For you veteran Witcher players out there, is there anything you'd recommend before playing Witcher? Is there any kind of backstory or short videos or comics or anything floating around that someone might want to look into before playing the game to get to know the world better? Or is the game so thoroughly caught up in its world that you learn a whole lot and don't really need to go looking for any additional stories or backstory to fill in any gaps?

I didn't know anything about the world when I played The Witcher for the first time and that worked out fine. I understood the game/world better the second or third time I played the game sure, but I don't know if it would have made a different in terms of immersion and enjoyment if I had known more about the lore.

I know that a couple of the books which the game is based on have been translated into English, but they are by no means required reading as far as I'm concerned.

They are, however, excellent books that you should pick up.

There is even a Movie, that just became dubbed for us in Germany (don't know if there is an english version, as my impression is that amercans and british can't dub movies good enough (they sub it (for example: Pan's Labyrinth) or just make a new movie (ex.: The Ring, REC, ...)).

I hope Uwe Boll´s not involved.

no, it was a czech or polish production... looks quite nice.

Here it is: [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hexer_(film]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hexer_(film[/url])

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0300657/ (movie)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1070742/ (tv series)
http://tinyurl.com/WitcherComics (comics)
http://preview.tinyurl.com/WitcherBooks (books)

Generally the issue is not being able to dub, but that dubbing live action always ends up looking/sounding very odd. I never watch dubbed movies, ever, and when they're on the cinema dubbed I'd rather wait until they're released in home video. I enjoy getting the whole movie experience, not some bastardized version of it.

Try to learn german and then first watch the english version of "Life of Brian" and then the dubbed german Version.

I love the british humor, but after just 10 minutes, the original version was just toooo boring and I switched to the german dubbed version. :)

There is an English version, apparently, but there is not one for the TV series that was hacked into the movie. They apparently took the 13 episode series and cut it down to 2 hours and released it.

Agreed: To OP, check this thread out:
http://www.gog.com/en/forum/general/the_last_wish

Yeah, it's quite crap I've read.

Haha in some cases dubs get it better. But they're rare, and I believe more common on animated features (Shrek series are infinitely better in spanish than in english, for example) than on live action.