For example, whenever I watch an American movie with Japanese subtitles: the translation kind of sucks since there are words translated literally word by word making zero sense or lack of taking account of visual context from a scene. Depends on who translated the dialog, it could be that translators didn’t watch the movie or understand the context in specific scenes.
I recall watching Clear & Present Danger (Harrison Ford) with JP sub, there was a piece of dialog where the commander of a special forces unit gave the orders on planting explosives in which he ordered them to “cook it” basically implying on detonating the trigger but the subtitles translated this as 料理しろ which is incorrect when you account the scene’s context.
Whether you speak German, French, Spanish or etc. are the translated subtitles crap when it comes to movies where colloquialisms (slang), jokes (humor) or wordplay (puns) are thrown into the mix while listening to the original English dub? It’s because subtitles only convey a message but can miss nuances from spoken dialog via the source language.
I’ve seen some French movies with English subtitles getting things wrong. As well as whatever other problems happen, sometimes it seems obvious that they’re going by what was written in the script and not what was said in the film.
I’m mainly talking about the reverse (English movies with French subtitles) as mentioned on the main thread, but can that also be wrong? Like for example, you can watch a movie set in the American South (full of it’s own slang) spoken in US English and won’t be translated well in French.
The French don’t do subtitles, they dub everything.
It’s horrible.
Luckily movie theatres in Switzerland and Belgium regularly show foreign movies with original soundtrack and French subtitles for all who prefer it that way.
Belgium shows films with TWO subtitle tracks though. Dutch and French. Takes up like half the screen 🫠
No wonder why English proficiency in France is bad despite being the most visited country.
English proficiency in France is bad
My guess is that it’s because French is comparatively-widely-spoken relative to most other languages in Europe.
The benefits of speaking a language increase the more people who can speak it — it gives you access to more people out there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers
According to this, as of 2026, there are about 1,493 million people in the world who can speak English.
There are about 334 million people in the world who can speak French. That’s second only to Spanish among European languages behind English.
So if you already know French, learning English will give you access to something like 4.4 times as many people as you could otherwise communicate with.
Contrast that with, say, Icelandic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_language
Icelandic or Icelandish (/aɪsˈlændɪk/ ⓘ eyess-LAN-dik, /aɪsˈlændɪʃ/ eyess-LAN-dish; endonym: íslenska, pronounced [ˈi(ː)stlɛnska] ⓘ, íslensk tunga [ˈi(ː)stlɛnsk ˈtʰuŋka]) is a North Germanic language from the Indo-European language family spoken by about 390,000 people, the vast majority of whom live in Iceland, where it is the national language.[2]
An Icelandic speaker picking up English gives them access to about 3,828 times as many people. That’s a a lot more content you have access to, people you can communicate with, etc. The payoff to an Icelandic speaker from picking up and using English is considerably larger than the payoff to a French speaker; they’ve got more incentive to be able to use it well.
Depends. I’d say most of them are fine but the issues come when there’s something niche, like technical stuff, local slang words or dialect etc.
I’m a (ex) car mechanic, my dad likes to watch Wheeler Dealers. Quite often I’m visiting when that show is on and so many of the technical terms used are translated completely stupidly. “Brake horsepower” has been translated to “bruttohevosvoima” which means “gross (as in economics) horsepower.” Alternator has been translated to “vaihtaja” which means “changer/switcher.”
There was a Top Gear episode where Clarkson said “a bit squirrely under braking” I understand that as “a bit restless when braking hard” but that was translated to “orava jarrutus” which means “squirrel braking.”
I have more such examples but I’ve forgotten most of them, its been a long while since I’ve watched traditional TV, I mostly download stuff and if I use subtitles (because of audio these days is messed up on purpose), I use English subtitles.
Like what I wrote in the thread: I was watching a Harrison Ford movie with Japanese subtitles and they translated “cook it” (as in “press the detonator”) said by a military commander during a certain scene leading up to an action sequence (special forces were about to raid a cartel compound in Colombia) literally as 料理しろ which literally means “Let’s cook” (like in cooking food at a kitchen) which sounds completely stupid when you take visual context into account. Subtitles can suck, even in Finnish for example since it’s a different language from English.
I don’t mind too much those translation errors that come from things like slang or figure of speech types of things, like “cook it” etc. But when theres a technical word that you could easily look up, its insane to me that the translator decides to just guess what it might be.
My favorite silly translation “error” was when the “The Song Remains The Same” Led Zeppelin film was translated to “Laulu Jää Pystyyn” - “the song stays standing up.” Like why would you even translate that? Its literally a song name, just keep it in the original English. But even further, why would you translate it that way? Why not use “laulu pysyy samana” which would be a direct translation of the song title. I would guess that who ever translated it was old and unfamiliar with Led Zeppelin songs, or something like that. But at least it gave us something to laugh at. And a Finnish band Eppu Normaali did release their own concert film with the title “Laulu Jää Pystyyn.” So that was something.
But when theres a technical word that you could easily look up, its insane to me that the translator decides to just guess what it might be.
A friend of mine used to translate subtitles as a part time job while being a student and I can assure you that he wasn’t paid anywhere close enough to waste any time at all on looking up anything he didn’t readily know.
Speaking of that, there was another scene from that movie I’ve mentioned where Harrison Ford’s character was reading through government files and one of them had the subheading Infantry Battalion as it was about the possibility of sending boots on the ground, which again in Japanese was translated as 歩兵小隊 (Infantry Platoon) when the correct word is in fact 大隊 (Battalion) as a platoon is smaller than a battalion. How does the translator not know the difference between the two?
It’s the same with military ranks as well: like I was watching an episode of 24, there was a scene where Jack Bauer contacts a surviving sailor on the submarine as the CTU were about to stop terrorists from deploying nukes. The sailor had a petty officer rank which was subtitled as 軍曹 (sergeant, in the army) when he’s in the navy! It should’ve been subtitled as 兵曹長, like the how does the translator not know the difference between a sergeant & petty officer?
Yeah, technical terms can be a bitch to translate when the translator isn’t experienced.
Yeah its stuff like that that bother me, things that would take 30 seconds to figure out with a basic internet search or reading a few lines of a Wikipedia article. I mean one mistake is not too bad, but if they keep happening, its clear that who ever translated it is not very professional.
No wonder AI is taking their jobs. Sadly.
It’s either AI conquering their position or an inexperienced human translator who probably hasn’t seen the film they’re translating, one of the two. Consistency is also key, since characters may use that term multiple times in the movie at different intervals, so maintaining the same correct translation is vital to avoid confusion.
However, what happens is that there are different word choices for the same term. For example, in Japanese there’s two words that mean “weapon” in English but have different connotations:
- 兵器 (ordnance, as in military hardware) - think of tanks, missiles, nukes
- 武器 (arms, think of sidearms or rifles) - basically a weapon you can use
The issue is that when watching a war film with subs, they get used interchangeably when that’s not correct, despite both words having the same definition: what matters is context. There was a scene in one war epic where the soldier said to the enemy “drop your weapons!” (武器を捨てろ) but the subs used the wrong variant 兵器 when the enemy is only armed with a normal rifle.
I mean, are there words in Finnish despite having the same meaning or translation in English: they are used differently based on a associated context and can subtitles still get it wrong?
This is the difference between translating and interpreting.
Tom Scott has a video that touches on this, although the video focused on subtitles not matching dubbing, it’s the same reasons.
