Aha, then it makes sense for the English subtitle. We don’t have this expression in Dutch. We’d just say ‘word wakker’ (wake up).Becauese the expression was literally translated to Dutch and they were sitting at a table, I started to scan the table to find that coffee and I was confused when I couldn’t find any lol
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I do that with many Asians sayings, too.
Can you share one or two of your sayings in Dutch? It would be nice to know some Dutch sayings. Thank you.
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I haven’t heard of that saying, either. Technically, we shouldn’t be including sayings/idioms at stuff in the subs for OL teams and English viewers from all over the world.
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@oriya @padmalayag @zyxw @poeticpeep
vivi_1485
I haven’t heard of that saying, either. Technically, we shouldn’t be including sayings/idioms at stuff in the subs for OL teams and English viewers from all over the world.
First of all, this is exactly what I’ve been writing about all along in this thread. The fact that some subbers are doing here at RViki wrong translations, wrong EDITING etc. because they really don’t know what they’re doing. But YET, they are working in many, many different dramas, movies, shows etc. (and I heard some are even getting paid!)
In this case, is undoubtedly obvious the person/subber did not know the DUTCH language (since it did a literal translation), and in top of that, added his/her familiarity with an English saying. It was irresponsible of this and many other subbers to take the liberty of adding these English saying/subtitle in a language it doesn’t exist at all (IT SHOULDN’T BE DONE IN ANY LANGUAGE PERIOD!) because that’s the reason we have so many subtitles that makes NO SENSE to the viewers worldwide.
Although in that specific scene that English saying may apply and make sense to an English speaking viewer, and it won’t face us, the fact that in the Dutch language they don’t have such saying, it was a HUGE wrong move on the part of that subber. But it surprises you that this is going on in here? Because it doesn’t surprise me at all since it’s nothing new, and I have been pointing this out for a long while now.
Now, we all know there may be Dutch saying that although written differently in the End, they Do mean the same thing. If the subber had put more care into the quality of his/her work, they might have used in Dutch a saying similar to be used in that scene. According to @oriya they only say: ‘word wakker’ (wake up) that I have a feeling means the same thing except the coffee part of course.
ANYWAY, I did explained what that saying in English means to @oriya to let her/him know that although the saying doesn’t exist in the Dutch language, the subber probably felt it ‘‘FIT’’ the scene, and even though it was the wrong move, and proved what I’ve been saying all along about annoying subtitles, by now we should ACCEPT that this situation might never change and if anything, might even get worse.
SOME SAYINGS THAT WON’T WORK IN OL
GERMAN
FRENCH SAYING
…
POLISH SAYING
HINDI SAYING
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@damiechan
Back in 2021 you and many others wrote that a certain subber was working doing DUTCH subtitles that were really bad. Do you think is the same person that did the ‘‘wake up and smell the coffee saying?’’
here is link to that thread…
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feyfayer:
Dutch sub
Yes, they have made Dutch subs before as well
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hehe thanks i practiced well. Maybe i will soon start my training.
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Here are a few Dutch sayings
- Met de deur in huis vallen (To fall with the door into the house) = To get straight to the point.
- Maak dat de kat wijs (Try to convince the cat) = I don’t believe a word of what you’re saying.
- Iemand achter het behang willen plakken (Wanting to glue someone behind the wallpaper) = Thinking someone is very annoying.
- Als de kat van huis is, dansen de muizen op tafel (The mice are dancing on the table when the cat is not at home) = People do whatever they want if there is not supervision.
- Oost, west, thuis best (East, west, home best) = There is no place like home.
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1.+4. same here in German, 3. turns out a bit more rabiat:
" …würde jemanden am liebsten an die Wand klatschen" (would like to smack someone against the wall… and wallpaper over it)
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Wow, the 4th is almost exactly the same as the Polish one: kota nie ma, myszy harcują.
The only difference is that “harcują” is not exactly dancing on the table, but just doing weird stuff in general (which might include that activity :D)
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We also have a similar saying in English: When the cat’s away, the mice will play.
I like all the different versions in these other languages.
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Wie sagt man 1 + 4 auf deutsch?
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Polish mice also lose their fear when the cat is not around 
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- Mit der Tür ins Haus fallen. (Man fällt doch nicht gleich mit der Tür ins Haus!)
- (Kaum) ist die Katz’ aus dem Haus, tanzen die Mäuse auf dem Tisch.
One other:
Als ob ein Blinder von der Farbe spricht. (lit. A blind person talking about colours - someone without any basics gives great speeches).
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In Punjabi -
(khote to giri, gussa kumhar te = fell from atop of donkey and angry at potter) - [Taking anger out third party]
(sariyan da kahan sir-mtthe, ptnala utthe da utthe = Agreeing to the order of village chief but not moving the canal) - [paying lip service to order / higherups]
*
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I am curious. For 정신 차려, would “Come to your senses.” or “Get a hold of yourself.” been a bit easier for OL translation?
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Yes, for sure. Those are translations that I see more often and that I’m used to seeing. I hadn’t seen the sentence with ‘smell the coffee’ before. That’s why I thought he meant it literally and didn’t understand it at first.
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I think minimal use of colloquialisms and/or slangs is (should be) one of the things that differentiate Viki translation from NFLX. Since our OL subbers need to use the English subtitles as the source to translate, the less colloquialisms used would make OL translation not only easier but also more accurate. At NFLX, the English translators wouldn’t need to be as careful and would actually be praised for their knowledge of slangs and colloquialisms. I think our Viki translators are just as knowledgeable but they are also more aware of OL translations.
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my_happy_place
We also have a similar saying in English: When the cat’s away, the mice will play.
You won’t believe this, but in my 60 yrs. I’ve never heard that one before, and amazingly, it has a version in many OL. I wonder why…
…Unless is because I’m more familiarize with Spanish sayings than the English one (believe it or not).
I mean, I know its real meaning now, and that explains what we’re going through here right now; these subbers doing all these things during their subbing volunteer work, and they really can’t/must not be supervised because is the only thing that makes sense about what @oriya experienced. How can a person be able to add as a subtitle a literal translation from a Language they have no knowledge of? (in this case Dutch language).
Common sense should tell us that ‘‘sayings’’ are different in every OL, and using them in a scene, needs to be carefully thought/analyzed before they are added as a subtitle. So that explains it for me: these subbers are not under any responsible supervision.
Ironically, we discovered here thanks to @oriya that maybe moderators should make some notes about subbers needing to be more careful when using a saying in any given Language, and especially in any language they have little to no knowledge at all.
This is the surprise factor feeling I get when a subtitle/ makes no sense to me as I read them, a weird feeling of wonder…what they meant by that? Or I don’t ‘‘see’’ around in the scene what they are talking; where is it? Just like @oriya went through when he was looking for the ‘‘coffee’’
Although help center is practically non-existent I hope this person gets reported so it doesn’t continue to do this things and affect the quality of the subtitles in any given OL.
@oriya @spaufler_89 @zyxw @my_happy_place @sandeepsandhu
Thank you so much for sharing your ‘‘sayings’’ here in this thread. I will keep them neatly safe in my notes. It’s always a good thing to learn more about sayings in OL so we won’t disappoint our viewers by our wrong choices of words/sayings in a sentence/subtitle.
Enjoy your weekend everyone! More packing to do, and I feel low in energy. So tired…_bed:
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This is a really, really great idea. I’m more than happy to take it on board and help translators out when idioms are unavoidable in a subtitle.
To explain…
Just recently, I was GE for “One The Woman.” Throughout this show, there were many English and Korean idioms, metaphors, similes and sayings. Moreover, most of these needed to be kept because they were essential for the dialogue and important for establishing a character’s personality. As I went through my editing, I checked every idiom (and metaphor, simile, saying) that I came across by typing it into Google. I wanted to make sure that an explanation for each idiom (etc.) was easily found. I did this to double-check that OL teams could find any details they might need with the minimum hassle. If I couldn’t find an explanation of the idiom, I either added a brief explanation note or rephrased the idiom.
I’m embarrassed to say that it never occurred to me to share my research with the OL teams. After reading the above comment, I now realize that I should have copied all those explanations into a Googledoc with appropriate sub reference details (i.e. episode, time stamp) and shared that document with the OL teams. I could have potentially saved them a lot of time.
I will definitely do this in future.
Thank you so much for enlightening me.
Kind regards,
Manganese
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