Please no. Some subtitle companies do think like this, and it's really weird, like when they try to "convert" cultural jokes, and then add in a bunch of more assumptions regarding what cultures you're aware of depending on the subtitle language, making it even harder to understand...
Just because I want my subtitles in English, doesn't mean I want all typical discussed Spanish food names to be replaced by "kind of the same" British names, yet something like that is something I've come across before. Horrible.
But for example you'd want the English "so so" to be translated in Spanish as "más o menos" instead of doubling down on whatever literal translation for "so" they choose.
Plenty of dialog needs language specific context, you have expressions that don't lend themselves to literal translation, or the translation in that language is so long and cumbersome that paraphrasing is an improvement.
Like with anything else, the secret is using it sparingly, only when it adds value.
Agree, but I don't think those are "cultural translations" but more like "idioms translations", which mostly makes sense to do.
What I originally wrote about are things like Family Guy original voice-overs + subtitles making a joke about some typical father figure in Hollywood for example. Then the Latin Spanish subtitles will have translated that joke but replaced the specific actor with some typical father figure from the Mexican movie industry, while the Castilian subtitles would have replaced it with someone from the Spanish movie industry.
Without adapting the translation the natives will immediately understand the reference while you, the non-native with no sense of who they're talking about are left wondering what's the real message. Calling someone a "Mother Teresa" might miss the mark somewhere in China. Same if an Italian movie made references to food like Casu Marzo and the average American would probably miss a lot of the context.
Just recently I saw this in a series where some workers in the oil extraction industry were staring at a pan of paella asking what it is and calling it jambalaya. Paella is world famous, how about khash?
That's why I said I understand the usage but it should only be done if it really helps the comprehension, not just the principle of gratuitously adapting to one language.
Right, but isn't that why the American is watching this Italian movie anyways, to get a wider understanding of Italian culture? I don't watch foreign movies with the expectation that they're adapted to my local culture, then there wouldn't be much point in watching it.
I don't know. I always though people would prefer to hear the original voice of the actor, since speech is a big part of the acting. But movies are dubbed in a lot of countries. And most people from those countries I spoke to said that they find the idea of subtitles very odd because it's distracting them from the movie.
I am sure many if not most people simply want to understand what's the message behind the conversation on the screen first and foremost. Learning something new only works if while you try to keep up with the dialogue, you also keep track of all the expressions you heard for the first time, to look them up later.
This is why I think it's the translator's job to balance translation and adaptation. Directly translate the original where context helps you understand the meaning so you get the "original" experience, and adapt where leaving just the 1:1 translation will make you lose the thread or miss some details.
His translations were nowhere near what the movie was about, but they were hilarious and fit the plot perfectly.
On the other hand, his Lord of The Rings was an "alternative" dub as you described. Didn't watch that one though.
Jokes are an example of something translators can do really well - things like puns don't work 1:1 across languages. A good translator will find a corresponding, appropriate line of dialogue and basically keep the intent without literally translating the words.
Food is kind of silly because it's tied to place - if a setting is clearly Spanish, or a character is Spanish, why wouldn't they talk about Spanish food? Their nationality ostensibly informs something about their character (like Godzilla) and can't just be fine/replaced.
Again, those aren't "cultural translations" but "idioms translations", which I do agree should be translated into something understandable in the language, otherwise you wouldn't understand it.
What I was aiming at in my original comment was examples like these:
> Family Guy original voice-overs + subtitles making a joke about some typical father figure in Hollywood for example. Then the Latin Spanish subtitles will have translated that joke but replaced the specific actor with some typical father figure from the Mexican movie industry, while the Castilian subtitles would have replaced it with someone from the Spanish movie industry.
That's just bad destructive art, especially for a foreign language that you partially know.
> Sometimes you need to name a voice as unknown, to avoid spoilers.
Don't name any, that's what your own eye-ear voice recognition/matching and positioning are for (also reduces the amount of text)
> Sometimes the positioning on the screen matters.
This is rather valuable art indeed! Though unlikely fit to be modelled well
That’s tricky when one or more speakers aren’t visible.
You can probably get 99% there without that for a lot of content, but I'd challenge the notion that this is somehow only important for hearing impaired viewers (or people just watching without clearly audible sound for other reasons).
I don't think that's an unrealistic goal to have for AIs; they're already extremely good at semantic scene description after all. By looking at the image in addition to just the audio track they probably also get a lot more metadata, which a refined world model will eventually be able to use just like a human subtitle editor can today.
They're using Whisper for speech to text, and some other small model for basic translation where necessary. It will not do speaker identification (diarization), and certainly isn't going to probe into narrative plot points to figure out if naming a character is a reveal. It isn't going to place text on the screen according to the speaker's frame place, nor for least intrusion. It's just going to have a fixed area where a best effort at speech to text is performed, as a last resort where the alternative is nothing.
Obviously it would be preferred to have carefully crafted subtitles from the content creator, translating if the desired language isn't available but still using all the cues and positions. Secondly to have some carefully crafted community subtitles from opensubtitles or the like, maybe where someone used "AI" and then hand positioned/corrected/updated. Failing all that, you fall to this.
There is no need for artistic interpretation, substituting words, or hiding information. If it’s in the audio, there’s no reason to keep it out of the subtitle.
An AI subtitle generator that takes artistic license with the conversion is not what anyone wants.
Questionable. It drives me crazy to have subtitles that are paraphrase in a way that changes the meaning of statements.
I really hope people to stop doing that.
Agreed.
> Sometimes it's better to paraphrase dialog to reduce the amount of text that needs to be read.
Hard no. If it’s the same language, the text you read should match the text you listen to. Having those not match makes parsing confusing and slow.
> Sometimes you need to name a voice as unknown, to avoid spoilers.
Subtitles don’t usually mention who’s talking, because you can see that. Taking the source of a voice is uncommon and not something I expect these system to get right anyway.
Pretty sure this is a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, so illegal in the U.S. at least. Being Deaf doesn't mean you need "reduced" dialogue.
NO!
I speak and understand 90% of English but I still use subtitles because sometimes I don't understand a word, or the sound sucks, or the actor thought speaking in a very low voice was a good idea. When the subtitles don't match what's being said, it's a terrible experience.
So, knowing exactly the words being said is of utter importance.