Shaw. Divided by a common language. Though he may have stolen it from Wilde.

It seems kinda indicative of a notsorare J'can mindset that the captioner seems to have their own unapologetic idea of what the characters should be saying.

So the characters say one thing, and the captions don't match at all? Ew.

the captions don't match at all?

Not quite that bad, but it sometimes happens that it's the sense (and only most of it) and not the details that are translated (like "I'm not hungry" when the character said "Mi no waan nyam" -- which is just "I don't want to eat").

Ah. That happens in a lot of movies, it seems. V. irritating, because often it seems as if that's going on, but I don't speak the language at all (or well enough) to know what's really being said. Was watching a Swedish movie this weekend ("Show Me Love"), and at several points, we wondered what was really being said...

Thus I really like watching subtitled movies in languages I do kinda know (ok, french or spanish), because I might not QUITE be able to follow it without subtitles, but with them, I can follow well enough to listen for subtle translation things.

I've never found it as egregious in the other languages I know, especially since when patois has a directly equivalent, word-for-word, just alter the pronounciation ... well go for it, no?

I've noticed also, that the subtitles in English sometimes vary on English works, but really not much at all. It's much funnier when they're wrong, as happened in All The President's Men (and no, I can't remember the line, but they were standing on some stairs outside a building, and I think they were talking about a party).

meara is me. I can almost follow spoken French, if I have a subtitle track. Then again, I have started to watch most movies with the English subtitles on, because if I'm not paying attention and miss hearing something, I can read the screen and catch up.

I think most of the subtitle changes I've seen are intended to make the sense of the speech come across, in as few letters as possible, because you can hear faster than you can read. Where is scrappy? She will explain.

(OWW doesn't come subtitled on VHS, but it does come with hearing-impaired captions, which is tantamount to subtitles. They weren't necessary all of the time, but sometimes, yep.)

it does come with hearing-impaired captions, which is tantamount to subtitles

You know, on Princess Mononoke, there are both captions and subtitles, and they are different. I prefer the subtitles, IIRC.

Subtitles just translate whoever is speaking. Captions have to also give salient sound effects and identify who is speaking and sometimes tone of voice. You don't realize how much information a film gives through sound until you have to determine which sounds are needed for the deaf community to fully enjoy the film.

And yes, captions edit for reading rate, which is usually 240 wpm. This includes taking out repeated words, ums and wells, changing verb tenses (from "I am going to" to "I will" and in extreme cases removing whole phrases. We try to do it verbatim whenever we can, but it's sometimes impossible.

Show Me Love

Oooh! aka Fucking Amaal, I think? Or something like that? I heard good things about this.