Korean Job Discussion Forums

[IncognitoHFX]

I saw Dark Knight in theatres tonight. Great move, one of the best I've seen in awhile.

When I watch a movie at a Korean cinema I usually read the Korean subtitles to study unless something important is happening on screen. What I noticed about a lot of Korean subtitles (mostly the ones I can understand which accounts for about 5-20% of the dialogue depending on the movie) is that they seem to be way oversimplified and I'm wondering if this has to do with the Korean language versus the English language in general, or if it has to do with poor translators writing the subtitles or maybe even cultural differences.

In movies, lines like: "for the love of god, please save me!" --> "Jaebal! Yogi wa yo!"

"Where the *beep* are you?" --> "Odi issoyo?"

The strangest one I saw in Dark Knight was the scene in which Bent turns himself in as Batman. When he says the word terrorist, the Korean subtitle phonetically spells out "Taliban". When I read that I had a good chuckle and wondered if it was just my reading, or if the translator actually thought terrorist = Taliban.

Etc, etc.

Why is this? Sometimes, like when I was watching Dark Knight, it seems like complicated scenes with a lot of dialogue are boiled down to their most salient features when translated into Korean. Not that I can understand a lot of it, but I know enough to know that a lot is lost in translation (maybe lost in culture, too).

Does anyone have a theory for this? Why is this the case?

[stevieg4ever]

In reverse, I have heard this countless times from my Korean friends when we watch Korean films. My Korean is nowhere near good enough to tell however.

I watched Batman in the cinema the other day as well and thought exactly the same. The Korean subs didn't quite capture the essence of the film and I wonder whether the audience could fully appreciate it as such.

I guess invariably the more complex the film the more of the subtext gets blurred out as the subs are primarily aimed at keeping the main plot in focus.

[PeteJB]

Sometimes I've noticed the subtitles take information that wasn't actually in the line spoken, but IS in the story of the movie. I'm sure they get scripts to work with for translations so this might be why.

As for English subtitles to Korean movies, well...

To be honest there are so many badly done translations all over the place on both sides of the line. I'll have to create a new association...

[komtengi]

there are word counts for each screen, so they need to simplify the words used, otherwise if there were literal translations they'd take up half the screen

[Thunndarr]

Makes you wonder how much of the original meaning of movies like Oldboy gets lost in the translation to English.

[bluelake]

Over the years, I liked to catch bad English to Korean translations in the movies. Common ones deal with numbers. Others are related to the translator not having a clue about the culture they are translating.

One of my favorites was from the movie, Dead Bang with Don Johnson. I forget the exact wording, but it went something like, "There is a $10,000,000 shipment of coke coming into the country." The Korean translation said, "There is a $10,000,000 shipment of cola coming into the country." The translator had no clue that "coke" meant cocaine.

In the movie, Naked Gun, when Leslie Nielsen tells about his wife dying in a blimp accident, he is asked "Goodyear?" and he answers, "No, it was a bad year". The translation literally said, "Was it a good year?" This, of course, was before Goodyear tires came to Korea.

[Bigfeet]

I don't think simplifying the dialog when subtitling is a Korean phenomenon. I've recently seen this done in Kung Fu Hustle. I turned on the English subtitling and English voice dubbing at the same time. Quite a few times what was said was not what was written. The dialog was usually more complex and involved than what was written. It makes sense since reading takes you away from the action on the screen so they would want to keep that distraction to a minimum.

[Cheonmunka]

There's also the censorship element of language. If an actor says, "F%$% you Mother-F%$$%'er," the translator ain't gonna write, "야, 아줌마를 강제로 강간하려고 하는 놈!" The literal translation would be too rude.
Instead just use the time-worn '나쁜 놈.'

[Raeddie]

My favorite was an American movie with bad words translated as ...18... 18...

[Justin Hale]

Incognito is right and it happens all the time. I'm not a quick enough reader to have a complete view, but I do know that often they make (a) glaring errors with register and, even more glaringly, (b) show a complete reluctance to translate vulgar English into vulgar Korean. Regarding (a), in Terminator II almost the entire script is translated into "yo" Korean - regular, not especially polite speech but generally not impolite. T2 is almost entirely in low register English and banmal therefore being the correct interpretation that should be used but isn't. Sure, it makes a refreshing change from all English = banmal (a terribly irritating Korean misconception) but, Jesus, can't they get anything right? Regarding (b), I've seen so many hilarious examples, like.....

E: "I don't give a _____"
K: "sang guan obsoyo"

E: "how the ____ should I know, goddammit?"
K: "molayo"

E: "Holy _____"
K: "mapsosa"

E: "What the ____?"
K: "way gudae?"

Obviously, completely literal translations are impossible, but one would've thought vulgar English would be translated into some vaguely similar Korean vulgarity, as opposed to show a complete reluctance (others' experience may differ). When the translators do indeed muster a Korean vulgarity, I noticed se ggi is a kind of one-size-fits-all expression for all manner of vulgar English cusses.

(sorry, no hangeul)

They always screw register up - not translating into jondaemal when a high register English expression is used, like "would it be possible to speak to _____ please?" and, as I say, using regular or high register Korean when a low register or even vulgar English expression is used. Perhaps this is unsurprising, since register in English is one of the more difficult things for Koreans (and others) to learn, but one expects movie translators to be fluent and evidently they are not.

edit: Cheonmunka beat me to it

[Young FRANKenstein]

[Young FRANKenstein]

[komtengi]

In Charlies Angels there is a scene when the postman comes to deliver a package, and Diaz says something along the lines of "I signed a waiver, so you can just stick it in my box", these double meanings have no way of being translated.
A reason that Austin Powers went so badly over here

[ajuma]

A Korean friend of mine who does a lot of movie and TV translating to improve his English told me that it took him a LONG time to realize that when someone says "Roger" it means "I understand" , NOT a person's name!!!

[Young FRANKenstein]