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Comment by imjustsaying | Hacker News Reader

In practice, the foreign subtitles do not line up with the foreign words as well as the native subtitles line up with the native words. It took me years to figure out why this was.

In a conversation I had with someone who knew the business, the new language subtitles don't line up with the new language audio because the new language subtitles are translated from the original language subtitles, not the new language audio.

Why? This saves a step from someone having to rewatch the final new language dialogue and transcribe the new language as it is exactly spoken. That step can be skipped and the new language subtitles can still be translated from the original language subtitles, although they will be quite off much of the time.

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There's practical reason too. Translations made for overdubbing are designed to roughly take the same amount of time to say, and ideally to carry the punch in the same part of the sentence (so it fits with when the actor makes the corresponding funny face). This is not always trivial, to the point that sometimes translators change the meaning entirely (especially with eg comedy - entire jokes are reinvented because they were untranslateable so they just put a different joke in).

Subtitles are translated with brevity and ease of reading in mind. Translators typically take more freedom with nuances and emotion because, well, you're hearing the actor say it out loud in the original language and that's where you get the emotion from. So it's ok if the subtitle has it in a different order / different "punch", etc.

I'm also pretty sure that translated subtitles have as their primary target audience people watching the movie with the original audio. Taking the two step process of going from the source audio, to translated audio, to subtitles seems like a needless detour for that (both organizationally, but also qualitatively).

I know this too well as I tried learning French by watching FR dubbing with FR subtitles on Netflix.

There's absolutely zero resemblance between the two. Different words used, different order within the sentence (dubbing says "A B C" while subtitles say "C B A" half of the time). Pure madness. I immediately had to stop because it's been impossible to follow the two :(

Practically, not many people want dubbing and subtitles at the same time, so it's probably rational choice to save the costs.

I also ran into this issue with French specifically, and got frustrated and gave up. Even original language French films/shows seem to have spotty subs (or none at all!) Most of them have English subs, but that's not as helpful for learning. Did you ever find alternatives?

> just put a different joke in

I wonder how often you get a different joke on the translated audio and yet another different joke in translated sub titles. Kind of wild.

"Maybe it's a drill." Said stormtrooper, when Luke and Leia hid and siren was on background.

Finnish translation was originally a physical object drill, and not drill as a practice .

This is like that time "Boring machines" are often mistranslated as uninteresting into many languages.

Yeah this is unfortunate. As a native English speaker living in Finland - going to the movies it's interesting seeing how dumbed down the subtitles are. Dialects, slang: a lot of it can't be translated directly. I just installed this extension and tested it on "Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat" and one of the first things I noticed - two lines into the show was:

"... that she grew up eating in Iran" => "joita han söi Iranissa"

The Finnish translation here is "that she ate in Iran". Contextually, it still makes sense, but it's important when learning a language why it's okay to translate it that way. Literally it means something different, contextually it means the same.

I might give this a try, with the auto-pause feature.

For a language learner, shows where they match up are gold!

If anyone is studying Spanish, the animated show Star Wars: The Clone Wars have audio that exactly matches the subtitles (Start Wars: La Guerra de los Clones). Good show with a good mix of action / dialogue that I learned of Spanish a lot while watching.

Thanks for this tip! Working on my Spanish as we speak!

For Netflix shows, take a look here: http://languagelearningwithnetflix.com/catalogue.html

I would love a service that created matching subtitle tracks for dubbed audio for this exact reason

This can reveal some interesting insights into how the film was made. I often notice extra lines that got edited out to make the scene more concise. Sometimes the director changes a whole shot.

That would be extremely frustrating. Due to certain sensory issues, when possible I often have the (English) subtitles displayed while watching a show, as I'll otherwise just miss the odd word or phrase.

If the subtitles do not exactly match the dialogue, it is very frustrating. This happened a lot with some older shows I have the DVDs of, where the subtitles are... abridged versions of what is spoken. Impossible to use really unless you are stone deaf.

But why are the original language subtitles not accurate ? and I am referring even to "simple" local TV series that didn't undergo several rounds of editing.

As part of my Swedish learning I watch a lot of Swedish shows with Swedish subtitles, there are always discrepancies

Isn't it because subtitles are typed in live? So they have to skip words in order to convey the meaning in time.

If there is a script for the movie subtitles will often be identical to the script even if the actors deviated from it. Much simpler and quicker to do than having somebody transcribe everything that was actually said and then having someone watch everything again to make sure it was transcribed correctly.

I imagine the audio is transcribed before voice actors speak; they aren't translating on the fly.. it seems to me the natural solution would be to have the transcription the voice actor uses be the same as what's provided to the subtitle generation.

This seems to require two translation attempts; the main benefit being they can be done independently/parallel, but at the cost of duplicating the work. But it doesn't seem to save any work (assuming VAs work off a written transcription/translation, presumably completed by other staff members)

FWIW subtitles for the original language will also sometimes vary from the original audio as well. I tend to re-watch shows on low volume with subtitles on so I've caught this a number of times, but it's fairly rare.

Usually I've seen the subtitles shorten the words in the audio. "You must come with me now" -> "Come now" or similar. I've been assuming it's to help the reader keep up with some quick exchanges.

> the new language subtitles don't line up with the new language audio because the new language subtitles are translated from the original language subtitles, not the new language audio.

Foreign DVDs include two subtitle tracks, one to translate the English dialogue and another to transcribe the dubbed dialog. At least, this is the case for my Chinese Disney DVDs.

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