Thanks to helpful tips from readers last time Comics Kingdom commenting came up, this time I was able to remark on this one: “So true! Burns me up when they do that!”.
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I’m lost. Is it that classroom &language and spoken &language are quite different? Yeah, so?
The closed captioning blocks the text
Yeah, my issue is the one Lost in A** A**** identifies — one mode of captioning blocks another. The “subtitles” in the video itself are presumably giving the English translation of what is on the audio, namely the uncle saying something in Italian. As an end-user, all we viewers can do if we want the translation is rewind a little and turn off the CC (and then possibly turn it back on, if we wanted it in the first place). But all this would be simpler if they had some co-operative guidelines to who gets to use what screen territory for what auxiliary content.
I took French in High School. That doesn’t mean I can understand much today. :-)
Had I known then that I’d be listening to a lot of cool French music after I graduated, perhaps I’d’ve tried harder in class. I barely passed. It was a struggle.
I’ve never encountered a subtitle collision, but I have been annoyed by missing subtitles on several occasions, most frequently on DVDs produced in France. When the dialog is in English, the DVD provides both English and French subtitles, but if someone drops into French, the French subtitles disappear. Idiots. I wanted to know what they said in French, and not what some underpaid translator thinks they said in English.
P.S. Foreign language movies that have been synchronized into English often have two completely different sets of dialog. The idiots doing the subtitles don’t transcribe what has been said on screen; instead, they do a separate translation from the script. The differences are only occasionally remarkable, but always annoying.
P.S. The first time that I watched Pixar’s “Brave” (a.k.a. “Merida”) on DVD, there were a couple of scenes where I needed to rewind and turn on the German subtitles, to get an understandable translation of the heavily Scots-inflected English.
Part of the reason for the differences between subtitles and spoken word is space. Subtitles have very strict character limits, so the people who write them occasionally have to do a bit of editing to get things to fit. Another factor is fast turnaround times. The subtitler may be working with a script that was changed during shooting or where an ad lib gets used.
Most hilarious subtitle I ever saw was watching Star Trek: Voyager on Dutch TV. The Vulcan Tuvok said something like “I have acquired a lock on the target, Captain.” The subtitle was, “Hebbes! (Basically a rather colloquial “Got it!”)
DemetriosX says: The subtitler may be working with a script that was changed during shooting
The widest departures I’ve noticed have been in animated series; such as Futurama in my distant past or BoJack Horseman in the middle distance. There were plenty of departures that were not just explicable as difficulty of hearing, but entirely new substitutions. It seemed that the script had been revised after it had been sent off to the overseas subtitling service, but in time for the local dialogue recording sessions to get the new version.
I have seen occasions with closed captions where a song was swapped out, probably some rights clearance issue, so the CC has different lyrics.
I highly recommend the animated (original) “Cowboy Bebop”. My guess is that it was originally prepared for English speaking audiences as Japanese with English subtitles, but then later English dialog was dubbed in. While the gist of the dialog is similar between the two, they sometimes go wildly astray.
There’s video represented here? Where?
@Ed, I see your point, the comic frame hasn’t been replaced by a drawn TV screen or something. But the two scenes here are best understood as happening onscreen, since the second panel shows the presence of both some translation subtitles (in elevated position, so not strictly “sub” — the gold lettering directly on the dusty blue background) and some closed captioning for Deaf and hard-of-hearing (the “[SPEAKING ITALIAN]” in white letters on a black backing).
Back in college (before Robert who I met in college the next year) I went to Mexico with a female friend from the yearbook we both volunteered on. (She was the outgoing Managing Editor and I was the incoming Editor in Chief. Robert would later be one of the new Managing Editors.)
She had traveled before and was knew much more about same. However, she had taken French in school, while I had taken Spanish and not done well with it – but she had figured I would be able to deal with it. She was/is a very dynamic personality.
We got off the plane and went to customs – she did not understand anything they said and I had to sort of piece it together as well as I could. This was the only time I ever saw her not in charge of what was going on. As the trip went along she did get to the point of saying “are we tardying or nocheing” when she did not know if “Buenos tardis” or “Buenos noche” was appropriate.
@ Meryl (13) – This may be a regional peculiarity, but when I was learning Spanish in high school, we were taught that “¡Buenas tardes!” was appropriate everywhere and everywhen (from early afternoon onward, even continuing well past darkness), whereas “¡Buenas noches!” was more personal, and was to be used only with family and very good friends.
Kilby – I had learned which to use by the time of day. I will admit to being 70, and I am not sure how old you are – so if you are younger the usage may have changed over time. The trip mentioned was in 1972 or 1973.
Comics I Don't Understand 
I’m lost. Is it that classroom &language and spoken &language are quite different? Yeah, so?
The closed captioning blocks the text
Yeah, my issue is the one Lost in A** A**** identifies — one mode of captioning blocks another. The “subtitles” in the video itself are presumably giving the English translation of what is on the audio, namely the uncle saying something in Italian. As an end-user, all we viewers can do if we want the translation is rewind a little and turn off the CC (and then possibly turn it back on, if we wanted it in the first place). But all this would be simpler if they had some co-operative guidelines to who gets to use what screen territory for what auxiliary content.
I took French in High School. That doesn’t mean I can understand much today. :-)
Had I known then that I’d be listening to a lot of cool French music after I graduated, perhaps I’d’ve tried harder in class. I barely passed. It was a struggle.
I’ve never encountered a subtitle collision, but I have been annoyed by missing subtitles on several occasions, most frequently on DVDs produced in France. When the dialog is in English, the DVD provides both English and French subtitles, but if someone drops into French, the French subtitles disappear. Idiots. I wanted to know what they said in French, and not what some underpaid translator thinks they said in English.
P.S. Foreign language movies that have been synchronized into English often have two completely different sets of dialog. The idiots doing the subtitles don’t transcribe what has been said on screen; instead, they do a separate translation from the script. The differences are only occasionally remarkable, but always annoying.
P.S. The first time that I watched Pixar’s “Brave” (a.k.a. “Merida”) on DVD, there were a couple of scenes where I needed to rewind and turn on the German subtitles, to get an understandable translation of the heavily Scots-inflected English.
Part of the reason for the differences between subtitles and spoken word is space. Subtitles have very strict character limits, so the people who write them occasionally have to do a bit of editing to get things to fit. Another factor is fast turnaround times. The subtitler may be working with a script that was changed during shooting or where an ad lib gets used.
Most hilarious subtitle I ever saw was watching Star Trek: Voyager on Dutch TV. The Vulcan Tuvok said something like “I have acquired a lock on the target, Captain.” The subtitle was, “Hebbes! (Basically a rather colloquial “Got it!”)
DemetriosX says:
The subtitler may be working with a script that was changed during shootingThe widest departures I’ve noticed have been in animated series; such as Futurama in my distant past or BoJack Horseman in the middle distance. There were plenty of departures that were not just explicable as difficulty of hearing, but entirely new substitutions. It seemed that the script had been revised after it had been sent off to the overseas subtitling service, but in time for the local dialogue recording sessions to get the new version.
DemetriosX: more than “sometimes”. 99 Percent Invisible had a good episode on this:
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/craptions/
I have seen occasions with closed captions where a song was swapped out, probably some rights clearance issue, so the CC has different lyrics.
I highly recommend the animated (original) “Cowboy Bebop”. My guess is that it was originally prepared for English speaking audiences as Japanese with English subtitles, but then later English dialog was dubbed in. While the gist of the dialog is similar between the two, they sometimes go wildly astray.
There’s video represented here? Where?
@Ed, I see your point, the comic frame hasn’t been replaced by a drawn TV screen or something. But the two scenes here are best understood as happening onscreen, since the second panel shows the presence of both some translation subtitles (in elevated position, so not strictly “sub” — the gold lettering directly on the dusty blue background) and some closed captioning for Deaf and hard-of-hearing (the “[SPEAKING ITALIAN]” in white letters on a black backing).
Back in college (before Robert who I met in college the next year) I went to Mexico with a female friend from the yearbook we both volunteered on. (She was the outgoing Managing Editor and I was the incoming Editor in Chief. Robert would later be one of the new Managing Editors.)
She had traveled before and was knew much more about same. However, she had taken French in school, while I had taken Spanish and not done well with it – but she had figured I would be able to deal with it. She was/is a very dynamic personality.
We got off the plane and went to customs – she did not understand anything they said and I had to sort of piece it together as well as I could. This was the only time I ever saw her not in charge of what was going on. As the trip went along she did get to the point of saying “are we tardying or nocheing” when she did not know if “Buenos tardis” or “Buenos noche” was appropriate.
@ Meryl (13) – This may be a regional peculiarity, but when I was learning Spanish in high school, we were taught that “¡Buenas tardes!” was appropriate everywhere and everywhen (from early afternoon onward, even continuing well past darkness), whereas “¡Buenas noches!” was more personal, and was to be used only with family and very good friends.
Kilby – I had learned which to use by the time of day. I will admit to being 70, and I am not sure how old you are – so if you are younger the usage may have changed over time. The trip mentioned was in 1972 or 1973.