Idiots

What's worse than a botched translation? What's worse than PAYING to see a movie with a botched translation? How about paying and not being able to see the correct translation at all!?

Being a linguistics major and language geek (my nickname to some at high school), it really really bugs me when I'm watching a movie and what is being said by the actors doesn't match the subtitles appearing below. I'm not just talking about a slightly different translation to make it sound more natural in the other language. I can understand that many translators do this to a certain degree and there are definitely times where this is needed.

What I'm talking about is some real horrible translating which sometimes reads the complete opposite from what is being said. Now a lot of these botched translations are from amateurs on the internet, maybe Uni students who think they have enough English to roughly understand everything being said and put out a translation for the internet community. And to be honest, if you are downloading a movie illegally then you can't really complain about a botched translation and you half deserve it too. This is why if I'm to show someone a movie in another language I like to get an official copy so I know I can probably rely on its accuracy.

But what if you pay to go and see a movie but can't see the subtitles at all?

Well this seems to be the case for many Korean movie goers. I have been to two movies now where so much of the dialogue has been lost to the non-English speaking members of the audience because you couldn't see the subtitles! And why not? Because the font is a plain white and blends into any bright image on the screen! My prime example is the movie "Australia". Whether you liked it or not I don't care, but the first hour or so of the movie being filmed in the Australian desert, consists of mainly white sand and bright skies which meant you couldn't see the subtitles at all. I'm sure the audience didn't get 70% of the dialogue in that first hour. How frustrating it must be! Ridiculous. 

The latest culprit is Gran Torino. This movie being based in a neighbourhood with houses all painted white, left a lot of the dialogue in certain scenes to the imagination for the audience. How is one expected to appreciate a movie like this? The font was extremely skinny, white and had no dark outline around it. Do the producers or subtitilers(?) not preview the movies before they are sent off to the theatres? Or do they just think,"Oh whatever, they'll get the jist of it"?

This could be fixed several ways. You could use a darker colour for scenes where the subtitles are clearly not going to be easily visible. Why not use a black outline if you really want to use white for the whole movie? Or place the subtitles in the upper right corner (as in many other movies) where there is generally a better contrast? Even if it's a slightly different shade of white it's still hard to see right?<---- Please select.

Anyway thats my rant about subtitles. I'm curious if there are similar situations for the English speaking audiences watching the subtitled Korean films?

Slow NZ news

The headline on the  bottom right.

Living in Korea I like to get my news from back from the usual news sites the NZherald and stuff.co.nz. 

Is it a slow week, is NZ that boring? Or do we really care about trivial things that much? 

What I am referring to is that the front page headlines have seemed to have remained the same for the last 3 days.

Maybe if it was something important such as the ongoing Bain trial, Sure. But having your front page headline for an article about a blog by some Australians talking smack about NZ on the internet? As a friend of mine would say (probably the only guy reading this blog actually) "somebody call the wambulance!". Geez somebody talked down another country on a blog? Shock horror! Geez how long have you been using the internet, I'm sure you could find a hate blog for Mother Teresa if you tried.

In other random and irrelevant news, water has started to leak through the bottom of our walls and floor which is a bit of a worry so we'll be calling up the land lord tomorrow. Just lucky we caught it before water dripped into a power socket or something.

And in blending news. My wife surprised me by ordering a blender over the net. (We had been planning to buy one.) Turns out it was just the one I wanted! Look forward to making some high calorie, energy filled, power weight gaining shakes! Hopefully help stomach a few more things in shake form to make my scrawny frame look a tad more sturdy and muscular.All this of course accompanied by a workout routine which I'm doing a shocking job at sticking too.

And finally, welcome home to my sister who just got back from India. Cannot wait to see the photos!

March and Civil Defence

Well it's been a good month since I last posted, largely due to tiredness, laziness and not having enough time to complete my work in work hours.

Last year I spent my first spring here and I found that March just seemed to drag on forever. It's cold, but not cold enough to snow, it's spring but not a sign of grass or new flowers (until the very end of the month). It's been a cold March compared to last year with the temperature hitting -4 this weekend. Supposed to get warmer from today so hopefully that'll wake up some of the trees from their winter sleep.

There were a couple of events that happened worth noting, one being the Korean president's trip to NZ. I happened to catch some footage of this last night,  which showed him looking curiously at NZ fruit while they talked about it to him. He then proceeded onto Australia and then to Indonesia. While the president was in NZ a Korean international student stabbed my old high-school Japanese teacher in the back in front of two of my family members and the rest of the class. He is currently being held in custody until his trial. There has been a lot of gossip spread around by students and NZ media regarding the injured teacher who is still in hospital. This has really pissed me off as there is no excuse for stabbing a teacher and putting two of my family members and a class of kids in danger.

Anyhow apart from that,we had one week at work with no students. It was nice and quiet and we got a lot of much needed work done. Now the year has started again and our students will be coming through week by week.

Civil Defence Drill

The 15th of every month in South Korea is civil defence day and on this day drills are carried out by the military forces, public emergency services and sometimes the general public. Often in the month of March there is a nation wide civil defence drill where everything and everyone in the whole country comes to a stand still for 20 minutes while a siren wails out through the streets. Sometimes fighter jets fly overhead and emergency services can often be seen roaming the empty streets. They don't do it in the weekends so there is a nationwide drill scheduled for tomorrow at 2pm. I'll be working when it happens but hopefully I'll be able to hear the siren since I'm near the army hospital and airforce base. Here's a video of what it's kinda like.