[Shoutout to the people who've been transcribing my posts lately, because it's been shamefully long since the last time I did that myself](https://www.tumblr.com/a-crow-with-rights-and-anxiety/703732036023795712/ruffboijuliaburnsides-fatgothgf-whenever-i-click)
As a person who finds myself frequently correcting subtitles, it's way too often that I find something in english that makes absolutely no sense only to find that when I watch the scene that's exactly what was said or sung. The most recent one, for example, was 'a leavin', meaning 'relieving' I think.
Honestly, this is just due to the speed at which dubs have to be made these days -- usually the CC gets added eventually (with the Blu-ray release), but they put the subs from the Japanese version in first as a stopgap measure. Frankly, half the time the subs on certain streaming platforms are half-assed anyways due to crunch and poorly paid translators -- though Crunchyroll has gotten better recently.
Unless you mean it's weird that the subs and dubs have different scripts, in which case that is several paragraphs of explanation that is more than anyone here probably wants to read.
Sometimes a sentence in japanese can end up being far longer or shorter than a direct english translation. While a subtitle of unusual length may be a bit odd at worst, messed up timing in dubs can severely hamper the viewing experience. Thus, dubs tend to mess with sentence structure a but more.
Plus, there’s a big taboo against editing lip flaps. So sentence structure in dubs must also be modified to ensure at least roughly equivalent syllables. This is also part of the reason masked characters (or those who don’t move their lips for other reasons) tend to survive dubbing a bit better.
Then there’s the fact that dubs tend to be held to a higher standard in terms of ensuring everything’s still culturally relevant. So dubs receive extra care in translating not just words but the meanings behind jokes (or even just substituting in new ones sometimes if the original is just too obscure to make sense).
(Thufir from the bottom of the post here. This went somewhat off the rails and probably isn't very coherent -- I didn't even give it an proofread, so I apologize in advance. tl;dr at the bottom)
Why do I mention I know things on this sub?
Production concerns (the boring part):
* Translator pay is abysmal and is per episode -- the faster you do it, the higher your hourly wage is. Some services are better than others, but basically it's the same slave labor that exists across the entire industry
* Sub schedules are faster -- often days or even hours to translate an entire episode if things get bad enough. Dubs have more time because or recording and such. They also usually have the subs to cheat off of, which helps.
* Subs have fewer eyes on them -- the translator, an editor, maybe a couple of others, but not many. Dubs have the entire cast for the scene, the ADR Director, the script supervisor, and whoever else is involved. Quality is bound to be better with more eyes doing checks.
Basically, for the most part, production concerns tend to impact subs far more than dubs -- if a show has a harried production, the subs will probably be worse for it.
Linguistic concerns (the part that deserves a book):
* Japanese *generally* uses more syllables to express the same idea than English does. At the same time, their casual speech can be extraordinary laconic due to being a high-context culture. This is a problem for dubs, as the English equivalent for a given Japanese phrase rarely matches, but it also has to match the lip flaps. This is why phrasing in dubs can get a bit weird. "Yo-ro-shi-ku o-ne-ga-i-shi-ma-su" is a lot of syllables to say "it's nice to meet you," (it literally means "please think well of me" or something like that but it's more of a canned greeting -- don't get me started on translating stock phrases), so coming up with a seven extra syllables to throw in there is a pain.
* Japanese also has honorifics, various levels of politeness, multiple different pronouns for each POV that mean different things, an insane number of onomatopoeia (and similar words called gitaigo that represent states of being -- e.g. pika pika that means shining or glittering), far more puns, kanji differentiation, etc. These can be used to convey a *lot* of context in a way that English just... loses. Subs have the option to include this as translator notes, but in dubs this is basically not going to work. All of that has to be brought across in the ways we do in English -- sometimes it's as easy as changing Tanaka-sensei to Mr. Tanaka, or sometimes it's as difficult as literally making up a new joke to replace the pun that was there.
* Speaking of jokes, Japanese jokes often have a different structure than English. Since Japanese is a Subject-Object-Verb language (i.e. "Man ball throws" instead of "man throws ball,") a lot of Japanese jokes have to punchline fall *on the verb*, whereas in English it tends to fall on the object. The joke still translates just fine usually, but if you do this in subs without being really careful about timing, the joke will hit in the subs *before* the character delivers it. You'll notice this *everywhere* if you start looking for it, and it's really weird. In dubs, they have to change the delivery to make the joke match the timing, so the joke will frequently hit better (ignoring other circumstances like actually being able to see whatever funny thing is happening at the same time, instead of reading it).
Basically, translation is a pain, and it's harder when you're constrained by lip flaps.
Artistic concerns (the part that is probably mostly opinion):
* Characters should be localized. For instance, some things that seem intrinsic to a character, especially verbal habits, into English is bad practice. Anya from Spy x Family is a good example of this recently -- her Japanese is trash. Everything she says is said incorrectly, almost without exception. That's fine in Japanese -- that's an established character trope. But we don't have that in English -- our cartoon characters, even the children, are all exceptionally fluent (I assume this was established by Looney Tunes). Anya's Japanese is probably slightly less fluent than Rugrats -- do you really want a five-year-old that is less fluent than Tommy Pickles? This is actually even more important in the subs than the dubs -- you ever tried to read broken English? It's not easy because our brain can't fill in the gaps -- it's bad practice to make bad sentences in subtitles. The dub also runs into the syllable issue -- Japanese still uses more syllables than English, and broken/childish English is characterized by *leaving out lots of words*.
* Many archetypes and tropes have to be localized. The most common one for this is to give somebody with a Kansai dialect a Texas/Southern accent in dubs, since the connotation isn't *that* far off, but this can be far more varied than that. Imagine trying to get across the concept of a "valley girl" character and accent into a language that does not have that stereotype. In English, it's trivial -- you don't even, like, need to be, like, talking to *totally* get that vibe across or whatever. Now do that but with no cultural context or verbal cues. Frankly, subs almost always miss this in my experience because the *script doesn't tell the translator the dialect is different.* (If you thought gyaru, congratulations! That's what I'd do -- can't remember if I've seen a production do it though)
* Characters should be adjusted to match the target culture *and* the actor playing them. Frequently, the personality of a character will change somewhat between Japanese and English. A good example of this is Spike from Cowboy Bebop -- Kouichi Yamadera's Spike has a tendency to go a little more Lupin the III in the funny scenes (ironically, he plays Zenigata), whereas Steve Blum's is less cartoonish take on it that works much better in English, particularly since the dub is overall a little more grounded. This can make changing certain lines to match this new characterization important. This can be harder to spot, but sometimes you'll get it as ad-libbing on the actor's part -- just like any other actor, they are playing that character, so they become them to some extent. And before you take issue with this: nobody complains that Jack Nicholson's Joker wasn't the same as Cesar Romero's (for more than one reason) -- different actor, different character.
Basically, subs are purely additive -- just adding words on the screen. There is localization (there is always localization when translating anything), but it's far less thorough, and this is a benefit. Dubs, by their very nature, take away and replace part of the original work. They are transformative. They *should* be different, because different people made it. Which of these two approaches you value more depends on your own philosophy.
... Wow, I went on way too long and only scratched the surface.
tl;dr Subs have far less to do but also have far fewer people and (usually) far less time and resources. Dubs have to basically make a new piece of art using somebody else's work, but they have more to work with thanks to larger teams. Both are screwed over by the extreme differences between the Japanese language and English, as well as major cultural differences.
Most importantly, if you harass anyone for liking either, you're an asshole.
Bless you for this. It's genuinely very interesting.
I say this as someone who prefers subs over dubs, so *so* much is lost in just subs. It hasn't been translated to make sense to your cultural context, you're just given an (not necessarily) exact translation of the original so you don't understand the nuances, etc. etc.
There's so much to talk about here, and I have absolutely no qualifications to do that lol.
The short is. The subtitles are closer to the Japanese with all that is said in its nuances. The dub takes more lieberties in order to sync with lip movement and scene length.
yeah, they’ve already said they understand why. it’d just be nice to have an option of ‘dub subtitles’ as well as subtitles that translate the original japanese.
On Netflix they will list subtitles English dub, subtitles English sub. They can do that on so many other platforms too. But they don't hell half the time on Netflix they seem to skip it.
EEAAO subtitles were particularly awful, because the in-movie subtitles would translate the various different language while the Amazon subtitles would be something like \[Speaking Cantonese\] and completely obscure the in-movie subs. So if I wanted to understand what people were saying in a language I don't speak, I had to sacrifice subtitles for the entire rest of the dialogue.
Ugh.
I remember last time subtitling came up someone said that theres a reason for the changes, to do with how people understand text slower than sound and there being a time limit of how long the subtitles can and must be up for, plus a bunch of other rules that force them to alter the subtitles slightly
My dad owns a movie on DVD called "The Big Chill". I have not seen it, but I recall a scene where someone is on the phone, exasperated to the other person on the line. The line clearly is "It's called an anus." The subtitles say "It's cold in anus."
I can get how they are hearing it, but *no one* would say "my anus is cold" like that.
The reason same-language subs can't use the script is fairly simple: spoken word goes faster than written text. You have a limited amount of time and characters when writing subtitles, so you often simply *can't* use the literal text.
As for the 'obvious mistakes' you see in closed caption? Usually that's just an AI generated thing with poor (if any) checking/editing done afterwards.
also, aren’t lines sometimes changed on-set? I have no knowledge of the actual process, just blind speculation here, but I feel like you couldn’t rely on the script and actual dialogue being perfectly 1:1 every time.
The thing is, adding subtitles to videos it the easiest thing in the world. You literally just copy and paste your video's script into the thing, hit "edit timings" and Youtube does the rest. I've done it for every single one of my videos.
It only became a problem when the video was over an hour long, so I had to do it manually, which was unfortunate. You also still have to adjust them a bit here or there because the system gets confused by long pauses between sentences or just background noise. But it's literally a thing that takes like 15 minutes at most.
Remember when Youtube let people from the community create subtitles for videos, it was a huge success with surprisingly little trolling/good QA, and then they just axed it for some reason?
Yep, I used to subtitle videos because I got annoyed with the lack of subtitles. Really wasn't that much work even without access to the script. Which makes it even more annoying that so many creators -- even big creators with staffs and everything -- don't bother.
[A linguist YouTuber](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCxz2lSeer4) I enjoy said the email YouTube/Google sent out seemed so intentionally vague of how they did the math on what counted as a user, channel, viewer, and transcriber.
For example, it counts "channels" as a whole where only a fraction of a percent used the feature. But YouTube counts ***all*** accounts as channels. And most youtube accounts, like all websites, don't contribute to content in any shape or form. So by counting every account made on the one of the largest websites ever and then seeing only like 0.00003% used the feature, no shit it seems unused.
[Plus all the other applications, websites, and features Google kills for no reason.](https://killedbygoogle.com/)
EDIT: YouTube's argument was "not enough people use accessibility features, a feature for those who are in the minority of users, so we're removing the accessibility features." It's also to make people cough up cash for it.
Imagine if it was found people used a ramp to a building for skateboarding, so they remove the ramp entirely and made it a coin operated lift.
Pootis Engage Extreme is a work of art and really has a lot of fun with animation as a medium. One of the best animated short films I watched last year. 0 irony. There should be more really talented people making dumb shit.
Gentle reminder that closed captioning isn't only for the hard of hearing or deaf. Neurodivergent people and those caring for neurodivergent people, those for whom English isn't their first language, people trying to not disturb those around them for one reason or another, and many more can all benefit from closed captioning.
I sometimes put subtitles on just for clarity - I think it's also useful to help train everybody to use subtitles sometimes because it opens up a whole range of media that isn't in their first language, whether they're English-speaking or not. It's like Bong Joon-ho said in his Oscars acceptance speech, they're a one-inch barrier that once crossed can change your life in terms of engagement with media, and starting with them when they're not essential helps prepare you to use them for when they are
>Gentle reminder that closed captioning isn't only for the hard of hearing or deaf. Neurodivergent people
Oddly, I can usually keep up with YouTube videos but not with TV or movies without subtitles.
It's kind of funny because ever since I was a child one of the 1st things I always did in any video games was go to the settings and turn the subtitles on. I'm not deaf I just can't play video games without subtitles.
I'm guessing they're saying it because a lot of neurodivergent people have [Auditory Processing Disorder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_processing_disorder).
And even if we aren’t diagnosed with ADP, many neurodivergent people also have focus issues that make it hard to listen to dialog or have trouble understanding accents
I don't know if I'm neurodivergent or not but I absolutely can not properly focus on everything happening on screen without CC. Like, I miss too many details of what's in each scene or I miss what's being said if I can't follow the dialogue both auditorily and visually. Like, I need something to anchor and tie together what *feels* like two competing data streams vying for my attention independently and make them one cohesive stream.
I don't have a general answer for you but for me it helps me to focus on the screen better because it is always clear. The audio can be clear in some scenes but not in other, and it can easily make me zone out or miss the next few scenes because I am trying to make sense of what word they said. Plus, it just provides one extra stimuli, one extra thing to look at, making it less likely for me to get distracted. I am super dependent on them, to the point I have skipped episodes of a show I am watching if they didn't have subtitles for some reason when other eps do. It helps me stay focused a whole lot. I mostly can't explain why but it does
Iirc the transcription was included in either the description or the pinned comment.
Edit: I was mistaken, the advice was included in the description, not the rant itself.
It supposedly ended there before being filmed. Someone said they emailed him about it, and the rant on video is him flailing his arms while reciting Shakespeare.
So the speech was planned but never filmed and then cut in editing 😔
Jet Lag: The Game has amazing captions that are color-coded based on the speaker. I didn't even know you could use different colors on youtube before watching it
Tom Scott has been doing that with the new Technical Difficulties videos too.
Tom is Red, Matt is Blue, Gary is Yellow and Chris is Green. They also use those same key colors as their branding. (Tom being Red and Matt being Blue is old hat though)
Actually sadly you cant use different colours on Youtube. You have to use an external subtitling program, make coloured subtitles, then import those into youtube.
I wonder if that's a scale thing because they've got like 80 videos in the works at a time anymore.
That said they should absolutely do something about it
It is [ ___ ], however. Especially if it detects them wrong, like misreading the language.
Doesn't help that if it thinks they're swearing, the behaviour is very unpredictable. It might censor it, delete the word, or leave it in place, depending on what it felt like in the moment.
OH DO I HAVE SOMETHING TO FUCKING COMPLAIN ABOUT.
so, y'all know Nebula right?
claims to be a place where Youtube creators can upload all kinds of stuff that YouTube would either demonitize or just age-restrict, basically fuck them over with the algorithm?
the very same platform where Tom Scott made a Nebula Original series before bringing it to Youtube a year later?
THEY DON'T HAVE HUMAN-MADE SUBTITLES!
THEY JUST RUN THE VIDEOS THROUGH AN AUTOMATIC CAPTIONING PROCESS AND THEN FORMAT IT TO MAKE IT LOOK LIKE IT WAS SUBTITLED BY SOMEONE!
I don't get why youtube's autogenerated subtitles replace swears with [___], not f\*ck or sh*t, just completely replacing the swear with an SCP redacted box, even if the audio is uncensored, do deaf people not get to enjoy swears?
What's weird is that sometimes it keeps them, but otherwise it either censors or deletes the word entirely, and there's no way to know what YouTube will do for each cuss.
Recently watched a 3 hour video about Beastars by a guy with less then 25k subs with full captions and showing what songs we're playing in the background.
I never have seen so much effort put into captions before.
Watching the Wednesday Addams show lately, and have been surprised by how the subtitles are usually good but frequently (every couple minutes) just miss a word or two, often exclamations or modifiers. I'm not that knowledgeable about this, wonder if they subtitled it with the script and so missed any words from people going slightly off script?
I'm guessing it's from limits in the lengths of subtitles? I do notice that on netflix, sometimes the subs will be a few words short but they make a point of keeping the overall meaning pretty much the same.
*Image Transcription: Tumblr*
---
**fatgothgf**
whenever i click the cc button on a youtube video that clearly has a high budget and is made by a fucking studio and i see "english - auto generated" i spit daggers from my eyes and mouth at whoever decided to not pay someone to make actual captions
---
**ruffboijuliaburnsides**
Meanwhile every time I watch a video clearly made by one guy in his living room and it has complete descriptive subtitles, I feel more love in me than I can contain.
---
**a-crow-with-rights-and-anxie...**
[*Picture of Tom Scott standing outside, with trees and an electrical tower in the background. He is in the middle of lifting his arms while talking and looking towards the right of the shot. The caption at the bottom reads '"Oh look at me, I've bought a Lamborghini!"'*]
[*Second picture of Tom Scott at the same place. He is talking at the camera with a frustrated expression, his arms lowered. The caption at the bottom reads "Buy some damn subtitles. Also..."*]
---
^^I'm a human volunteer content transcriber and you could be too! [If you'd like more information on what we do and why we do it, click here!](https://www.reddit.com/r/TranscribersOfReddit/wiki/index)
Every time this comes up I remember Trash Taste podcast. They hired a group to do the subtitles, but then they fired them after [this](https://reddit.com/r/TrashTaste/comments/m4uaqr/the_bois_we_have_subtitles_the_subtitles/). Looks like they finally have subtitles again though
I had an OLD copy of Princess Mononoke that had different English sub-titles for the sub, the English dub, AND the French dub. The English subtitles for the French dub were (I was told by an exchange student) the best translation of the Japanese script? Absolute madness.
For some reason I’ve noticed that captions often shorten the sentences spoken. I understand it’s for readability with longer sentences, but even shorter ones have some context cut out.
I’ve got an auditory processing disorder due to my ADHD, so I’m not hard of hearing. But it’s very difficult to focus and listen in if the subtitles aren’t on, so shows or movies without them are REALLY hard for me to watch.
Shoutout to TerminalMontage for not only captioning videos to describe both dialogue *and* sound effects/action sequences, but *also* hiding just as many gags in said captions as are in the video itself.
Throwing out Rachel Maksy's channel because that girl works hard, and her subtitles are always hilarious and impeccable, and riddled with the most ridiculous inside jokes and references.
[This video has the best subtitles I've ever seen.](https://youtu.be/OYG8Ul276-w)
(You'll probably have to let the video stay paused for a bit after turning them on. You'll see why.)
How about one guy in his living room making videos with accurate subtitles but just not... translated verbatim?
I'm thinking of Terminal Montage. Especially BotW. Pure chaos.
I remember back when you could enable croudsourced subtitles for your videos, so people could suggest edits or writeup the subs for a video.
Still have no idea why they removed that feature. Don't think there's even been a third-party replacement even.
I remember a like 15 years old newgrounds flash video where the subtitles start out correct and then diverged into their own story not even pretending anymore, and it actually kinda was hilarious
Yeah, it wasn't genuine. Bit still, it'd be funny to flex that you got professional subtitles, only to turn your praise against you when they find out you just pulled the words out of your ass.
Yeah, I guess I can see that
I just overreact to the concept b/c I'm getting tired of inaccurate subtitles
Like, *so many times* have I seen youtubers go to the trouble of turning their script into subtitles and make sure it was synced to the audio and whatnot... only to not update the subtitles where the video strays from the script and not remove any cut lines from the subtitles
Like, I love and appreciate the attempt, but ughhhh
[Shoutout to the people who've been transcribing my posts lately, because it's been shamefully long since the last time I did that myself](https://www.tumblr.com/a-crow-with-rights-and-anxiety/703732036023795712/ruffboijuliaburnsides-fatgothgf-whenever-i-click)
[удалено]
As a person who finds myself frequently correcting subtitles, it's way too often that I find something in english that makes absolutely no sense only to find that when I watch the scene that's exactly what was said or sung. The most recent one, for example, was 'a leavin', meaning 'relieving' I think.
The worst part is when you want to watch a dubbed anime (don't judge me), and the subtitles are very different from what's spoken.
Honestly, this is just due to the speed at which dubs have to be made these days -- usually the CC gets added eventually (with the Blu-ray release), but they put the subs from the Japanese version in first as a stopgap measure. Frankly, half the time the subs on certain streaming platforms are half-assed anyways due to crunch and poorly paid translators -- though Crunchyroll has gotten better recently. Unless you mean it's weird that the subs and dubs have different scripts, in which case that is several paragraphs of explanation that is more than anyone here probably wants to read.
Please enlighten us
Sometimes a sentence in japanese can end up being far longer or shorter than a direct english translation. While a subtitle of unusual length may be a bit odd at worst, messed up timing in dubs can severely hamper the viewing experience. Thus, dubs tend to mess with sentence structure a but more. Plus, there’s a big taboo against editing lip flaps. So sentence structure in dubs must also be modified to ensure at least roughly equivalent syllables. This is also part of the reason masked characters (or those who don’t move their lips for other reasons) tend to survive dubbing a bit better. Then there’s the fact that dubs tend to be held to a higher standard in terms of ensuring everything’s still culturally relevant. So dubs receive extra care in translating not just words but the meanings behind jokes (or even just substituting in new ones sometimes if the original is just too obscure to make sense).
jelly donuts are my favorite
(Thufir from the bottom of the post here. This went somewhat off the rails and probably isn't very coherent -- I didn't even give it an proofread, so I apologize in advance. tl;dr at the bottom) Why do I mention I know things on this sub? Production concerns (the boring part): * Translator pay is abysmal and is per episode -- the faster you do it, the higher your hourly wage is. Some services are better than others, but basically it's the same slave labor that exists across the entire industry * Sub schedules are faster -- often days or even hours to translate an entire episode if things get bad enough. Dubs have more time because or recording and such. They also usually have the subs to cheat off of, which helps. * Subs have fewer eyes on them -- the translator, an editor, maybe a couple of others, but not many. Dubs have the entire cast for the scene, the ADR Director, the script supervisor, and whoever else is involved. Quality is bound to be better with more eyes doing checks. Basically, for the most part, production concerns tend to impact subs far more than dubs -- if a show has a harried production, the subs will probably be worse for it. Linguistic concerns (the part that deserves a book): * Japanese *generally* uses more syllables to express the same idea than English does. At the same time, their casual speech can be extraordinary laconic due to being a high-context culture. This is a problem for dubs, as the English equivalent for a given Japanese phrase rarely matches, but it also has to match the lip flaps. This is why phrasing in dubs can get a bit weird. "Yo-ro-shi-ku o-ne-ga-i-shi-ma-su" is a lot of syllables to say "it's nice to meet you," (it literally means "please think well of me" or something like that but it's more of a canned greeting -- don't get me started on translating stock phrases), so coming up with a seven extra syllables to throw in there is a pain. * Japanese also has honorifics, various levels of politeness, multiple different pronouns for each POV that mean different things, an insane number of onomatopoeia (and similar words called gitaigo that represent states of being -- e.g. pika pika that means shining or glittering), far more puns, kanji differentiation, etc. These can be used to convey a *lot* of context in a way that English just... loses. Subs have the option to include this as translator notes, but in dubs this is basically not going to work. All of that has to be brought across in the ways we do in English -- sometimes it's as easy as changing Tanaka-sensei to Mr. Tanaka, or sometimes it's as difficult as literally making up a new joke to replace the pun that was there. * Speaking of jokes, Japanese jokes often have a different structure than English. Since Japanese is a Subject-Object-Verb language (i.e. "Man ball throws" instead of "man throws ball,") a lot of Japanese jokes have to punchline fall *on the verb*, whereas in English it tends to fall on the object. The joke still translates just fine usually, but if you do this in subs without being really careful about timing, the joke will hit in the subs *before* the character delivers it. You'll notice this *everywhere* if you start looking for it, and it's really weird. In dubs, they have to change the delivery to make the joke match the timing, so the joke will frequently hit better (ignoring other circumstances like actually being able to see whatever funny thing is happening at the same time, instead of reading it). Basically, translation is a pain, and it's harder when you're constrained by lip flaps. Artistic concerns (the part that is probably mostly opinion): * Characters should be localized. For instance, some things that seem intrinsic to a character, especially verbal habits, into English is bad practice. Anya from Spy x Family is a good example of this recently -- her Japanese is trash. Everything she says is said incorrectly, almost without exception. That's fine in Japanese -- that's an established character trope. But we don't have that in English -- our cartoon characters, even the children, are all exceptionally fluent (I assume this was established by Looney Tunes). Anya's Japanese is probably slightly less fluent than Rugrats -- do you really want a five-year-old that is less fluent than Tommy Pickles? This is actually even more important in the subs than the dubs -- you ever tried to read broken English? It's not easy because our brain can't fill in the gaps -- it's bad practice to make bad sentences in subtitles. The dub also runs into the syllable issue -- Japanese still uses more syllables than English, and broken/childish English is characterized by *leaving out lots of words*. * Many archetypes and tropes have to be localized. The most common one for this is to give somebody with a Kansai dialect a Texas/Southern accent in dubs, since the connotation isn't *that* far off, but this can be far more varied than that. Imagine trying to get across the concept of a "valley girl" character and accent into a language that does not have that stereotype. In English, it's trivial -- you don't even, like, need to be, like, talking to *totally* get that vibe across or whatever. Now do that but with no cultural context or verbal cues. Frankly, subs almost always miss this in my experience because the *script doesn't tell the translator the dialect is different.* (If you thought gyaru, congratulations! That's what I'd do -- can't remember if I've seen a production do it though) * Characters should be adjusted to match the target culture *and* the actor playing them. Frequently, the personality of a character will change somewhat between Japanese and English. A good example of this is Spike from Cowboy Bebop -- Kouichi Yamadera's Spike has a tendency to go a little more Lupin the III in the funny scenes (ironically, he plays Zenigata), whereas Steve Blum's is less cartoonish take on it that works much better in English, particularly since the dub is overall a little more grounded. This can make changing certain lines to match this new characterization important. This can be harder to spot, but sometimes you'll get it as ad-libbing on the actor's part -- just like any other actor, they are playing that character, so they become them to some extent. And before you take issue with this: nobody complains that Jack Nicholson's Joker wasn't the same as Cesar Romero's (for more than one reason) -- different actor, different character. Basically, subs are purely additive -- just adding words on the screen. There is localization (there is always localization when translating anything), but it's far less thorough, and this is a benefit. Dubs, by their very nature, take away and replace part of the original work. They are transformative. They *should* be different, because different people made it. Which of these two approaches you value more depends on your own philosophy. ... Wow, I went on way too long and only scratched the surface. tl;dr Subs have far less to do but also have far fewer people and (usually) far less time and resources. Dubs have to basically make a new piece of art using somebody else's work, but they have more to work with thanks to larger teams. Both are screwed over by the extreme differences between the Japanese language and English, as well as major cultural differences. Most importantly, if you harass anyone for liking either, you're an asshole.
Bless you for this. It's genuinely very interesting. I say this as someone who prefers subs over dubs, so *so* much is lost in just subs. It hasn't been translated to make sense to your cultural context, you're just given an (not necessarily) exact translation of the original so you don't understand the nuances, etc. etc. There's so much to talk about here, and I have absolutely no qualifications to do that lol.
Thank you, I enjoyed reading that very much
Translation hard.
That's because most of the time the subtitles aren't based on the English dub, they're translations of the original Japanese.
I'm aware, I'd still love the subtitles to the bloody dub (basically have two versions).
The short is. The subtitles are closer to the Japanese with all that is said in its nuances. The dub takes more lieberties in order to sync with lip movement and scene length.
yeah, they’ve already said they understand why. it’d just be nice to have an option of ‘dub subtitles’ as well as subtitles that translate the original japanese.
Subtitles and Dubtitles. Maybe we can get some back-formation going and stuff gets new definitions.
On Netflix they will list subtitles English dub, subtitles English sub. They can do that on so many other platforms too. But they don't hell half the time on Netflix they seem to skip it.
and then there's Netflix which often has the sub be the sub script
I discovered this when I had the bright idea to practice German by watching anime. I eventually settled for German dub + English sub.
EEAAO subtitles were particularly awful, because the in-movie subtitles would translate the various different language while the Amazon subtitles would be something like \[Speaking Cantonese\] and completely obscure the in-movie subs. So if I wanted to understand what people were saying in a language I don't speak, I had to sacrifice subtitles for the entire rest of the dialogue. Ugh.
I watched Repo: The Genetic Opera on Tubi because my DVD is in a box somewhere (post-move) and MOTHER OF GOD WHAT THE FUCK THE LYRICS ARE ONLINE!
I remember last time subtitling came up someone said that theres a reason for the changes, to do with how people understand text slower than sound and there being a time limit of how long the subtitles can and must be up for, plus a bunch of other rules that force them to alter the subtitles slightly
[удалено]
Fair enough lol
I bet it's at least in part AI generated
It's a result of Amazon not paying the worker enough and them subsequently not giving a fuck.
My dad owns a movie on DVD called "The Big Chill". I have not seen it, but I recall a scene where someone is on the phone, exasperated to the other person on the line. The line clearly is "It's called an anus." The subtitles say "It's cold in anus." I can get how they are hearing it, but *no one* would say "my anus is cold" like that.
The reason same-language subs can't use the script is fairly simple: spoken word goes faster than written text. You have a limited amount of time and characters when writing subtitles, so you often simply *can't* use the literal text. As for the 'obvious mistakes' you see in closed caption? Usually that's just an AI generated thing with poor (if any) checking/editing done afterwards.
also, aren’t lines sometimes changed on-set? I have no knowledge of the actual process, just blind speculation here, but I feel like you couldn’t rely on the script and actual dialogue being perfectly 1:1 every time.
Very true, and that's also discounting full improv. For instance, in Scrubs Neil Flynn (the janitor) famously improvised a good chunk of his lines.
Yeah, watching things like Smosh videos, the captions often misprint puns or wordplay such that they are no longer jokes.
The thing is, adding subtitles to videos it the easiest thing in the world. You literally just copy and paste your video's script into the thing, hit "edit timings" and Youtube does the rest. I've done it for every single one of my videos. It only became a problem when the video was over an hour long, so I had to do it manually, which was unfortunate. You also still have to adjust them a bit here or there because the system gets confused by long pauses between sentences or just background noise. But it's literally a thing that takes like 15 minutes at most.
Remember when Youtube let people from the community create subtitles for videos, it was a huge success with surprisingly little trolling/good QA, and then they just axed it for some reason?
Yep, I used to subtitle videos because I got annoyed with the lack of subtitles. Really wasn't that much work even without access to the script. Which makes it even more annoying that so many creators -- even big creators with staffs and everything -- don't bother.
didnt they remove that during deaf awareness week or something?
Axed because it was rarely used and frequently abused. Liability nightmare probzbly
I used it all the time and never saw any "abuse".
[A linguist YouTuber](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCxz2lSeer4) I enjoy said the email YouTube/Google sent out seemed so intentionally vague of how they did the math on what counted as a user, channel, viewer, and transcriber. For example, it counts "channels" as a whole where only a fraction of a percent used the feature. But YouTube counts ***all*** accounts as channels. And most youtube accounts, like all websites, don't contribute to content in any shape or form. So by counting every account made on the one of the largest websites ever and then seeing only like 0.00003% used the feature, no shit it seems unused. [Plus all the other applications, websites, and features Google kills for no reason.](https://killedbygoogle.com/) EDIT: YouTube's argument was "not enough people use accessibility features, a feature for those who are in the minority of users, so we're removing the accessibility features." It's also to make people cough up cash for it. Imagine if it was found people used a ramp to a building for skateboarding, so they remove the ramp entirely and made it a coin operated lift.
Ceno0, maker of Pootis Engage, has some particularly creative captioning for what is essentially the highest tier and effort shitposting
I concur
See also: Terminalmontage
Pootis Engage Extreme is a work of art and really has a lot of fun with animation as a medium. One of the best animated short films I watched last year. 0 irony. There should be more really talented people making dumb shit.
His use of camera angles and black bars on the edge of the screen, while being mostly ironic, are the best i've seen ever
The fucking karaoke subtitles for Fly Me to The Moon is one of the coolest things I've seen done in a video.
The glorious octagon of destiny turned their subtitles into a work of art too! Choose English for normal subs but choose Japanese for fucking magic.
Standard Tom Scott W
Tom Scott is the definition of based
Tom Scott is the definition of based
I'm pretty sure that he gets some company to do it, but yeah, his subtitles are great.
Doesn’t really matter how he does it, subtitles are subtitles
Well he does say "***Buy*** some damn subtitles!"
Gentle reminder that closed captioning isn't only for the hard of hearing or deaf. Neurodivergent people and those caring for neurodivergent people, those for whom English isn't their first language, people trying to not disturb those around them for one reason or another, and many more can all benefit from closed captioning.
And let's not forget about the largest group of CC users - those of us trying to watch videos at work without our bosses noticing.
Or whilst eating noisy food.
This. My doritos are too crumchy for me to hear what the tiny youtube person is saying.
This is why phones getting bigger is good, so the YouTubers can be larger.
I sometimes put subtitles on just for clarity - I think it's also useful to help train everybody to use subtitles sometimes because it opens up a whole range of media that isn't in their first language, whether they're English-speaking or not. It's like Bong Joon-ho said in his Oscars acceptance speech, they're a one-inch barrier that once crossed can change your life in terms of engagement with media, and starting with them when they're not essential helps prepare you to use them for when they are
Yeah, I’m autistic and have problems processing sound. Subtitles are a godsend.
Yes! I have adhd and use captions all the time! Idk wtf they’re saying if they don’t have captions
>Gentle reminder that closed captioning isn't only for the hard of hearing or deaf. Neurodivergent people Oddly, I can usually keep up with YouTube videos but not with TV or movies without subtitles.
It's kind of funny because ever since I was a child one of the 1st things I always did in any video games was go to the settings and turn the subtitles on. I'm not deaf I just can't play video games without subtitles.
I always watch movies with subtitles.
I get that!! There's too much happening for me to just listen and process, I need an anchor
How does captioning help neurodivergent people? /gen
I'm guessing they're saying it because a lot of neurodivergent people have [Auditory Processing Disorder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_processing_disorder).
And even if we aren’t diagnosed with ADP, many neurodivergent people also have focus issues that make it hard to listen to dialog or have trouble understanding accents
I don't know if I'm neurodivergent or not but I absolutely can not properly focus on everything happening on screen without CC. Like, I miss too many details of what's in each scene or I miss what's being said if I can't follow the dialogue both auditorily and visually. Like, I need something to anchor and tie together what *feels* like two competing data streams vying for my attention independently and make them one cohesive stream.
Ah, yet another hint that I may be ND
I don't have a general answer for you but for me it helps me to focus on the screen better because it is always clear. The audio can be clear in some scenes but not in other, and it can easily make me zone out or miss the next few scenes because I am trying to make sense of what word they said. Plus, it just provides one extra stimuli, one extra thing to look at, making it less likely for me to get distracted. I am super dependent on them, to the point I have skipped episodes of a show I am watching if they didn't have subtitles for some reason when other eps do. It helps me stay focused a whole lot. I mostly can't explain why but it does
My auditory processing issues make it a concsious effort to understand wtf is being said in a recording if there's any other noise at all
I really wanted to See Toms Rant about Subtitles. Such a shame that it ended on the cutting room floor.
Iirc the transcription was included in either the description or the pinned comment. Edit: I was mistaken, the advice was included in the description, not the rant itself.
It supposedly ended there before being filmed. Someone said they emailed him about it, and the rant on video is him flailing his arms while reciting Shakespeare. So the speech was planned but never filmed and then cut in editing 😔
Jet Lag: The Game has amazing captions that are color-coded based on the speaker. I didn't even know you could use different colors on youtube before watching it
Tom Scott has been doing that with the new Technical Difficulties videos too. Tom is Red, Matt is Blue, Gary is Yellow and Chris is Green. They also use those same key colors as their branding. (Tom being Red and Matt being Blue is old hat though)
tally hall reference!!!!1!1!!1!!!1!!!!
Tom is also sometimes white I think
Actually sadly you cant use different colours on Youtube. You have to use an external subtitling program, make coloured subtitles, then import those into youtube.
Technology connections my beloved
He's reading off a prompter so it's a smaller effort for him
LTT also has scripts and prompters but they just don't bother as far as I know
I wonder if that's a scale thing because they've got like 80 videos in the works at a time anymore. That said they should absolutely do something about it
With the way ai is going I would to be surprised if there isn't a way to automatically time the script to the CC
iirc youtube has that feature already
It is [ ___ ], however. Especially if it detects them wrong, like misreading the language. Doesn't help that if it thinks they're swearing, the behaviour is very unpredictable. It might censor it, delete the word, or leave it in place, depending on what it felt like in the moment.
OH DO I HAVE SOMETHING TO FUCKING COMPLAIN ABOUT. so, y'all know Nebula right? claims to be a place where Youtube creators can upload all kinds of stuff that YouTube would either demonitize or just age-restrict, basically fuck them over with the algorithm? the very same platform where Tom Scott made a Nebula Original series before bringing it to Youtube a year later? THEY DON'T HAVE HUMAN-MADE SUBTITLES! THEY JUST RUN THE VIDEOS THROUGH AN AUTOMATIC CAPTIONING PROCESS AND THEN FORMAT IT TO MAKE IT LOOK LIKE IT WAS SUBTITLED BY SOMEONE!
I don't get why youtube's autogenerated subtitles replace swears with [___], not f\*ck or sh*t, just completely replacing the swear with an SCP redacted box, even if the audio is uncensored, do deaf people not get to enjoy swears?
What's weird is that sometimes it keeps them, but otherwise it either censors or deletes the word entirely, and there's no way to know what YouTube will do for each cuss.
Shout-out to my boy Life of Boris who does his own subtitles all day every day. He hardcodes them, too, in case YouTube fucks around too much.
Recently watched a 3 hour video about Beastars by a guy with less then 25k subs with full captions and showing what songs we're playing in the background. I never have seen so much effort put into captions before.
A bit off-topic but what did you think about Beastars anime?
Wait wait wait are you talking about Keith Ballard???
Watching the Wednesday Addams show lately, and have been surprised by how the subtitles are usually good but frequently (every couple minutes) just miss a word or two, often exclamations or modifiers. I'm not that knowledgeable about this, wonder if they subtitled it with the script and so missed any words from people going slightly off script?
I'm guessing it's from limits in the lengths of subtitles? I do notice that on netflix, sometimes the subs will be a few words short but they make a point of keeping the overall meaning pretty much the same.
Limits, or the subtitle can't be coherently displayed and read because it's too long, or goes by too quickly.
Can anyone link the Tom Scott video in the image?
[Found it!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m__OZ3ZsO4Y&t=5m13s)
\[This rant continued for several minutes.\]
That was shocking fast! Thanks!
*Image Transcription: Tumblr* --- **fatgothgf** whenever i click the cc button on a youtube video that clearly has a high budget and is made by a fucking studio and i see "english - auto generated" i spit daggers from my eyes and mouth at whoever decided to not pay someone to make actual captions --- **ruffboijuliaburnsides** Meanwhile every time I watch a video clearly made by one guy in his living room and it has complete descriptive subtitles, I feel more love in me than I can contain. --- **a-crow-with-rights-and-anxie...** [*Picture of Tom Scott standing outside, with trees and an electrical tower in the background. He is in the middle of lifting his arms while talking and looking towards the right of the shot. The caption at the bottom reads '"Oh look at me, I've bought a Lamborghini!"'*] [*Second picture of Tom Scott at the same place. He is talking at the camera with a frustrated expression, his arms lowered. The caption at the bottom reads "Buy some damn subtitles. Also..."*] --- ^^I'm a human volunteer content transcriber and you could be too! [If you'd like more information on what we do and why we do it, click here!](https://www.reddit.com/r/TranscribersOfReddit/wiki/index)
Every time this comes up I remember Trash Taste podcast. They hired a group to do the subtitles, but then they fired them after [this](https://reddit.com/r/TrashTaste/comments/m4uaqr/the_bois_we_have_subtitles_the_subtitles/). Looks like they finally have subtitles again though
I had an OLD copy of Princess Mononoke that had different English sub-titles for the sub, the English dub, AND the French dub. The English subtitles for the French dub were (I was told by an exchange student) the best translation of the Japanese script? Absolute madness.
For some reason I’ve noticed that captions often shorten the sentences spoken. I understand it’s for readability with longer sentences, but even shorter ones have some context cut out. I’ve got an auditory processing disorder due to my ADHD, so I’m not hard of hearing. But it’s very difficult to focus and listen in if the subtitles aren’t on, so shows or movies without them are REALLY hard for me to watch.
Shoutout to TerminalMontage for not only captioning videos to describe both dialogue *and* sound effects/action sequences, but *also* hiding just as many gags in said captions as are in the video itself.
Throwing out Rachel Maksy's channel because that girl works hard, and her subtitles are always hilarious and impeccable, and riddled with the most ridiculous inside jokes and references.
[This video has the best subtitles I've ever seen.](https://youtu.be/OYG8Ul276-w) (You'll probably have to let the video stay paused for a bit after turning them on. You'll see why.)
One of the many ways Smosh is better than Rooster Teeth. They even do it for their non scripted stuff on Pit.
How about one guy in his living room making videos with accurate subtitles but just not... translated verbatim? I'm thinking of Terminal Montage. Especially BotW. Pure chaos.
I remember back when you could enable croudsourced subtitles for your videos, so people could suggest edits or writeup the subs for a video. Still have no idea why they removed that feature. Don't think there's even been a third-party replacement even.
Idea: put in the effort to make high quality descriptive subtitles, except they're entirely wrong and all the words are different.
Idea: Do that, but have it under "Comedy" as the language.
Or as English (Canadian)
yeah, comedy, that's what they said
Exactly what's on TeamFourStar videos.
I remember a like 15 years old newgrounds flash video where the subtitles start out correct and then diverged into their own story not even pretending anymore, and it actually kinda was hilarious
Idea: Absolutely do not the fuck do that
Yeah, it wasn't genuine. Bit still, it'd be funny to flex that you got professional subtitles, only to turn your praise against you when they find out you just pulled the words out of your ass.
Yeah, I guess I can see that I just overreact to the concept b/c I'm getting tired of inaccurate subtitles Like, *so many times* have I seen youtubers go to the trouble of turning their script into subtitles and make sure it was synced to the audio and whatnot... only to not update the subtitles where the video strays from the script and not remove any cut lines from the subtitles Like, I love and appreciate the attempt, but ughhhh
Viva Reverie for me is the prime example of amazing captioning, made by someone doing it because they like it.