I like it when the subtitles out a character yer not supposed to see or know about yet:
DAVE: [Breathing heavily] 🤣
Or when it spoils a joke or jump scare a few seconds early
“You’re not going to shoot me, you don’t have the…”
My favourite is when the show did have translation but its overruled by the optional subtitles.
Rental Family had this problem. Lots of Japanese and English interwoven with “[Japanese]” appearing and blocking the built-in subtitles
The audience is not supposed to know what’s being said.
I’ve definitely seen movies where common Spanish words or phrases that an anglophone audience would be expected to understand are transcribed as simply “[speaking Spanish]”
e.g. “that hombre is loco” becomes “that [speaking Spanish] is [speaking Spanish]”
Second this! I very often encounter phrases in foreign languages I understand when I turn up the volume, but the subtitles person has been too lazy to write out or translate.
I really wish the subtitles said [ intentionally not translated]. I never know if the subtitles are just broken, if I’m actually using half-assed closed captioning, or if it’s the director’s intent.
Then it shouldn’t be said.
Least they could do is to add the Japanese words to the subtitles for those who can understand Japanese but are hard of hearing.
That is done for other types of subtitle track, but for the main or forced subtitles, the intent of the programme maker is paramount.
I don’t see how representing foreign dialogue with foreign text subverts the author’s intent. sure, they may not intend for their general audience to understand, but they still won’t. and they must have known, and maybe even intended, that a certain part of the audience would understand, and if the foreign text were shown, they could
The audience better not speak Japanese.
The audience is not supposed to know what’s being said.
Well, translating from languages that are more relaxed regarding swear words might have an impact on the PG rating in the US, so you might be right, but for the wrong reasons :-)
Wife and I watched Conclave a few years ago in cinema. There were no subtitles at all, even for the extensive and important parts were everybody spoke Italian
I have used live translation more than a few times in those situations.
ARISU
It’s even more annoying when the subtitles say “speaking xyz”, while obscuring the writing underneath baked into the video image that shows the actual translation.
Had that several times already…
(as a non-native English speaker I often have the subtitles on, because *mumble-mumble-scottish-accent*…)I know that’s a “Squid Game” card but is that a still from “Alice in Borderland”?
I think so. Better than squid game imo.
I hate this so much but i guess they do it because the director doesn’t want you to know what is being said?
This would be a good use of AI, a universal real time close captioning regardless of language. Although if you had the movie at home maybe you could create a tool to create the CC before hand? My random thoughts…
Why go through all those resources for this when scripts for the movie probably exist or it can be done by fans?
Or maybe the people creating the subtitles should be given enough time and resources to be able to do their job well?
That or they didn’t give the translation to the captioner. Not the captioner’s job to translate so they put in [speaking in a foreign language] instead.
