4 ms·

I think it's a great option but their is an art to translations. This applies especially to books (I'm reading an English translation of https://en.wikipedia.or

I think it's a great option but their is an art to translations. This applies especially to books (I'm reading an English translation of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zorba_the_Greek https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zorba_the_Greek which is very well done) and while you do have less dialog with movies, I wonder if some subtleties will be missed, particularly around humour.

henrikschroder 5y ago
This is something that bothers the crap out of me watching recent shows on Netflix or similar that come with official subtitles, and that is that they're often crap. You're spending millions on actors and sets and directors and visual effects and editing and everything else around the production, but the subtitles are some kind of shitty after-thought doled out to the lowest bidding subcontractor? In Sweden, everything foreign is subtitled, and as a result of the vast quantity of subtitles produced, the quality is high, so I've grown up expecting good quality subtitles. And then I watch something on HBO or whatever, and the subtitles are just bad. Clearly not proofread, clearly done by someone who didn't watch the thing, and just translated the written material as is. And the art side of subtitles is often neglected or plain just not understood. Timing is really important, which people understand when it comes to for example dialogue timing to make a joke land. But then the subtitles are shit, and ruin the joke because the subtitle timing is off, when you could have had good subtitles that worked with the material, preserving the timing! Why aren't studios and networks investing as much in the subtitles as the rest of the production? Yes, 95% of subtitles are easy to make, there's a single unambiguous way to translate what's being said into your target language, and by syncing it to the audio it's gonna be good enough. But some things are hard to translate, because there simply doesn't exist a 1:1 mapping between every language, despite Google assuming the world works like that. But YouTube's auto-caption thing is garbage. It's enough to sort-of kinda make out what is being said, but it's often complete garble, and there's zero understanding of good timing or the art side of subtitling.
- henrikschroder 5y ago
  Everyone understands that acting, directing, editing, and sound editing is Art, it's creative work, you need humans to do it. But somehow, subtitles are Not Art? It's somehow not creative work?

henrikschroder 5y ago

This is something that bothers the crap out of me watching recent shows on Netflix or similar that come with official subtitles, and that is that they're often crap. You're spending millions on actors and sets and directors and visual effects and editing and everything else around the production, but the subtitles are some kind of shitty after-thought doled out to the lowest bidding subcontractor? In Sweden, everything foreign is subtitled, and as a result of the vast quantity of subtitles produced, the quality is high, so I've grown up expecting good quality subtitles. And then I watch something on HBO or whatever, and the subtitles are just bad. Clearly not proofread, clearly done by someone who didn't watch the thing, and just translated the written material as is. And the art side of subtitles is often neglected or plain just not understood. Timing is really important, which people understand when it comes to for example dialogue timing to make a joke land. But then the subtitles are shit, and ruin the joke because the subtitle timing is off, when you could have had good subtitles that worked with the material, preserving the timing! Why aren't studios and networks investing as much in the subtitles as the rest of the production? Yes, 95% of subtitles are easy to make, there's a single unambiguous way to translate what's being said into your target language, and by syncing it to the audio it's gonna be good enough. But some things are hard to translate, because there simply doesn't exist a 1:1 mapping between every language, despite Google assuming the world works like that. But YouTube's auto-caption thing is garbage. It's enough to sort-of kinda make out what is being said, but it's often complete garble, and there's zero understanding of good timing or the art side of subtitling.

henrikschroder 5y ago
Everyone understands that acting, directing, editing, and sound editing is Art, it's creative work, you need humans to do it. But somehow, subtitles are Not Art? It's somehow not creative work?