Films and TV shows and more often have subtitles, which are helpful for enjoying muted video, translation, people with hearing impairment, people struggling to understand accents, checking fast unclear dialogue and other reasons. They are important, and sometimes it’s clear when they do something right or wrong.
Maybe we can’t expect them all to be works of art, but there are certainly some easy wins even in the industrial media environment. What do you think?
The thing that annoys me in subs of foreign-language things, is where a very simple or recognisable sentence gets turned into something else. Not in a “localisation” way, where extra context is needed. Just in a weird way.
Audio: Arigatou, @meejle@lemmy.world-san.
Subtitle: Thanks, @meejle@lemmy.world, I really appreciate it.
Audio: Ja.
Subtitle: OK, I’ll see you there!
This seems a lot more common in “official” subs of anime, nordic noir, etc. Fan-subs seem a lot more accurate.
I’m not sure why subs would be so weird and verbose. Maybe the translator is afraid the implication (rather than literal meaning) will be lost somehow, but really, ‘ja’ isn’t some loaded enigma.
On a side note, fan works (anything from subs to software to upscales and remasters) tend to be better, done out of passion rather than just an industrial chore.
Best example: Earth 2 complete series DVD
Subtitles up high during opening credits.
The upper one is read first.
Speaking off screen right of camera.
Some helpful caption/subtitles is for videos which don’t have dialogue but add information to what’s going on. One example is primitive technology but there are plenty of other skill presentations/tutorials where the how and why is spelled out in the subtitles while the actual audio is just peaceful melodies to enjoy watching someone work too.
You should check out the BBC guidelines for subtitling. They are really good and include preserving the intent of the program, avoiding ambiguity, and not spoiling jokes with bad timing.
I think there is some sort of automated system being used often because I have seen the same spoken word by a character some up as different words and sometimes its even almost a catchphrase yet it comes up with it differently.
