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 in 日本語 however, 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.
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.
It’s getting a bit out of hand with all those people with sockpuppets, isn’t it?
Anyway, if 子供 for “(person who is mentally a) kid” is the worst thing you’ve encountered in translation, that must’ve been your first piecd of translated media or you haven’t been paying attention. I wouldn’t even know where to start with all the atrocities I had to witness back when I still consumed the occasional dubbed movie/show. It actually made me want to become a translator so that I could do a better job (didn’t work out, health reasons).
Back when Good Omens S02 came out in 2023, I was apparently feeling masochistic so I switched the language to German for a rewatch. I spent the next two days meticulously writing down all the small and big violations of some geneva convention that the translator committed (also a few actual good bits where I was genuinely impressed). I think I managed to make it through 2 of 6 episodes before I yielded and instead got drunk.
I really should put that up somewhere so I can pretend in my mind like somebody with authority surely will see it EVENTUALLY and rectify that train wreck and people will start paying their translators.
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”. ??
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).
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.
Silliest press misstranslation for me is still Eng->Ger where they translated
May the force be with you
into
am vierten Mai sind wir bei euch
which translated back into English would be
on the fourth of May we are with you
Correct translation (and used like that in the movies) would be
Möge die Macht mit dir sein
Two examples I can think of:
“It’s a tie”, as in a draw, translated to mean “it’s a necktie”
“Roger that” translated to mean “that must be a man named Roger”
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When I use subtitles, I see such errors all the time. Too many to count.
And that’s why I rarely use subtitles at all.
They’re often AI generated nowadays.
Most of what I described was before current AI existed.
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I can’t think of an example right now but I absolutely cannot watch French films with English subtitles and vice versa because I spend too much time raging at inaccuracies. Or I get caught thinking about how I would translate something myself and I quite literally lose the plot.
I get that translation cannot always be 100% accurate to account for cultural differences for example, but sometimes it’s just plain wrong.
Same for me with English and Spanish :-/
Just the most silly things get mistranslated, and it’s no wonder some English films don’t do well in Spain when the dubs are so far off!
Tons, I know tons. Some of them even get into the cultural zeitgeist as jokes. For example in Final Fantasy VII they translated “Your party is waiting for you on the second floor” as “Su fiesta le espera en el pisos 2” (if you don’t understand Spanish, they translated party/group as party/celebration)
Yeah, Japanese subtitles can have issues. Various broadcasters have been caught saying something else, though usually only when they overdub so one can barely hear the actual person.
Since Dutch as a language is generally not big enough to make dubs profitable (the exceptions is media specifically meant for young kids) almost everything her is subtitled. Subtle here are mostly quite good. Sometimes I notice it doesn’t match exactly what is being said but then it does have approximately the same meaning. I never noticed examples like yours from english to Dutch, but I don’t watch a lot of TV anymore.
If it doesn’t match exactly what’s being said that means a human translated it based on not just what it literally says but also on context and on what a Dutch person would actually say.
Example, when Quirrel “finds” the troll in the dungeon in HarryPotter, he says “thought you ought to know”, which would literally be “ik dacht dat jullie dat moesten weten” but was actually translated as “Ik dacht, ik zeg het even.”
I remember that one because I laughed so hard.
Eh that kind of catches the spirit of it, certainly something a Dutch Quirrel would say.
But yeah get the wider point.
I remember in the moulin rouge, they translated “let’s make love” word for word. Laten we de liefde maken.
Not exactly, but there are cases when a joke doesn’t make sense in my language, then in literally translate to English and I get the original joke. I remember this with Toy Story 5, but I don’t remember the joke.
I can with Mandarin and English and there are many words that both languages don’t have. Also in Mandarin there are different levels of respect/ tones when speaking to an elder or a boss that gets completely lost in translations.
English not having truly differing levels of formality/respect expressed through grammar or different words is definitely a big difference.
Loads. I just binged “One Piece” (the real life version), with English Audio and German subtitles. The amout of text that matched the audio was neglectable.
Like half of the subtitles between English, French, and Spanish get mistranslated
I once saw extremely poor fansubs. I’d attribute them to AI but sometimes they described the scene visually with no correlation to the audio. What the hell? English → Czech too, not from an obscure language.
