I found out
that there are mixed opinions: some of them said that it would not be such a bad thing to have
every movie on TV in Romanian, because if you want to watch them in their original language,
you have the Internet option and it might even have some benefits, such as foreigners could learn
Romanian easier, by hearing only Romanian on TV; others absolutely disagreed with this
proposal, saying “Imagine watching Morgan Freeman talking in Romanian! That is awful just
thinking about it, you cannot replace his voice!” and mentioning that kid’s films should be
dubbed because most of the time they cannot keep up with the subtitles. Ultimately, even though
every answer came with good reasons, the majority verdict was that we should not dub every
film, only the kid’s ones if it is necessary.
While quantitative data analysis was needed in my study, because the more answers I
could get, the more accurately it could be generalised among the students from our university,
my questionnaire was predominantly centred on the qualitative type of data, meaning that the
honest, longer and reasoned answers can lead to a valid conclusion. Being a questionnaire, there
were not many things I had to do in order to achieve my goal: firstly, I came up with questions
that require deep thinking and in-depth answers, then I sent them to my colleagues and waited a
few weeks to gather as many fillings as I could, then, when I reached a decent number, I started
to put them together and analyse them.
One of the major ethical issues this research might cause is related to consent, anonymity
and confidentiality. To prevent any undesired conflicts, I assured the people that the filling of
the form is completely voluntary and no personal data will be asked for. The questionnaire was
completely anonymous, not even the email address was requested. Additionally, I guaranteed
that the completions of the questionnaire will be used strictly for the realisation of my thesis.
