#bad subs

[idiopathicallyalive]

[smylealong]

Bad Subs

The thing about watching a show in a language I don't understand is that I have to rely entirely on subtitles. When the subs are good, it's golden. But then, sometimes, we get subs that make no sense. Presenting some examples below:

I do wonder what come?

Only a fews?

Okay, won't lie, this one killed me. I mean... why did they lecture? What's the significance of the furry costume? It did not help that the "him" in question was tied up lightly with a rope. This was meant to be a serious scene but my mental image...HAHAHAHA

This isn't as bad... comparatively.

Yup. Gotcha.

Multiple commands? Do we need a command structure or something?

I mean... okay...I guess?

My normal body temperature is a little higher than most people. Guess I know now the reason is...

And the winner is.... The rest of them were at least words?

Go on, gimme your best bad-subs.

[miraculous-ash]

Ah yes, my favourite show, the Miraculous Lady Gaga

I never realized just how whack youtube's subtitles were haha, I honestly think I understood more from French lessons years ago Also, may I present to you my favourite sub it created that had me cackling:

[shitsub]

The king of romantic declarations, Seto Kaiba 

[ella390-the-potato]

My Japanese is good enough to pick up the mistakes while watching anime with Subs. But it isn't good enough to watch without Subs. 😒 Makes me regret not continuing with Japanese after 8th Grade. But I will still appreciate the work of those who write the subtitles. As that's something I'm not capable of.

[amistilllame]

JERRY FINDS A BOOTLEG SUBTITLED DVD: ASTERIX AND THE BIG FIGHT

Before starting, if you are not familiar with Asterix, I’d recommend reading this post to get a good gist of the series.

As an Asterix fan in a country where it’s largely unknown, I’m hard pressed when it comes to Asterix media. Only a handful of books got translated and released for American audiences, America only got two Asterix video games, Asterix and Obelix: Mission Cleopatra was the only live action Asterix movie released in America, and only one Asterix animated movie was translated and released in America...

..which was Asterix and the Big Fight.

For the most part, I saw the first five Asterix animated movies on Youtube (in English and visually and audibly unaltered), but I couldn’t find Asterix and the Big Fight anywhere on there with no annoying edits.

To clarify: The first five animated movies were only dubbed in English in Britain, but Asterix and the Big Fight got both a British English dub and an American English dub, for the sole reason of trying to introduce Asterix to a larger American audience. I’ve been told the American English dub was terrible and is the only dub that can be legally bought anymore. So I didn’t watch the American dub.

After many failed attempts to find the British dub online I realized I’m forced to watch the American dub, I thought since the movie got an American dub, maybe I could buy it on an American DVD on Ebay and see it that way.

I couldn’t. Instead, I bought a very shady Arabic DVD of the movie that had English subtitles.

The cover of the DVD

The DVD itself. It looks like it was made in Microsoft Word.

I was skeptical of how they translated the English subtitles and the quality of it, but since it was region 0 and a great chance the Arabic dub was possibly translated from the French version, and I thought could see a (possibly) better version of the movie that I could understand.

To clarify, translating anything Asterix from anything but the original French version is frowned upon, translators would be prone to diluting jokes or straight up ruining any.

I thought very wrong.

Turns out even this Arabic dub was translated from the American English dub and back into English, and they couldn’t even translate it correctly half the time.

The only things I knew about the American English were the character name changes:

- Panoramix/Getafix becomes Vitamix, I don’t have a single problem with this name change

- Cacofonix becomes Franksinatrix, maybe the translator did this in an “ironic” way, which I thank for them for then

-Vitalstatistix becomes Bombastix, don’t have much to say about this name

Since the subtitles are literally decent half the time, here are some select highlights from them:

Here’s an excerpt from the first minute of the movie. I should say while this dialogue is on screen, no such conversation can be heard

I do wonder about Vitamix’s (Panoramix’s/Getafix’s) brochure!

While the magic potion is called a vitamin potion for most of the movie, the translation keeps changing the name very early on

The above happened within less than a minute

As if this DVD wasn’t a bootleg enough already...

Ah yes, who could forget Asterix’s friend “Oblix”?

Oh, never mind..

Yeah! How do we supposed he feel?

Whimpers suddenly become questions, apparently.

I guess this could be funny if you think of Frank Sinatra as a sarcastic insult to Cacofonix being a bad musician, but his name joke is still lost.

HEY! Watch your language translators! Kids could be watching...

And now to end this highlight post:

The moral of today is, be careful of bootleg DVDs with subtitles, especially if they are of series that heavily rely on puns.

[maytheforceormaynot]

[cryoverkiltmilk]

I should go back and watch some of my Game King DVDs. See whatever happened to seahorse and wooden horse.