If you speak another language: do you know examples of mistranslations via subtitles?
This can go both ways whether you understand both the original dub and the subtitle language that differs from the dub, for example: I recall watching a TV show episode where a conversation about a friend of theirs being drafted to war, but this piece of dialog was horribly translated: “He’s still a kid” as in the guy is his early 20s.
The subtitles however in JP, used the worst wording for this idiomatic prasing by translating “kid” as in a literal minor (子供) when the real context is more on referring to someone who’s 20 years old or above (basically equivallent to saying “young man” / 若い人) which butchered the scene since the subtitles failed to express that right.
I mean, do you know examples of a movie or TV show where the subtitles suck at translating the spoken dialog when it involves idioms, puns or even cultural references? Whether it’s French Dub & English Sub or vice versa (like English Dub > Spanish Sub & etc.) since each language has their own way of conveying a message.
PhilLab@feddit.org 16 hours ago
Not the subtitles but even the original audio dubbing, I hope that counts too.
In Futurama, there is one episode with a robot court. The robot judge has a meltdown and somebody says “try Ctrl+Alt+Del”. The official German audio dub totally didn’t get the joke and it said “versuch die kontrollierte Alternativlöschung” which would translate to “try the controlled alternative deletion”. ??
HoratioHufnagel@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
I was going to mention the German dub of the Simpsons, probably done by the same studio. There’s a scene where Homer comes into Moe’s bar, fully dressed in the Springfield baseball team merch and shouts "isotopes rule!’ which they translated to “Isotopes Spielregeln!” meaning “isotopes rules of the game!”. Pathetic (as Skinner would surely agree).
trxxruraxvr@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
Lol. Being German, the translator probably still used a typewriter and fax, so they didn’t know what ctrl+alt+del is on a computer.