Condensed Subtitles

[Phlip]

I guess just a bit of a rant, but I'm seeing so many films do this with subtitles where, as to keep the amount of words down to a minimum, unnessecary words are dropped and often sentences restructured just to keep it short, even if the characters' point is intact.

I have to say I hate this mismatch between dialogue and subtitles as it's distracting, and quite unfair to deaf people who won't be given a chance to get the way the character is intended to speak.

[figrin_dan]

Originally Posted by Phlip

I guess just a bit of a rant, but I'm seeing so many films do this with subtitles where, as to keep the amount of words down to a minimum, unnessecary words are dropped and often sentences restructured just to keep it short, even if the characters' point is intact.

I have to say I hate this mismatch between dialogue and subtitles as it's distracting, and quite unfair to deaf people who won't be given a chance to get the way the character is intended to speak.

I'm finding the opposite; where there is too much info in the subs - When someone opens a door sound of door opening or when you hear a voice from off-screen which later turns out to be a presumed dead character the sub gives away the voice's owner and a constant music gets louder, music gets quieter, music gets louder again.

I know it's not related to your rant which I think is due to the time it takes to read the subs.

[MichaelB]

Originally Posted by Phlip

I guess just a bit of a rant, but I'm seeing so many films do this with subtitles where, as to keep the amount of words down to a minimum, unnessecary words are dropped and often sentences restructured just to keep it short, even if the characters' point is intact.

I have to say I hate this mismatch between dialogue and subtitles as it's distracting, and quite unfair to deaf people who won't be given a chance to get the way the character is intended to speak.

I feel your pain, but it's unavoidable. People, on average, process printed words slower than they process verbal ones, and if you're subtitling someone talking a mile a minute, you have to "slow down" the subtitles if they're not to become so cluttered and rapidly delivered that they're effectively useless. It's a very tricky balancing act, and now that I do a lot of subtitling myself I can really appreciate the skill and tact that it demands.

Let's take a film that i subtitled 100% myself from transcription to delivery: Russ Meyer's The Seven Minutes. Problem number one is that it's insanely talky - even outside the courtroom scenes that must take up half the running time. So even allowing for two-line subtitles that go as wide as the system allows (since there's a character limit), I found I often had to jettison 10-20% of what was being said (since there's a basic principle that long subtitles shouldn't be on screen for less than two seconds).

But to complicate things further, Meyer has a very tricksy editing style that often means that we're looking at someone other than the one who's speaking at the start of that chunk of dialogue - so I had to make room for an identifying name in parenthesis, thus forcing me to made additional cuts to the full transcript. And overlapping dialogue poses yet another challenge.

But I do try to do this as conscientiously as possible - in fact, often when revising supplied SDH subtitles I'll add additional description. For instance, in Brute Force where Hume Cronyn's evil deputy prison warder is listening to music in his office, I changed "(Music playing)" to "(Wagner playing)", as that seemed psychologically significant. Although my favourite such change was in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, where "(Music playing)" became "(Slow tuba version of 'Deutschland über Alles' playing")

[MichaelB]

As a footnote to the above, when we did Withnail & I producer Anthony Nield and I agreed that the subtitles would be 100% word perfect.

But if you watch Arrow's BD with the subtitles on, you'll be able to see the problem - sometimes the text goes by too rapidly for accurate assimilation. In this particular case, we felt that this would be justified by the fact that practically every line is so revered by the film's fans, but in general it's not a good idea.

And even the 100% fidelity approach raised questions along the way - for instance, should one of the film's most famous moments be transcribed as "Get in the back of the van!", "Get-in-the-back-of-the-van!" or "GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN!" The problem here is that the line is delivered incredibly quickly - in fact, the extreme rapidity is crucial to the comedy - which ruled out the last option as it's just too big a wodge of text to reliably process if you're seeing the film for the first time. On the other hand, lower-case didn't really convey the full flavour, so we opted for "GET-IN-THE-BACK-OF-THE-VAN!".

[malcy30]

Originally Posted by figrin_dan

I'm finding the opposite; where there is too much info in the subs - When someone opens a door sound of door opening or when you hear a voice from off-screen which later turns out to be a presumed dead character the sub gives away the voice's owner and a constant music gets louder, music gets quieter, music gets louder again.

I know it's not related to your rant which I think is due to the time it takes to read the subs.

But that is because what is the purpose of the subtitles.

The ones you are talking about are subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing. Because of legal requirements particularly on the likes of BBC content these feature on many UK disks whether TV or film.

These are designed for the "deaf" so people like my mum who can now hear virtually zero so relies on lip reading etc. in real life.

The problem you have is when subtitles are being used by a non native language speaker to improve their language skills, so they can hear "door slams shut" but want help with the language.

This is why you see particularly on films two subtitles a normal subtitles (of the dialogue) and a hard of hearing version with the sound effects subtitled as well. I guess the issue is that most companies just use the 2nd one to save money and only have one subtitle stream.

Is most annoying on non English language stuff where the studio only includes a hard of hearing version.

[StephenFS]

Originally Posted by MichaelB

As a footnote to the above, when we did Withnail & I producer Anthony Nield and I agreed that the subtitles would be 100% word perfect.

Loved that BD and the subtitles were great! I had never even seen the film before.

[UpsetSmiley]

Originally Posted by MichaelB

I feel your pain, but it's unavoidable. People, on average, process printed words slower than they process verbal ones, and if you're subtitling someone talking a mile a minute, you have to "slow down" the subtitles if they're not to become so cluttered and rapidly delivered that they're effectively useless. It's a very tricky balancing act, and now that I do a lot of subtitling myself I can really appreciate the skill and tact that it demands.

Let's take a film that i subtitled 100% myself from transcription to delivery: Russ Meyer's The Seven Minutes. Problem number one is that it's insanely talky - even outside the courtroom scenes that must take up half the running time. So even allowing for two-line subtitles that go as wide as the system allows (since there's a character limit), I found I often had to jettison 10-20% of what was being said (since there's a basic principle that long subtitles shouldn't be on screen for less than two seconds).

But to complicate things further, Meyer has a very tricksy editing style that often means that we're looking at someone other than the one who's speaking at the start of that chunk of dialogue - so I had to make room for an identifying name in parenthesis, thus forcing me to made additional cuts to the full transcript. And overlapping dialogue poses yet another challenge.

But I do try to do this as conscientiously as possible - in fact, often when revising supplied SDH subtitles I'll add additional description. For instance, in Brute Force where Hume Cronyn's evil deputy prison warder is listening to music in his office, I changed "(Music playing)" to "(Wagner playing)", as that seemed psychologically significant. Although my favourite such change was in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, where "(Music playing)" became "(Slow tuba version of 'Deutschland über Alles' playing")

Reading that made me appreciate just how much work you put in. If I may ask what do you do if you can't understand what the character is saying? And would you add for instance mumbling to the subs instead of or as well as the translated mumbled words?

I imagine at some point you'd have to revert to the original script.

[MichaelB]

Originally Posted by UpsetSmiley

Reading that made me appreciate just how much work you put in. If I may ask what do you do if you can't understand what the character is saying? And would you add for instance mumbling to the subs instead of or as well as the translated mumbled words?

I imagine at some point you'd have to revert to the original script.

If it's available - I had to transcribe The Seven Minutes by ear. And about ten minutes in there's a scene where there are essentially three parallel soundtracks going at the same time - onscreen dialogue accompanied by Wolfman Jack talking over a song. If Meyer hadn't kept cutting to Wolfman Jack as an onscreen character, I might have got away with leaving out the latter two elements altogether, but as it was I couldn't: it would have been too confusing. So I somehow had to make sense of them in a full transcript (or as full as I could manage) and then had to condense it so that the important elements all ended up in the subtitles at the right point.

But sometimes you have to throw up your hands and say "[inaudible dialogue]". It feels like a cop-out every time, but if you genuinely have no idea what they're saying and the script is no help, what can you do?

[Bates_Motel]

Originally Posted by figrin_dan

I'm finding the opposite; where there is too much info in the subs - When someone opens a door sound of door opening or when you hear a voice from off-screen which later turns out to be a presumed dead character the sub gives away the voice's owner and a constant music gets louder, music gets quieter, music gets louder again.

I know it's not related to your rant which I think is due to the time it takes to read the subs.

That's the difference between regular subtitles (dialogue is subtitled) and SDH Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (which subtitles all sounds, because, you know, deaf people can't hear the sound of the door opening). Many discs have both versions of subtitles.

Originally Posted by Phlip

I guess just a bit of a rant, but I'm seeing so many films do this with subtitles where, as to keep the amount of words down to a minimum, unnessecary words are dropped and often sentences restructured just to keep it short, even if the characters' point is intact.

I have to say I hate this mismatch between dialogue and subtitles as it's distracting, and quite unfair to deaf people who won't be given a chance to get the way the character is intended to speak.

You don't see it as much anymore. In the past, they would do it because of slower readers, which makes sense. I prefer direct translations, and now that they often put subs under the person speaking, they can do direct translations easier.

[MichaelB]

I suspect Phlip is talking about English-language films subtitled in English - transcriptions, not translations.

[DaveSimonH]

I regularly use English subtitles for TV & films and prefer standard subs to HOH/SDH, but I'll never complain about the latter as obviously making releases more accessible to those that are deaf or hard of hearing is something that should be encouraged and where possible made available.

My only experience with creating subtitles is for personal use in home server and/or tablet/phone files, where I've added subs to videos (eg. some music videos etc). And just from that limited experience, it has given me a greater appreciation for the work that goes into subtitling. I imagine that it becomes even more difficult translating to other languages, where direct translations are difficult or impossible, and you are left having to find the best way to interpret the dialogue.

[MichaelB]

Originally Posted by DaveSimonH

I imagine that it becomes even more difficult translating to other languages, where direct translations are difficult or impossible, and you are left having to find the best way to interpret the dialogue.

Timing is a constant headache. Comedies are particularly tough because a verbal joke may well depend on all sorts of complex linguistic and cultural echoes that you don't have time to explain, so you just have to devise a workable equivalent and hope for the best. And sometimes this means coming up with completely new jokes, which inevitably annoy people who understand enough of the original language to realise that the subtitles have deviated from it. But what can you do?

There's a great example of a subtitle that really needs footnotes in the original Hong Kong version of Lau Kar Leung's Tiger On Beat where a character says "My brother's not easy to get on with: he's tear and I have mucus". As far as I can make out, this is an absolutely literal translation of what's being said, but it doesn't work at all in English as it requires an appreciation of the Chinese concept of the four "humours" that make up the human body and how they're either balanced or unbalanced at any given moment. In this particular case they've just translated the line literally, but I imagine were a UK label to take the title on and retranslate it in more idiomatic English they'd have to come up with an alternative explanation for the brother's mood swings.

[figrin_dan]

Originally Posted by Bates_Motel

That's the difference between regular subtitles (dialogue is subtitled) and SDH Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (which subtitles all sounds, because, you know, deaf people can't hear the sound of the door opening). Many discs have both versions of subtitles.

Most of my discs seem to be HOH only. Obviously it's important to know what's going on but giving away spoilers and saying the thing on the screen makes a sound like the thing on the screen is just annoying.

[Margot Robbie Fan]

Originally Posted by MichaelB

As a footnote to the above, when we did Withnail & I producer Anthony Nield and I agreed that the subtitles would be 100% word perfect.

But if you watch Arrow's BD with the subtitles on, you'll be able to see the problem - sometimes the text goes by too rapidly for accurate assimilation. In this particular case, we felt that this would be justified by the fact that practically every line is so revered by the film's fans, but in general it's not a good idea.

And even the 100% fidelity approach raised questions along the way - for instance, should one of the film's most famous moments be transcribed as "Get in the back of the van!", "Get-in-the-back-of-the-van!" or "GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN!" The problem here is that the line is delivered incredibly quickly - in fact, the extreme rapidity is crucial to the comedy - which ruled out the last option as it's just too big a wodge of text to reliably process if you're seeing the film for the first time. On the other hand, lower-case didn't really convey the full flavour, so we opted for "GET-IN-THE-BACK-OF-THE-VAN!".

Hi Michael, could you please tell me why in some instances the subtitles can be seen featuring additional lines of dialogue when on screen no one is talking, I've noticed this in a few films. Is this when the subtitlers transcribe using the script but the final cut of the film has excised those lines or is it something else?

Originally Posted by MichaelB

Timing is a constant headache. Comedies are particularly tough because a verbal joke may well depend on all sorts of complex linguistic and cultural echoes that you don't have time to explain, so you just have to devise a workable equivalent and hope for the best. And sometimes this means coming up with completely new jokes, which inevitably annoy people who understand enough of the original language to realise that the subtitles have deviated from it. But what can you do?

There's a great example of a subtitle that really needs footnotes in the original Hong Kong version of Lau Kar Leung's Tiger On Beat where a character says "My brother's not easy to get on with: he's tear and I have mucus". As far as I can make out, this is an absolutely literal translation of what's being said, but it doesn't work at all in English as it requires an appreciation of the Chinese concept of the four "humours" that make up the human body and how they're either balanced or unbalanced at any given moment. In this particular case they've just translated the line literally, but I imagine were a UK label to take the title on and retranslate it in more idiomatic English they'd have to come up with an alternative explanation for the brother's mood swings.

The thing that annoys me about translation subtitles is when the translater themselves don't have a good grasp of English and the subtitles have lots of grammatical and spelling errors making it easy to get lost whilst reading and having to then rewind and untangle the words.

Another thing that's annoying is when the subtitling tries to Westernise the dialogue, I believe it was on Artificial Eye's Chungking Express when one of the characters makes a reference to a famous Chinese movie star couple, the subtitles translated it as Bruce Willis and Demi Moore - no doubt to give the audience a general idea of what he's comparing his relationship to but I've always thought that they could just as easily use parenthesises and write 'famous Chinese couple' or something like that following the actual names he spoke.

Although I'm all in favour of the translator rewriting a joke or particular line of dialogue which for cultural reasons would otherwise not be understood as a direct translation, in these instances rewording to get the gist across is necessary.

[MichaelB]

Originally Posted by Margot Robbie Fan

Hi Michael, could you please tell me why in some instances the subtitles can be seen featuring additional lines of dialogue when on screen no one is talking, I've noticed this in a few films. Is this when the subtitlers transcribe using the script but the final cut of the film has excised those lines or is it something else?

I suspect the source was the script, and this wasn't caught in QC. Either that or the subtitles were created before the final sound mix was signed off. But I work with archival releases so I've never had to deal with such a thing myself.

The thing that annoys me about translation subtitles is when the translater themselves don't have a good grasp of English and the subtitles have lots of grammatical and spelling errors making it easy to get lost whilst reading and having to then rewind and untangle the words.

Although, that said, old-school Hong Kong subtitles are often an absolute joy. There's nothing like sitting in a packed cinema and hearing an entire audience basically go "WTF?", only non-verbally. As someone once pointed out in a letter to Sight & Sound, when Chow Yun-Fat is voicing his suspicions of the contents of a female drug smuggler's underwear and it comes out as "I suspect her bra also contains cock", you can't really be irritated by it.

Another thing that's annoying is when the subtitling tries to Westernise the dialogue, I believe it was on Artificial Eye's Chungking Express when one of the characters makes a reference to a famous Chinese movie star couple, the subtitles translated it as Bruce Willis and Demi Moore - no doubt to give the audience a general idea of what he's comparing his relationship to but I've always thought that they could just as easily use parenthesises and write 'famous Chinese couple' or something like that following the actual names he spoke.

Well, you'll be glad to hear that one of my most recent subtitling jobs involved removing all the glaringly modern US slang from the subtitles for Story of Sin (a costume drama set in 19th-century Poland, so endearments like "baby" and pejorative terms like "crazy" and "crap" were like fingernails down a blackboard), and also making sure (along with Arrow's gimlet-eyed QC inspector Nora Mehenni) that all Polish names were spelled completely correctly, diacritics and all. So the initial "Lukash" became "Łukasz", and there are loads of other examples.

Although I'm all in favour of the translator rewriting a joke or particular line of dialogue which for cultural reasons would otherwise not be understood as a direct translation, in these instances rewording to get the gist across is necessary.

It's completely unavoidable at times. Many things are untranslatable full stop, never mind efficiently in a couple of subtitles that have four seconds maximum to deliver the English version.

[jwf]

Originally Posted by Margot Robbie Fan

Hi Michael, could you please tell me why in some instances the subtitles can be seen featuring additional lines of dialogue when on screen no one is talking, I've noticed this in a few films. Is this when the subtitlers transcribe using the script but the final cut of the film has excised those lines or is it something else?

I came across this on a Blu-Ray of either "Cars" or "Cars 2". The few lines, usually from characters speaking from a distance, could only be heard on a surround sound setup. Watching it with subtitles, it took me a long time to work out what the problem was.