This is a really big coincidence Irmar, I was watching the episode 1 in Hindi this afternoon (4-5 hours ago) and my reaction to the subs was the same.
I’d definitely not like to watch so much mixed language stuff.
I wanted to say this at the same time when this topic was made. If a Korean name conflicts with a Hindi word and you prefer to write the Korean name in English then what about English words that conflict with Korean names?
Should “Park went to Park” or “Song sang a song” be written in English like “박 went to park” or 송 sang a song"?
Not so long ago, I received a request from a person to improve the subtitles of a drama. I asked the moderator to add me and according to what the person said she also asked to add me to the team, I wonder what’s taking so long to add me to the team?
I strongly feel the Devnagari script is much more powerful and expressive than the Latin alphabets when it comes to writing Korean names. Many people at first won’t even realize that Seoul is not pronounced as Se-o-u-l. I see a lot of Hindi subbers writing Se-o-u-l in Hindi when we can write 서울 without much “vowel conflicts” and the reader can also read Seoul comfortably and not get mixed with the three vowels in a row.
I’ve always had the Devnagari script to write Korean words and I use Latin letters only when there are short forms in subs, like XYZ company or KPSE institute. I only write the “XYZ and KPSE” part in Latin, writing this in Hindi will be too big to read in a few seconds. (eks-wai-zee and ke-pi-es-ee)
The person who complained about the quality of subs in another drama gave a really valid reason as to why not use Latin alphabets for names. “It’s a headache to switch between two different scripts in 2 seconds”. Also, as for the OSTs, she likes them so much but the translations were not there. I also love that show but I watch in English so I can’t say how much of that is truth but she said the OSTs are not translated, the names of places are not translated, either they are in English or there are just full stops or music notes.
We do have Hindi versions of more popular places. Like USA is “Amrika”, Greece is “Yunaan” and so much more. And if there are no Hindi versions, we transliterate the English names.
As of now, I am working on High school dramas and as usual, there are scenes of teachers teaching math, history science, etc. My subbers leave the English subs just transliterated in Hindi. When I edit, I sit for almost an hour finding the Hindi equivalents of English terms because if the viewer is watching the subs in Hindi, the very first assumption I make is the person attended a Hindi medium school so the person was educated in Hindi language.
As an example, this is a sub from True Beauty episode 5,
What’s the limiting value of constant function 7 when x goes over 6?
The original subber just transliterated the mathematical terms and I am not saying the subber did wrong, the subber did their best and the subber has always given good subtitles.
This is my version of the above subtitle
अचर फलन 7 का सीमांत मान क्या होगा जब x 6 से आगे बढ़ेगा?
This one contains the Hindi words of “limiting value” and “constant function”. This is a very good reason why I take a lot of time to edit Hindi subtitles, because I do immense research while making the subs and making the sure that the spelling and grammar is always correct.
The viewer I mentioned above does not know English so she finds the regular appearance of English subs very uncomfortable and she is not blame for not knowing English. The person also claims to be a Hindi teacher and she catches mistakes so fast.
There is a military drama where I am redoing the subs because an abuser ruined the subs and the affected episodes were recently corrected. That was one of the first dramas I took as a moderator, I did research, went through several Wikipedia pages, compared the Indian army ranks, the US army and Korean ranks to finally settle to the posts of the cast. I also did a lot of research on the way Indian Army address their juniors and seniors. For the other military drama at Viki, the ranks of the cast is according to US army. How are the viewers going to understand if the speaker and listener hold the same position or not based on ranks they don’t even know?
Putting every other stuff apart, I was actually thinking about this the other night. When there are scenes in a drama where dialogs from some other dramas are used for pun, should we provide translation notes in the subs.
To be more clear, there is a scene in True Beauty where dialogs from some other movie were used to make the situation look funny. Are we, the OLs, also supposed to quote the same dialogs and provide TNs in the subs? Reading the long TNs can be cumbersome. I did not provide any TN and to preserve the inside joke of the scene, I used another dialog from a Bollywood movie, Don (the one with Shahrukh Khan) and used the “11 countries’ police are chasing me” dialog. This way, I could preserve the joke as well as use less screen space.
Now, the dilemma is, what to do if somebody from a movie where the lead has worked and the person makes a cameo and makes references to their work together. One such example is the Han river scene in Legend Of The Blue Sea where the main lead from the movie Sassy Girl makes appearance and talks about their work (I forgot what they talked about though). In this situation, I’d choose to provide TNs rather than choosing an alternative from my country.
Are these approaches acceptable for these two different situations?
I saw this music video on YT and I find the subs really soothing. They are short, crisp and above all rhyming. I really appreciate the effort made by the translator. I’d like to elaborate and support Vivi’s statement in my own words.
If the original meaning is there in the subs and I can see the original culture, I am okay with the subs.
And just like Vivi, I won’t support the shift from Aishwarya to Pamela.
This MV is a really good example of how to keep the original meaning and rhyme intact. Ever since I watched this video, I also try to do the same.
This is another song from the same movie
P.S This is the first movie of the actress and she is such a big star of Bollywoood right now. The movie is worth watching.
Whatever I said might hurt some people, I did not say this to pick up fights but to find solutions
much appreciated!
Hope you slept well!