Subtitle on movie ..Are they checked???
Thread poster: Virginie Lafage
Virginie Lafage
Virginie Lafage
France
Local time: 21:50
English to French
Mar 4, 2002

Hi Everyone,





I hope you all had a nice week-end and you\'re all ready for the end ahead.



Just want to catch your attention on the following issue..

I was watching a French movie on Saturday with English subtitle the film is \"Taxi2\" by the way.. I was shocked by the translation, I\'m French native myself and believe me that the subtitle were not meaning what they were saying in French..

This is not the first time I\'ve no
... See more
Hi Everyone,





I hope you all had a nice week-end and you\'re all ready for the end ahead.



Just want to catch your attention on the following issue..

I was watching a French movie on Saturday with English subtitle the film is \"Taxi2\" by the way.. I was shocked by the translation, I\'m French native myself and believe me that the subtitle were not meaning what they were saying in French..

This is not the first time I\'ve noticed that, I just wonder how this can happen??? does anyone, check afterwards or use some Native Speaker to make sure, that the all movie has been translated properly and will make sense....?

I find it hard myself to get jobs as Translator / Interpreter, and after watching that movie It made me feel sick that some people pretends to be a Translator..

Is this due to the fact that they don\'t use Native speaker of the language, is it to avoid to use rude words?? I don\'t know.. All I know it\'s that it doesn\'t sound as it should be, which is a shame and not fair on people watching those films without even knowing it.

I just wanted to share that with you all and maybe for some of you that will sounds like a \" Déjà vu \"



Bonne journée

Virginie

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Parrot
Parrot  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 21:50
Spanish to English
+ ...
Space limitations, etc. Mar 9, 2002

One criteria that influences this is space limitations. At the rate Dustin Hoffman talks, you\'d fill the screen in no time flat. One bad experience I have had was the producer\'s refusal to let me see the film, saying I could just work from the script. It was one of my first jobs, I had already signed the contract and I didn\'t know how to back out. Imagine my surprise at the release to find out that a word I had taken as a proper name (it was capitalised) was a \"surnom\" and, say for instance... See more
One criteria that influences this is space limitations. At the rate Dustin Hoffman talks, you\'d fill the screen in no time flat. One bad experience I have had was the producer\'s refusal to let me see the film, saying I could just work from the script. It was one of my first jobs, I had already signed the contract and I didn\'t know how to back out. Imagine my surprise at the release to find out that a word I had taken as a proper name (it was capitalised) was a \"surnom\" and, say for instance, the man I thought was called \"Bossu\" was a hunchback!



There is also a lot of idiomatic language in films, so that subtitling should always be done in a team of (at least) two - this is a \"must\" in Disney, because BEING A NATIVE SPEAKER OF THE TARGET LANGUAGE MAY NOT BE SUFFICIENT. One forgettable western I keep seeing in Spanish is (I don\'t know how they twisted the script to fit it in) about an Indian called \"Ojos de Serpiente\", who appears on the screen as a white man! (Fruit of not quite grasping the colloquial meaning of \"Snake Eyes\"). One title I won\'t forget is \"Suddenly Last Summer\", which turned into a disaster film (De repente, el último verano - \"Armageddon\" were better).
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Lincoln Hui
Lincoln Hui  Identity Verified
Hong Kong
Local time: 04:50
Member
Chinese to English
+ ...
Culture Jan 28, 2021

In some regions, many publishers were actually not trying to make the translations accurate back in the day. Both subs and dubs were often intentionally different and even added numerous lines that were never there. They were basically inventing new content for the movie or show.
It's a cultural artifact and you can't get away with it today. So you get the more boring, simple incompetence mistakes that you often see on Netflix if it's not one of their flagship shows in the region.

[
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In some regions, many publishers were actually not trying to make the translations accurate back in the day. Both subs and dubs were often intentionally different and even added numerous lines that were never there. They were basically inventing new content for the movie or show.
It's a cultural artifact and you can't get away with it today. So you get the more boring, simple incompetence mistakes that you often see on Netflix if it's not one of their flagship shows in the region.

[Edited at 2021-01-28 17:28 GMT]
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Veronica Montserrat
Veronica Montserrat
France
Local time: 21:50
Member (2020)
English to French
+ ...
It depends Jan 29, 2021

I remember reading recently a blog article from the ATAA (French association for audiovisual translators) regarding the subtitles provided for an event as important as the Festival de Deauville. Apparently the subtitles were not even human and had not been checked. (reference: https://beta.ataa.fr/blog/article/sous-titrage-au-festival-de-deauville)
In most la
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I remember reading recently a blog article from the ATAA (French association for audiovisual translators) regarding the subtitles provided for an event as important as the Festival de Deauville. Apparently the subtitles were not even human and had not been checked. (reference: https://beta.ataa.fr/blog/article/sous-titrage-au-festival-de-deauville)
In most laboratories you have quality checkers and revision, so it all depends on the seriousness of the outsourcer I imagine.
I do not know what kind of things bothered you while you were watching the film, but before doing subtitling work myself, I was often puzzled by some French subtitles I was reading. But now, I know that as a subtitler you have to respect so many norms: speed, character limits, style guideline, etc... and sometimes a fast turn-around, that it's not always possible to match exactly the source. It often feels frustrating to have to make hard choices, but in the end it's a very stimulating work because you need to find a way to catch the essence and convey the meaning in just a few words.
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Jocelin Meunier
Jocelin Meunier  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 21:50
English to French
+ ...
Lot of reasons Jan 29, 2021

As others pointed out, there are space limitations and other things that have a big impact over the quality of a subtitle. But even beyond that, you can also have technical issues or even bad transcriptions to begin with. And yes, sometimes the translator is not a native speaker. Let's say that there is a show in Russian that needs to be translated in 17 other language. What happens is that this show will first be translated in English, and then the English subtitles will be distributed as a bas... See more
As others pointed out, there are space limitations and other things that have a big impact over the quality of a subtitle. But even beyond that, you can also have technical issues or even bad transcriptions to begin with. And yes, sometimes the translator is not a native speaker. Let's say that there is a show in Russian that needs to be translated in 17 other language. What happens is that this show will first be translated in English, and then the English subtitles will be distributed as a base for all other languages. Which mean some things can be "lost in translation".
Also, from experience, a good subtitle takes time, and clients and agencies don't seem to have time. Most subtitling associations recommand not to go over 15 minutes of video a day (and 15-20 is perfect in my opinion) while I see more and more agencies saying "we expect 30-40 minutes per day". I believe we would see fewer bad translations if translators were properly paid and had better working conditions.
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neilmac
Shilpa Baliga
 


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Subtitle on movie ..Are they checked???







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