why are subtitles so shit?

[purplesequins]

on streaming services

so many spelling mistakes and missing spaces between words.

Yes, I find Prime particularly poor for cc. I've resorted to playing the non cc film on my phone and tv in sync and listening to the sound using the phone. But that's not a great solution. Does anyone know of any less clunky aids to hearing the tv?

Netflix does seem to miss the important subtitles. When something key is being said, it doesn't get translated.

Very annoying

The subtitles on Netflix are really hit and miss.

My husband is deaf and he watches Undercover on Netflix, he watches in with the original spoken audio and English subtitles, every spoken language is subtitled apart from when they speak English so some scenes are unwatchable.

BBC I Player - watching live is a nightmare - it's accurate but delayed. I'm partially deaf and have everything on subtitles where possible.

the delay in live prigrammes is very irritating when learning a language and trying to follow the news.

I’ve noticed some channels think it’s itv or channel 4 flicker subtitles so whole sentence do a tiny jump when each new word is added so look like flicker totally unwatchable. Never used to be so bad.

Would really like to know why some subtitles are in a box so they block out the pictures behind and others are just on the screen so you can see behind them.
BBC seem to do the blocky subtitles Netflix are the ones who are the better ones for us

Whilst moaning about tv is anyone as annoyed as I am by the BBC abandoning stating who they've been interviewing, and where they're reporting from, at the end of a news item? I've just caught the latter part of an item about a mudslide that has made many people homeless somewhere. Where? No idea. Who did they speak to? No idea. Did the reporter give her name at the end? Yes she did. I don't care who she is, she's not the story. It's incredibly annoying.

I assumed it was automatically done these days? We use it for videos at work and it’s not too bad… I do love it when they have these on in the bank - some of the errors are very funny!

No idea if this is real, but Swedish TV apparently wrongly played children’s tv subtitles over a parliamentary debate, and presumably single-handedly made this guy the most voted-for politician ever.

I love that!

They miss out important details because they think its easier, but it means a hearing impaired person is missing out on the full experience.

They (the good subtitlers, that is) have to miss out words. They have a limit on how many syllables/words can be used in each x seconds of footage to hit readability targets - so if the dialogue has more words than the allowance, then they must condense them whilst still trying to hold the meaning.

How good they are at condensing, very much depends on how good they are at their job and how much care they take. I've watched my brother sit for several minutes playing out different wording options to try and capture the right meaning. Plus, he has a Masters in languages so that helps!

But, like I say, not everyone wants to pay for that level of skill and quality. And some people (like Youube) use computer generation which is always going to be terrible.

I’ve always used subtitles when they’ve been available, as I’m hard of hearing.

It’s gotten better, I remember when Netflix first became a thing - most of the shows didn’t have subtitles. But it’s still not great. I thought Disney plus did a good job giving you options to customise how your subtitles look but then I watched Trust (great show, hilarious that it’s on Disney considering what it’s about) and because much of the dialogue is in Italian- the subtitle tracks conflicted!! As in, if I had the subtitles on for English, no subtitles would show for the Italian dialogue- but if I turned the subtitles off, there were the translated Italian subs. Like it honestly hadn’t occurred to them that deaf/hoh people would also like to keep up with the plot! I eventually muddled through with no English subtitles but I had to have it up louder than I’d like.

Also I remember when I was younger quite a lot of documentaries would not have subtitles. I got quite mad about that as a kid. I have a lot of opinions on the state of subtitling, though I have massive respect for those who do the work!

Re the comment that dubbing in English has a way to go, is dubbing really done well anywhere? I’ve seen loads of dubbed tv in Italy and it’s terrible. The obviousness of the dubbing, the dreadful hammy acting of the voiceover actors, the way there only seem to be a couple of actors covering each programme or film (sure that isn’t right, but it sounds like it)... Between subtitling and dubbing, I’d always take the former.

@JunkIsland

Re the comment that dubbing in English has a way to go, is dubbing really done well anywhere? I’ve seen loads of dubbed tv in Italy and it’s terrible. The obviousness of the dubbing, the dreadful hammy acting of the voiceover actors, the way there only seem to be a couple of actors covering each programme or film (sure that isn’t right, but it sounds like it)... Between subtitling and dubbing, I’d always take the former.

I think germany does it quite well for high profile/a-list productions. children's programmes can be hit and miss though.

@ElegantlyTouched

It surprises me how much dialogue is missed from the dramas I've been watching on Netflix. It really annoys me. Each time I debate whether to go back and listen again with the sound higher, and risk waking my dd in the room next door, or ignore and hope I haven't missed a vital clue.

I'm sure I can tell the subtitlers who work on Bing apart. One corrects Bing's language and Amma to Emma, the other keeps to the script.

Wireless head phones are your friend!

I’m watching a French series on NEtflix at the moment. In the first series the translator was English but for the second series they now have an American translator and the Americanisms drive me mad - I know Imbu but still - “butt”, “Mom”, “Gotta”. Mind you the worst was when a character said he was going to Le Touquet and the subtitle read “The Touquet”. Grr!

I do subtitles (as a volunteer) for a YouTube channel. We use Crowdscriber, which chops the videos up into 2-minute chunks, which is quite manageable. You request a chunk and then have 12 hours to complete and submit it before it gets released back into the pool. You can either type everything in from scratch or start with their autogenerated words (which aren't bad except for names, technical terms, or when more than one person is speaking). Once each chunk has been submitted, the owner of the channel sticks them back together and checks them through. We have a style guide for consistency.

For this particular YouTuber, I actually find it easier to start from scratch because although the placement of the words is accurate, it splits the lines in odd places and I'd spend longer cutting and joining than I would typing.

It's quite fun to do and there have been a huge number of comments about how helpful it is for people who are hard of hearing or have English as a second language or who watch with the sound off.

@Nocaloriesinchocolate

I’m watching a French series on NEtflix at the moment. In the first series the translator was English but for the second series they now have an American translator and the Americanisms drive me mad - I know Imbu but still - “butt”, “Mom”, “Gotta”. Mind you the worst was when a character said he was going to Le Touquet and the subtitle read “The Touquet”. Grr!

It’s a pain watching with someone who speaks the language - howls of ‘he didn’t say that!!!!!’. I can only speak a little Italian (but seem to know an awful lot of bad language), so o can point out where they make the swears polite.

@Watto1

There is a silent TV on in my bank which is permanently tuned to the BBC news channel with subtitles. A few years ago it reported on an accident at ‘Big Inhale’ airport. I think they meant Biggin Hill!

'Year of the whores' for Chinese New Year was my favourite BBC subtitle fail

I am also a subtitler and wonder if I know you, @BadPlaceJanet!

I've NC for this to one of my most notorious "mishears" –when something you want to say comes out as something different –and "fantastical" appearing on screen as "testicle" was one of the howlers...

It's the best part of the job –I must have the sense of humour of a 6-year-old, but I have cracked up live on air at times when something has come out wrong... 😂

I also like doing the local newses for all the regions around the UK. I had a hard-hitting story of social commentary one time about someone finding a badger fallen into their wheelie bin. Someone said when I told them, "Does not much happen in the West Country, then?"

The badger was fine.

😂😂😂😂😂

For anybody still followoing this thread, I came accross this article today.
You may find it interesting (and famiarly frustrating if you are a subtitler @BadPlaceJanet and @fantasticaltesticle)

www.cnet.com/news/features/inside-the-dying-art-of-subtitling/

To @JunkIsland, yes it is done well. Very well in some places. As a matter of fact, I know that some people are disappointed to hear an actor's real voice after being used to her/his usual doubbing actor's! Suddently, they don't seem such a good actor after all .

I'd say the main issue with dislike of dubbing is mostly due to the lack of familiarity with the system - as I said, pretty new in English speaking countries. If you had grown up in a place were dubbing is common, you'd be attuned to it and more ready to gloss over the less than perfect bits.

It is obviously not possible to make it seamless because of the nature of language (where is Star Trek's Universal Translator when you need it?!), but hours of hard, specialised work go into choosing words with similar length/closed v. open mouth, etc.

The thing with dubbing is, you get so much more information. Subtitles are limited in their length and you miss stuff. Also, slow readers would miss half the film.

Personally, I think there is a time and a place for both.

I am also a subtitler and wonder if I know you, BadPlaceJanet!

Ooh, maybe!

Really interesting article, Sticky, thanks. It's not what I do, but I agree with the subtitler in the article that good translation is an art, and an under-appreciated one at that. What she's doing is much more difficult than what I do
I do speak another language and always find it so interesting to watch content in that language and see how it's been rendered into English.

BBC seem to do the blocky subtitles Netflix are the ones who are the better ones for us

Block subtitles are required for some to be able to read at all, so that is the default. In a web-browser the BBC ones are actually configurable, but the page where you could do it no-longer exists, so you have to "hack it" Visit iPlayer - open the developer console and paste this in the console:

document.cookie="ckns_smpSettings="+JSON.stringify({subtitles:{contrast:0}})+"; Path=/";

And there will be no black border.

I watch Anime, I only watch the fan subs versions from dodgy online streaming sites because official subtitles are always terrible.

take Attack on Titan for example the official english subs simplified the story and dialogue massively, gave the story away early in some places, removed all the swearing etc.

I dont know why its crap but if fans can do a better translation and have it up within 3 hours of an Anime airing in Japan I dont know why we always get rubbish and what the excuse is.