What idiots did the subtitles on the DVD? by Mantichorus

GENERAL DISCUSSIONS

What idiots did the subtitles on the DVD?

POSTED BY: MANTICHORUS
UPDATED: Wednesday, June 16, 2004 07:30
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VIEWED: 8050
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Sunday, June 13, 2004 10:49 PM

Okay- time to bash the people who did the sub's on the DVD...

One springs to mind- in The Train Job, when Mal says "Drunks are so cute." the subtitles say... "Drugs are so cute."

And another- Safe: "MAL: Gotta say, doctor, your talent for alienatin' folk is near miraculous."
DVD: "MAL: Gotta say, doctor, the town's [forgotten what it said...] an' the folk are near miraculous."

In the words of Jubal Early: "Does that seem right to you?"

-------------------------------------------
"BADGER: You think you're better than other people.
MAL: Just the ones I'm better than."
-------------------------------------
"MAL: Gotta say, doctor, your talent for alienatin' folk is near miraculous.
SIMON: Yes, I'm very proud."

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Sunday, June 13, 2004 11:23 PM

SLOWSMURF

I forget for sure, but I believe its on The Message.

Jayne says "You're a rabbit, Mal!"(obviously the real line was Gorrammit Mal)

I just wish they'd translated the chinese. Lazy Fox or whoever did the DVD sub's(should've gotten scripts for some stuff like that!)

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Sunday, June 13, 2004 11:26 PM

MANTICHORUS

Yeah, definately translate the Chinese...
I'd forgotten the "You're a rabbit, Mal" line.

-------------------------------------------
"BADGER: You think you're better than other people.
MAL: Just the ones I'm better than."
-------------------------------------
"MAL: Gotta say, doctor, your talent for alienatin' folk is near miraculous.
SIMON: Yes, I'm very proud."

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Monday, June 14, 2004 1:58 AM

SASJA

Doing subtitles is a thankless task - you subtitle 15 hours of a show, make three mistakes, and guess what everyone remembers

While errors like the ones pointed out are quite terrible (especially "You're a rabbit, Mal!" - hilarious), I generally thought the subtitles were comparatively high standard. Three things spring to mind when I compare them with Buffy:

1) They contain relatively few errors (I know you've pointed some out, but even so)
2) They only spoil jokes rarely - you know, when you can read the punchline in the subtext while the actor is putting in that beat which just makes it all the more funny.
3) They correctly distinguishes between chinese words that you learn the meaning of and therefore should be in the subs ("mei mei", "dong ma") and those that are just there for the fun and would be confusing to have in the subs (they're just subbed with "[speaking in chinese]").

I agree a translation would be fun, but it would change the tone of the episodes, too.

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Monday, June 14, 2004 5:16 AM

MANTICHORUS

Now, I ain't bein' thankless!
It's just as several websites can get their hands on an accurate script, surely the people paid to do the subtitles can too.

-------------------------------------------
"BADGER: You think you're better than other people.
MAL: Just the ones I'm better than." -Shindig.
-------------------------------------
"MAL: Gotta say, doctor, your talent for alienatin' folk is near miraculous.
SIMON: Yes, I'm very proud." -Safe.

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Monday, June 14, 2004 5:24 AM

SASJA

Heh, I know - and good job on reporting the errors

Just thought I'd put the whole thing in perspective!

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Monday, June 14, 2004 6:44 AM

DARKSKY

In 'Out Of Gas', the chinese computer warning about low oxigen levels is subtitled [Computer speaks in galactic language].

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Monday, June 14, 2004 7:07 AM

ANNIK

Quote:
Originally posted by Mantichorus:
Now, I ain't bein' thankless!
It's just as several websites can get their hands on an accurate script, surely the people paid to do the subtitles can too.

Well, lots of shows provide scripts for the captioning. For those of us who watch everything with CC on, it's amazing at how often what is actually said on the show is different than what the script originally said. Working from the script is imperfect.

Working from hearing the soundtrack is also imperfect: captioners use the same device that court reporters do. Their transcripts often end up with little errors. I don't do captioning myself, so I'm not certain how much opportunity they have to correct those transcripts before they become part of the show.

Some captioners clearly don't have a good vocabulary or ear for what they're hearing ... I know if I want a good laugh, I can watch Oprah on captioning ... they're among the worst I've seen. Best I've seen is CTV news (in Canada) ... live, real-time captioning that is amazingly accurate. (And "This Hour Has 22 Minutes" was always impressive because although only a *comedy* news show, they also used real-time captioning, making it 'feel' more newslike in the caption feed.)

My favourite bad caption so far is from a TV commercial in Canada for A&W ... a fast-food restaurant. Two ladies are sitting in the lunchroom of a business, chatting about their low-fat, low-whatever creations they're munching on. A guy at a different table unwraps his Papa Burger and the two women end up drooling and lusting after it.

At the beginning of the commercial, the food the women are discussing is this great recipe for "tofu casserole". Except that the captioner didn't include the "c", so they were discussing the "tofu ASSerole" ... something I think Jayne and his "smells like crotch" might appreciate.

Cheers,
Annik
... my sister's a ship. We had a complicated childhood.

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Monday, June 14, 2004 8:14 AM

FIREFLEW

In England, they didn't even bother to work out that it was Chinese; instead we get, "[Speaking in Galactic Language]"

Those crazy subtitlers

.

Jayne: "Know what the chain of command is? It's the chain I beat you with till you understand who's in command."

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Monday, June 14, 2004 8:50 AM

WEERWOLF

Believe me, nothing can be worse than having subtitles translated from english to Dutch by a person who has absolutely no affinity or interest with the source material. The worst were the superhero cartoons a couple of years back, but sci-fi shows rank high on the cringe scale too.

Except maybe dubbing into German. That'll be worse than a bad subtitle translation. At least we Dutch haven't sunk that low. Yet.

-------------------------------------------
"Damn it Mal... You're a rabbit!"

*snigger*

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Monday, June 14, 2004 10:59 AM

CYBERSNARK

Quote:
Originally posted by annik:
Well, lots of shows provide scripts for the captioning. For those of us who watch everything with CC on, it's amazing at how often what is actually said on the show is different than what the script originally said. Working from the script is imperfect.

I'd imagine that another problem is that a given show might have more than one team doing the captions --one team does, say, episodes 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9, while the other team does 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10. This would save time and allow the shows to be put out on schedule.

If they only have one copy of the script, then the captions from one team will reflect that, while the others use "sound-alikes" or [speaking chinese] tags.

As an example: in the Gundam Wing dub, one character alternates between being named "Quatre" (his "proper" name, given the numerical motif in the other names [Quatre = four, Duo = two, Trowa = three, Yuy = one, Wufei = five, etc]) and being called "Katra" (apparently because one of the two dubbers [ A ] doesn't know about the name-pattern and [ B ] may or may not be familiar with Star Trek [Katra = the Vulcan word for soul]).

-----
We applied the cortical electrodes but were unable to get a neural reaction from either patient.

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Monday, June 14, 2004 7:46 PM

MERETEAN

The funniest Dansih subtitle goof I've seen (don't remember the show) was when they translated "He's a Vietnam vet" into "He's a Vietnamese veterinarian".

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Tuesday, June 15, 2004 3:59 AM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!

Wasn't it Tracy who uttered the famous ' You're a rabbit, Mal!" line ?

The scene just after Tracy has been shot, and he's taken Kaylee as hostage/cover and is trying to leave the ship.

Zoe: Wash?
Wash: Ow?!

" They don't like it when you shoot at 'em. I worked that out myself. "

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Tuesday, June 15, 2004 4:08 AM

MANTICHORUS

Nope, Jayne said it when offering Mal vera in OMR.

-------------------------------------------
"BADGER: You think you're better than other people.
MAL: Just the ones I'm better than." -Shindig.
-------------------------------------
"MAL: Gotta say, doctor, your talent for alienatin' folk is near miraculous.
SIMON: Yes, I'm very proud." -Safe.

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Tuesday, June 15, 2004 5:25 AM

NEDWARD

Quote:
Originally posted by Mantichorus:
And another- Safe: "MAL: Gotta say, doctor, your talent for alienatin' folk is near miraculous."

Subtitles say: "The town's real..." My double take at that was nearly as good as Simon's own blank expression!

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Tuesday, June 15, 2004 5:33 AM

MANTICHORUS

That's it! Thanks, man.

-------------------------------------------
"BADGER: You think you're better than other people.
MAL: Just the ones I'm better than." -Shindig.
-------------------------------------
"MAL: Gotta say, doctor, your talent for alienatin' folk is near miraculous.
SIMON: Yes, I'm very proud." -Safe.

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Tuesday, June 15, 2004 12:11 PM

ANNIK

It was a sad day for me when TPTB figured out that people could still catch all the cussin' from "Jerry Springer" and "Maury" by watching the CC ... now they actually *caption* the bleep as a *bleep*!!

I used to watch all kinds of funky Chinese movies not really intended for English audiences. Clearly, the English subtitler wasn't too proficient in English in many cases ... my friends and I would be rolling around on the floor hurting at some of the word choices!

Cheers,
Annik
... my sister's a ship. We had a complicated childhood.

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Tuesday, June 15, 2004 1:43 PM

MALSDOXY

I know what did this...

How about in 'Trash'...When Mal says YoSaffBridge the captioning says "Chinese" !!!
laughed my arse off at that

"Haven't you killed me enough for one day ?"
- Mal, War Stories

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Tuesday, June 15, 2004 4:38 PM

ELVIS

Quote:
Originally posted by annik:
It was a sad day for me when TPTB figured out that people could still catch all the cussin' from "Jerry Springer" and "Maury" by watching the CC ... now they actually *caption* the bleep as a *bleep*!!

I used to watch all kinds of funky Chinese movies not really intended for English audiences. Clearly, the English subtitler wasn't too proficient in English in many cases ... my friends and I would be rolling around on the floor hurting at some of the word choices!

Cheers,
Annik

Sounds like you're talking Hong Kong there. They paid the subtitler something like $50 to do the entire movie, still do as far as I know--it wasn't necessarily a lack of language proficiency but the need to work very, very, very fast. Did I include enough verys?

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Tuesday, June 15, 2004 5:21 PM

MISSAYATAM

One of my favorite subtitling came from .hack key of the twilight. It was subtitled by this company in China. My friends and I were so excited to watch it. The first few episodes were fine but then out of no where all of the character names changed and one of the characters names sanjuro-kun became 36 because in japanese sanjuroku means 36 while sanjuro is a name. It made my friends and I giggle. I just thought I would share

Aya

I love Simon !

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Tuesday, June 15, 2004 5:24 PM

ANNIK

Quote:
Originally posted by Elvis:
Quote:
Originally posted by annik:

I used to watch all kinds of funky Chinese movies not really intended for English audiences. Clearly, the English subtitler wasn't too proficient in English in many cases ... my friends and I would be rolling around on the floor hurting at some of the word choices!

Cheers,
Annik

Sounds like you're talking Hong Kong there. They paid the subtitler something like $50 to do the entire movie, still do as far as I know--it wasn't necessarily a lack of language proficiency but the need to work very, very, very fast. Did I include enough verys?

I think a few more would be appropriate in this instance.

Cheers,
Annik
... my sister's a ship. We had a complicated childhood.

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Tuesday, June 15, 2004 6:01 PM

DBELL46

Quote:
Originally posted by Mantichorus:
Nope, Jayne said it when offering Mal vera in OMR.

I believe that it was Tracy in "The Message" after he's shot while he's stumbling down the stairs
before he takes Kaylee hostage.

****************************************************
If history is remarkably clear on one point,
it's that people don't learn from history.
****************************************************

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Tuesday, June 15, 2004 9:53 PM

MANTICHORUS

Maybe they both said it.
Maybe one or both of us is wrong.
Ain't no hassle either way.

-------------------------------------------
"BADGER: You think you're better than other people.
MAL: Just the ones I'm better than." -Shindig.
-------------------------------------
"MAL: Gotta say, doctor, your talent for alienatin' folk is near miraculous.
SIMON: Yes, I'm very proud." -Safe.

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Wednesday, June 16, 2004 6:24 AM

CYBERSNARK

In Read or Dream (the TV followup to the Read or Die OVA), there's a character called Nenene Sumiregawa.

Apparently, Manga Entertainment (doing the DVDs) mistranslated her name as "Up! Up! Up!" (Ne = Up)

-----
We applied the cortical electrodes but were unable to get a neural reaction from either patient.

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Wednesday, June 16, 2004 7:30 AM

JAYSEDAI

One more reason 20th Century Fox should have picked our company our company to create the DVDs. We always double-check all the Subtitles and Closed Captioning for errors. If we find any we can change it at the DVD authoring level.

I won't even bring up how woefully inappropriate the menu design was (Okay I just did) - moving grids with techno music does not equal space western.

Bad decision Fox executive - you know who you are...

(On the other hand the commentaries and behind the scenes were well produced - gotta give credit where credit is due).

Jeremy

Latest Serenity movie news: www.serenitymovie.net

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