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!?
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?
Try and find a official copy of Siwole (Il Mare)..the subs in that are horrible..not so much the translation but they get cut off and are incomplete in some places..great movie otherwise. Same with Christmas in August.
ReplyDeleteNew movies..not so much. 왕의 남자 probably has the best English subtitles of all Korean movies..the translation is not exactly literal and was done by a Korean scholar specialising in Shakespeare guaranteeing a good read.
I was reading this just now
ReplyDeleteKUALA LUMPUR: Anticipating a suspenseful evening in front of the big screen, ardent fans of the latest thriller waited for the “murderer in an ice hockey mask” to start slashing and killing partying teenagers.
However, some 15 minutes into the movie, there were sniggers among the audience, which later erupted into guffaws.
The reason?
“Serial killer” was subtitled as “pembunuh bijirin” (cereal killer) in Bahasa Malaysia.
And Han Solo says this in star wars "kami tengah menuju halaju ringan" which says " We middle century velocity weight"
Makes sense to me