Why Subtitles Don’t Match Dialogue
It’s actually not because subtitlers are incompetent.
Anyone who knows even a little bit of a second language has likely had the experience of watching a subtitled movie and noticing that the subtitles don’t quite match the actual dialogue. I can recall multiple moments of watching a movie in Spanish or Arabic with English subtitles and being somewhat amused at the mismatch between what I was hearing and reading. And no, I did not know either language better than whoever created the subtitles for those movies. What I didn’t realize at the time, and what most people don’t realize is that there are very specific constraints on subtitles especially in professional and commercial contexts. This is common sense, really, when you think about reading speed versus listening speed and even the space that subtitles occupy on screen, for example. Subtitles often have to be a paraphrase of what is actually said in order to make it possible to read them at the same speed as the spoken dialogue. Creating subtitles, and especially interlingual subtitles, is more complicated than just translating and typing out dialogue — for the above reasons as well as some less obvious ones that I’ll also address.
Time and Space Constraints
Subtitles need to correspond with the film’s dialogue but also need to be on screen long enough for viewers to read them. Text needs to be large enough to read but there can’t be so much of it that it interferes with the film’s visuals. Subtitles need to present dialogue accurately but can’t be so long that viewers don’t have time to read them. These are all motivations for the translator to cut down on text, which presents the problem of shortening dialogue without changing its original meaning. Many companies have their own specific subtitle style guidelines that include things like characters-per-second limit, font size, etc.. Netflix, for instance, requires the duration of each subtitle to be at least 0.83 seconds and no more than 7 seconds and allows no more than 2 lines of text at a time on screen, among many other specifications, including characters per second. See Netflix subtitle style guide (if you’re particularly interested in the specifics of subtitling).
Modes of Meaning
The inherently multimodal aspect of film creates a myriad of other considerations for subtitlers. Multimodal refers to the different “modes” of conveying meaning such as spoken dialogue, music and sound effects, visuals, and subtitles. One of these challenges is how to deal with non-verbal communication such as culture-specific gestures as gesticulation can vary greatly between cultures. For instance, in a movie from a culture where a “thumbs up” is actually equivalent to the western “middle finger” (Iran and Afghanistan for example), the gesture might need to be subtitled as [obscene gesture] in order to portray the intended meaning in an English subtitling if the film.
Cultural Differences
Culturally specific items are another challenge for subtitlers which can result in the subtitles looking like they don’t match the dialogue. Idioms, for example, tend to be very culture-specific and can’t always be translated literally in a way that makes sense. In this case, the subtitler would need to take the meaning of the idiom and create a sort of equivalent meaning in the subtitle which means the words in spoken dialogue and subtitles will not match up even though they convey the right meaning.
This can also be an issue when translating culture-bound terms. An American movie using the term DUI (driving under the influence) for example would present an issue when creating subtitles in another language. “Driving under the influence” is a very English-specific term to mean drunk driving and would probably be best translated as “drunk driving” in another language to avoid confusion. Again, this results in a mismatch between the spoken and written dialogue.
The Vulnerability of Subtitles
Subtitling is a particularly commonly criticized type of translation due to the juxtaposition of source text (the original language) and target text (the translation), which is not the case for most forms of translation. Because the source text and target text in subtitling are delivered together on screen, viewers who have even a basic understanding of both languages will notice that the translation doesn’t correspond word-for-word with the original dialogue. This juxtaposition of original words and their translation creates a sort of “vulnerability” in audiovisual translation. It is obvious that there are inconsistencies between the dialogue and subtitles but most viewers don’t understand why and can easily assume that these are due to mistakes rather than necessary adjustments.
All that said, subtitlers do indeed make mistakes. I’ll leave you with these especially amusing ones.
References
Abdelaal, Noureldin Mohamed, and Amani Al Sarhani. “Subtitling Strategies of Swear Words and Taboo Expressions in the Movie ‘Training Day.’” Heliyon 7, no. 7 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2021.e07351.
Díaz-Cintas, Jorge and Aline Remael. Subtitling: Concepts and Practices. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2021.
Fawcett, Peter. Translation and Language: Linguistic Theories Explained. London, UK: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 1997.
Thawabteh, Mohammad Ahmad. “The Translatability of Gestures: A Case Study of Arabic- English Subtitling” International Journal of Translation 23, no. 2, 147–159 (2011). https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257339462_The_Translatability_of_Gesture s_A_Case_Study_of_Arabic-English_Subtitling.
