hello !! this may be a long shot, so feel free to pay me no mind. i've been watching as many venoms films as i can get my hands on, and i'm just OBSESSED ! finding your blog has been like winning the lottery tbh, and i actually have a question regarding subtitles;
in that one scene in shaolin rescuers where jin and dabao were fighting over the bowl, jin says "i got it!" "yummy food!" (cute), but i noticed the subs in one of your gifs say "now feed me!" (even cuter!!!!!!). i've seen subs vary depending on where the video file was sourced from, and was curious to know if you had any insight on that particular version for this film.
thank you for all the beautiful gifs and scans and pics you shared, and have a great day !!!✌️❤️
Thank you so much for sending this ask!!! I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get back to you!
First of all, I’m so excited that you’ve found the venom mob!! And I’m glad that you’re enjoying my blog! ^_^ I made this account because NO ONE was talking about or gifing the venoms, so I had to do what I could to fill in the gap. (And tbh there is still so much more that I need to gif…)
As for the subtitles! When I was starting to dive into the Venoms, I wanted copies of their movies that were dubbed in Chinese (either Mandarin or Cantonese) because I wanted to see the original cuts. To be honest, the main reason I sought out their original dubbing was because I had HOPED that the original dubs included their original voices—especially their original kihaps (the “hi-yah” sounds when fighting). But sadly the Chinese releases are also dubbed over, so none of the venoms’ real made-on-the-spot-while-filming kihaps are audible in any versions of their movies.
(HOWEVER. I have two videos that I plan to upload when I have the time. One that includes some behind the scenes footage of the filming of Masked Avengers where Lu Feng’s REAL KIHAPS can be heard, and another clip from a Taiwanese tv show where Chiang Sheng’s REAL KIHAPS are heard. So far they are THE ONLY EXAMPLES I HAVE FOUND of any of the venom’s real kihaps.)
Anyway, I’m not sure how difficult it is to find the Chinese dubs of venoms films nowadays, but back in 2020 when I first got into them, I had to find bootleg pirate downloads of most of their films. The people/website that provided the movies also provided a subtitle track file to be downloaded in conjunction, so that if I played the movie through VLC media player, I had the option to turn on the subtitle file that came with it. I have to assume that the people who provided these copies of the movies were also the ones to provide the subtitles. As in, they likely translated it themselves. And since this was 2020 (and the websites were older than that) the translations were not done through AI. They were human made, authentic subtitles, and I noticed that they often differed from official subtitles and official English dub lines.
A quick tangent about translations; I have found that overall, the official venoms English dubs tend to have the most accurate Chinese to English translation. I feel that the lines are localized properly, and that tone and intent is accurately translated. However, I still love to see the fan translated subtitles, because I think seeing additional possible interpretation of a line gives me a broader idea of what is being said.
And so, when it comes time for me to subtitle my gifs, I kind of just pick and choose between all of the translations that are available to me and go with my favorite translation. Sometimes that means I’ll be using translations from both the English dub AND the fan sub in the same gif set. Translation is reliant on interpretation and perception, and I’m not exempt from having my own biases when I decide how to present what is being said. I hope that makes sense. I’m certainly never making up lines in my gif sets, but I pay attention to the message that is being conveyed in a line and take into consideration all the different ways that could be worded/communicated.
For that particular Shaolin Rescuers set, that line came from the bootleg fan sub I have downloaded. I wish I could remember the name of the website I got them from… I’m sure I have it written down somewhere >_<
Again, thank you so much for this ask!! I hope I answered your question well… And please feel free to send any more questions my way! I am always happy to talk about the Venoms!!!