Korean Job Discussion Forums

[MoneyMike]

Hey guys,

I've watched a few movies lately with Korean subtitles, and it seems like the same phrases (in Hangeul) are used over and over for lots of different expressions in English.

My question is for anyone who speaks Korean fluently or near fluently. How well do the Korean translations in Western movies capture the subtleties of the language? I know Korean is a very context-based language, so phrases can carry a lot of different meanings, but just how well do they translate the more subtle meanings in the language?

Also, if you think a lot of subtleties are lost, is it even possible to do better without having a wall of text every time someone uses an idiom? Is Korean just so different that loose translations are all that is really possible without forcing Korean's to basically read a book worth of words every movie?

[sadguy]

all those subtleties are gone. it's ridiculous. even when movies reference drugs, koreans switch it to something else.

like in the show 24, jack bauer found pot in his daughter's room and instead of saying they found pot, the korean subtitles said it was condoms.

a lot is lost in translation.

[Jake_Kim]

If your primary sources of said Korean subtitles are cable channels, then you can forget about decent translation altogether, let alone matching sophisticated expressions with cultural context. The quality of contracted translator workforce outside of top-tier channels is, in short, hopeless.
In fact, even those professional translators with certain nationwide reputation who get contracted to work on multimillion Hollywood blockbusters can't get everything 'right,' and oftentimes there is no way of translating a simple expression properly without making it look unnatural in Korean in the first place.

[liveinkorea316]

There was a really funny line at the start of "No strings attached" involcing the word "finger" and ashton kutchers character as a 14 year old.

Needless to say me and my friends were the only ones in the theatre who gasped or laughed. It is kinda crude but I guess that is what they were going for.

My Korean friend afterwards told me that the translation was "can I touch you now". He said that it was understood in a sexual way but only generally.

My Korean is not that good but i am sure at other key funny points in the movie they substituted a dirty word for something more general and it was lost on the Koreans just how funny it was.

[sadguy]

yeah, and the movie with jim carrey and ewan mcgregor "i love you philip morris." that was a really dirty movie with some really really dirty homosexual dialogue during the anal sex scene. i asked my gf if it was translated correctly, but she said it wasn't at all.

[MoneyMike]

How will they ever throw off the shackles of a conservative mindset if they're never exposed to anal jokes?? Ohh, the humanity...

[jvalmer]

The problem with a lot of these translations is that often it's a non-native english speaker translating. So there is a lot of subtle things they won't understand. It happens when with both english and korean text translations. I find the best subtitles are the ones you can chose via gomplayer. Sometimes they have a plethora of subtitles choices for the same movie.

[Cedar]

I worked for awhile doing Korean to English subtitling for TV shows. You'd have this problem where the literal translation would not explain to an English speaking audience what was going on, but you have a two line limit to explain it (because the type can't get too small, because the audience can only read so much and still see the action at all). So you have to make compromises. A lot of compromises I see in Korean subtitling of English language stuff sacrifice humor for just being able to follow the plot. Explaining why something is funny, culturally, to Americans usually is going to take more than two lines.

[matthews_world]

Isn't there a central government unit such as a the ministry of culture or something rather that also pre-screens a lot of what Koreans can become exposed to? Especially with the news services, for example. A central wire service compiles the news, relays it to the network or newpaper who dissiminates the story to the public the way they see fit, without stretching any boundaries.

I had a student who's job was a newspaper reporter in Seoul and they confirmed this.


On a side note, are theaters starting to show Korean movies with foreign language subtitles these days? Now that would rock. I have yet to figure out how to use subtitle files properly when viewing foreign films and shows by torrent.

[Patrick Bateman]

[Patrick Bateman]

[tealeeds1]

[matthews_world]

Yeah, sorry to hijack. Figured someone could help;)

Noone has seen subtitles on new theatrical Korean movies yet?