Subtitles

[GenJerDan]

Now, me, I always thought the folks writing subtitles for films had the script there in front of them so they'd get it right.

Apparently not.

Watched Red Dawn the other night...my wife had never seen it...and had the English subtitles on because she can't always understand what people are saying.

Anyway...

In the scene where Powers Boothe is laying out the plan for freeing the prisoners at the drive-in he explains thusly:

"The B group comes across this area in a flanking maneuver and when you reach this bunker, you lay down grazing fire on this defilade. I think that's pretty simple. Anybody got any questions?"

But the subtitles have it as you lay down grazing fire on this Duffel-A.

Duffel-A?

I'm gonna have to start paying attention the subtitles when we're watching films...just to see how many times they're screwed up.

:)

[David Jimerson]

On the back of the DVD for the version of Beowulf starring Christopher Lambert, done with a sci-fi twist, it said that the story took place in a "techno-futile" society.

[Herman Witkam]

On the back of the DVD for the version of Beowulf starring Christopher Lambert, done with a sci-fi twist, it said that the story took place in a "techno-futile" society.

Sounds about right :beer:

[morten]

that's nothing. the most famous one (albeit in Norwegian) was the DVD version of Pulp Fiction:

Bruce Willis' character comes home to his woman after snuffing Zed.
Woman: Whose motorcycle (or was it bike???) is that?
Willis: It's not a motorcycle. It's a chopper

Norwegian translation:
Whose motorcycle is that?
It's not a motorcycle. It's a helicopter.

It seems to me that the people who do closed captioning / subtitles often either only have the audio track, original script or none of the above when they do this. It's incredible how wrong it gets at times. You notice it more when it's a foreign language movie with english translations. That's usually completely off the charts wrong.

mor10

[GenJerDan]

Aaaauuuugh! They did it again.

Just watched The Wind And The Lion (seems to be a Milius week for us).

Steve Kanaly "said" some interesting military commands:

"Sticks...bayonets!" ("Fix...bayonets!", of course)

"Go left...now!" ("Column left...march!")

Admittedly, not as bad as a helicopter....but sheesh.

[David Jimerson]

Nothing wrong with a Milius festival.

[XCheck]

Try literal translations of English idioms into a dubbed-over local versions. It's hillarious, and pretty much unwatchable if you know both languages.

Having just returned back to Canada from my native land (nowadays a.k.a. Czechistan), I can't wait to see a movie with the original dialog. It seems that on Czech TV, over 90% are (badly) dubbed-over American soap operas, or re-runs of old commie propaganda TV films. Both for the sake of entertaining the masses, I guess...:beer: