The guideline is common sense. If the Chinese or Korean is archaic language, then use old-style English. Not Shakespearean language, but at least don’t use words which came into use in the last half of the 20th century or later.
Korean-English subbers often don’t know how people spoke English in the old days - and when i say old days, again, I’m talking about the 1950s, not anything decrepit - because they don’t have the background from their parents and grandparents. So they translate in the only English they know, today’s English.
I’ve seen “okay” spoken to a member of the royal family in a sageuk, and to a company chairman by a subordinate!
See, it’s not only historical dramas… Koreans think that because the English only has “you” and not five or more different nuances of politeness/formality, it means that everyone speaks in any way they want even to high status people. Which is just not true. You don’t speak to your company president or your friends’ father as you speak to your buddies. The verb does not change but there are other ways of showing respect.
For instance, whenever I see a young person speak to an elderly or a subordinate to a higher-up, I correct “okay” to “alright”, “yes”, “fine” or “yes sir” I keep “okay” only when in Korean they are speaking in banmal, among friends or family members close in age.
If they someone orders a subordinate to do something and they agree saying “ye” instead of “ne” (=the two equivalents of yes, but ye is more formal), or 알겠습니다 algesseumnida (=I understand, I got it, alright, it will be done), then we know it’s formal and you absolutely cannot use “okay” or “I got it”, unless it’s playful/ironic. It should be “yes sir/ma’am”, “It will be done”.
You don’t need to know the intricacies of the language. It’s enough to use common sense and know the relationship among the characters.
For Other Language translators it’s difficult to understand where to use formal and informal. I know I struggled with this a lot, and I always sought help in Team Discussion.
Most of the times you’re good if you use formal for everyone except close buddies and immediate family (although most of them do speak formally to their parents). Higher-ups often use informal towards subordinates, but even if you miss this, nothing terrible will happen. And it will sound weird because in Europe we speak to the cleaning lady formally.
The difficulty is with couples, knowing when they pass from formal to informal, since the English gives no clues. When I didn’t know how to recognize it, I had made my own rule-of-thumb: once they kiss and start dating officialy (and or have sex), I pass to informal. Although I know pretty well that it’s not really true for the Korean (in “Encounter” the couple didn’t switch to informal until the very last scene of the last episode, after the time gap and in "The Secret Life of My Secretary she keeps calling him “Director” even after they sleep together!), I know it would make zero sense to Western viewers to have a couple kiss and make out while using formal speech, so I usually choose not to be too faithful.
That’s true. You would use a different tone of voice and the respect is shown in this way and through your body language. You wouldn’t roll your eyes or look half bored or yawn in front of your boss for example. Generally speaking you would maintain eye contact, listen well and be more calm yet alert when speaking to a superior at work.
Are most subbers from Korean into English native Korean speakers? Or if they are British, American or other native English speakers why do they not have the background? Some of the words I’m talking about have only been used in the last 10-15 years so their parents, teachers, employers should understand standard English. Why wouldn’t they have the background from their parents and grandparents?
When I was in school we used slang but we still knew how to speak without and wouldn’t have spoken that way when writing a paper for example. We understood the difference. In fact most subbing I see doesn’t use common slang or internet slang. Much of the subbing seems excellent. I just thought maybe making a guideline stating, “Please don’t use slang for historical dramas” and possibly giving examples would encourage the ones who do use present day slang for historical dramas to stop. But perhaps there’s something else going on that I don’t understand.
Side-tracking the thread for a second 
This summer I was riding in a bus, sitting next to an older lady who kindly explained to me that English “you” is a highly respectable form of addressing a person. It is not the German “du”, it is “Sie”. English “du” was “thou”, which was at some point completely dropped in an effort to simplify the language. So, basically, Englishmen have been addressing everybody with utmost respect for centuries, having no informal pronoun, but somehow people forgot about it.
Most of them are Korean-American. Of course there are also people of other nationalities who are advanced students of Korean language. Some would be English-speakers, but many others could come from whatever country.
I don’t mean that at all. Of course body language will also be used, but I mean actual way of speaking to them.
Let me try to find an example of things you wouldn’t say to people you are supposed to respect, and what you would actually say:
Yeah, sure, whatever! — Some people would say that, but I don’t agree.
You wanna bet? — I’m not sure about that. The opposite might be true.
Cut the BS! — I don’t think that’s relevant.
I don’t give a damn — Although I do understand your point of view, this matter is not that important to me.
Are you f**** serious? ---- I’m sure you don’t mean that, sir.
Interesting from a German teacher, knowing that English is heavily borrowed from the Germanic languages.
Even though it is part of Germanic languages you can’t really compare German grammar with English grammar since German is a precise language with complex grammar while English is one of the most imprecise (“Western”) languages. Compare German, French, Latin, Italian grammar… and then look at English…
English and German do have several words with the same letters but with complete different meaning or opposite meaning like “lies” and “Lies!”
So today when languages are mixed or one sees more English than in the past it can be really annoying because of eventually not understanding what’s really meant at first second because same spelling but different meaning. Or the new Denglish when even journalists use partly English words and then add the typical German endings like -isiert, -in, etc. Doesn’t look nice anymore.
I believe I understand your point now. Yes, the second version is what would be said in more formal situations.
Double negative -
example someone can’t stop himself from working:
It’s company work.
I received my salary.
I can’t not do anything.
I am not a native English speaker nor is this used that often but is this grammatically right? Or maybe it only feels wrong because of the addition of the word anything?
I have also a question, is there an oldfashioned term for “playboy”?
I read it once in a fantasy story with swordsmen and I had to think about today’s PLAYBOY magazine.
@sonmachinima
Are we talking about a womanizer? I could give you the German old style expression - Lebemann, Schürzenjäger, Schwerenöter, Frauen-/Weiberheld,
Maybe dangler in English?
Or Lebenskünstler but the best I found was “connoisseur of the art of living”?
I am curious too, I guess it’s about a historical drama?
It was a fantasy drama with swordsmen and some magic aspects and in one scene the English line was like: He is such a playboy.
So I chose Charmeur for the German version because in that context it was not about hunting girls to get them into bed but more in a way that he is quite nice and kind to people (no matter of the gender) to get what he want. You could call him a Süßholzraspler but I liked Charmeur more since it includes the way the character is and it is oldfashioned enough for a fantasy drama in my opinion.
Lebenskünstler does not fit for the character because it has a different nuance, more about surviving and making the best of a situation instead of being kind to others to get personal advantages.
@sonmachinima
Flatterer/charmer in German “Schmeichler”, the one who is more talk than action. Good!
Here you see VIKI’s wording vs official wording (the “nothing” sentence of official subs was a second earlier: Nothing.)
Double negation really should be avoided because it confuses the reader. However, directly removing the double negation here would give a different meaning to the sentence (I can do anything).
I think that sentence could be written in a more intuitive way such as “I have to do something”, “I can’t just sit and watch”, or “I can’t just let it happen”. There is a plethora of different expressions which could be used, depending on the context.
But personally I don’t mind the example so much. It doesn’t “poke my eyes”.
Ladies’ man
Seducer
Btw, this is a very useful site if people haven’t heard of it before
Really, we live in an age where we are only one google search away from the right answers and some seem to be too lazy to even find them (referring to the ie. people who wrote playboy in a historical drama).
Hi! Jumping in as a professional translator, if I may 
I agree with a lot of what’s been said above. I have spent years watching dramas on Viki, and I’ve always kind of ignored those kind of issues in the translations because I know what goes on behind the scenes (I volunteer here and there, when I can) and I know most of the seggers/subbers/editors here aren’t professionals.
The eternal translating issue of foreignizing vs. domesticating translation is never going to go away, but going into one extreme or another is a tricky path to go on.
The source language shouldn’t be translated in such a “faithful” way that the end result in the target language becomes nearly impossible to understand.
We need to keep in mind that we’re not necessarily translating for someone who wants to learn the source language by watching shows – even though that’s commendable, and undoubtedly where a lot of my Korean skills come from. I’d argue a lot of the audience on Viki are casual drama lovers, and they don’t necessarily want to worry about what a sentence means or wonder why something is worded weirdly (eg. “I’m going” and all the other examples cited above).
I’ve watched a couple dramas on Viki with family or friends, and I’ve repeatedly seen them have problems understanding what the subtitles were saying because they weren’t familiar with Korean at all and the translation was too literal – they got confused because of grammar or wording (and yes, I’m including relationship terms such as 형, 언니 and the like in that category – which, in my opinion, should not be included in subtitles). Of course, it’s never to the point that they won’t follow what’s happening in the episode, but those small instances of “wait what” bring you back to reality and you’re just not “in the show” anymore, which is a shame.
Subtitles are meant to let a wide audience enjoy content made in a foreign language, but the brain shouldn’t be struggling to follow what’s being said because of them. They should be invisible to the viewer’s eyes: if you don’t notice you’re reading subtitles while watching a movie or a tv show, then the subtitles are probably good.
Editors really are our biggest strength when translators are being too literal, and their task is never easy, because going from something too literal to something more correct yet still faithful is a never ending challenge… But that’s also where all the fun is 
Some more on subtitling
Somehow I’ve been writing this reply for too long and I don’t know if I’m on topic anymore, so I’m hiding this. I do hope I didn’t go off topic before this hidden part!
I wanted to talk more about some subtitling stuff, but I’ll keep it short (If anyone’s interested, we can also take it elsewhere)
A few years ago, I didn’t really mind or even see some of what I’m gonna mention next, so I know why people aren’t that bothered by it. But I’m academically trained now, and that left me with habits that I can’t shake. Sometime I do feel like we’d gain a lot from trying to use some guidelines that exist in the subtitling world, but it’s also complicated because they vary from one country to another. (French people really love their subtitling norms, but that’s a story for another time haha)
So in short, (very) basic subtitling norms that – from what I’ve seen here – aren’t known to most :
- The human brain can’t process too many characters per second, so there is an average limit (around 15 char/sec) that shouldn’t be ignored
- In a similar way, the number of characters per line needs to be limited too, especially since it gets super difficult to read long lines on wider screens. I know there’s the strange problem of roku not taking /br/ into account on here so we tend to not really cut subtitle lines… the only way to limit long lines would be to limit the length of sentences, I guess?
- Segments shouldn’t be too long (+5 secs), and they shouldn’t go over shot changes in the video (I am of course aware that there’s a whole way of segmenting that’s been developed here, and I was never bothered by it tbh)
For modern settings for sure, for fantasy and historical it depends. Just because someone went to university or has a profession doesn’t mean the person knows the necessary wording for a specific setting.
That also counts for subbers. If someone never read any or many fantasy or historical novels the person won’t be able to know terms that are suitable for these surroundings.
Same goes for modern stories that include specific topics like law/justice, medical aspects etc.
I think our focus is bit different. I understand that you mainly talk about common English terms/grammar while I’m talking also about certain surroundings and for me that is also important and often an issue when I compare VIKI subs with professional subs or synced versions elsewhere.
If you mean the SHIFT written examples I did not read it because capslock is exhausting for me to read.