i saw a few reports that the netflix version is a different sub?

yea i watched a few minutes of the dub after and it was just totally done wrong. beyond the basic wrongness of dubbing in general of course. the voices just didn't make sense.

While I was thrilled to read this morning that Magnolia Pictures will be pressing upcoming shipments of Let The Right One In discs with the theatrical subtitles, I feel immensely disappointed that there is no solution for the LTROI fans who were not only amongst the first to purchase the DVD/Blu-Ray release but also were most likely the most vocal supporters of the film.

I would imagine, thanks to these fans, numerous people had the chance to see the films while it was still in theatres. These fans also spent cumulative hours online posting rave reviews, discussing the artistry of the filmmaking and generally 'selling' the film to friends and family. These fans deserve better than to be dismissed.

Please provide us with an alternative to returning our copies (something I'm am preparing to do today) and allow a disc exchange program of some sort. We deserve to see the original film we were so vocally supporting and I trust Magnolia Picture to do right by their fans.

Best Regards,

Ugh.. this must be one of those examples where you either love it or hate it. An A/V professor of mine that taught script writing told everyone in the class to watch it with the English dub on, because it was done very well. I had already tried it though, and I found it to be absolutely terrible. It basically changes the entire mood of the film imo.

Granted all of my experience has been in professional japanese-english subtitling, not fansubbing, but we all use the same software with the same limits on the amount of text that can be displayed on-screen at once.

It is more common in fansubbing to see dialogue stretched into, say, two sets of subtitles; non-fansubbers avoid this practice for a good reason, namely that it weakens the impact of the sentence/phrase as a whole. Good subtitles take into consideration the visual impact of the words on the screen and how they need to meld with the action.

Consider Haruki Murakami, who speaks perfectly fine English (he's taught at Tufts) but doesn't translate his novels into English himself.

The cultural sensitivity of the work is paramount, and the example I gave was from a children's television show -- which is subject to the highest degree of flexibility. I, of course, treat novels differently than television shows.

But claiming that only the director/writer should have the ability to make a call like that ignores the basic fact that the director/writer presumably only speaks (or at least only speaks natively) the language of the source text. He/she is actually not a fabulous judge (oftentimes a very poor judge) when it comes to how to deal with translation. The translator's job isn't just to ferry words across a divide, because that divide (particularly with something like J-E) is far greater than you can possibly imagine. The translator's job is to recreate the spirit of the original text in a new language, to capture the je-ne-sais-quoi-essence, if you will. If the source text is, say, a post-modern novel that spends a great deal of time manipulating the source language playfully, then the translation will also have to find a way to do that in the target language -- but the translated work will have to reconfigure the wordplay in such a way that it works in the target language.

Sorry, this is a really over-involved explanation. I'd highly recommend reading The Scandals of Translation by Lawrence Venuti, it'll give you a much better understanding of this unfortunately under-studied field.

@rinse: I've seen this too, but it wasn't consistant - it really was just for the quiet or accent/regional-heavy parts.

If I don't know what 'knickers' are, typing it out isn't going to help me.

@galactus5000:

I think it is an american thing.. or to be more accurate... probably a british thing about talking down to americans.

But that original Region-free DVD was the one my friend who introduced us to it owned, and the one our locally-owned video shop has, and it is insanely superior to the more Americanized subs on the Region 1 version I briefly owned.

magnet films replied to teh accusations by saying they were sorry people didn't like their new translation and said that a new release of teh film is on the way with the "theactrical subtitles" however they said anyone hwo bought this version and fuck right off.

Lousy subtitles aside, even if you can't get your hands on a good copy I wouldn't miss out on this film. And read the book, there's stuff in there they didn't cover in the movie.

It will be interesting to see the difference between the US version and the original. Because of the whole "we take our children to adult movies and then love to complain about the violence" thing.

@Feba: then why is it just an American thing? You don't see Australia doing that for other English speaking projects. You don't see Canada dubbing things from other Canadian provinces.

I've also noticed when I watch a movie or T.V. show and read the Japanese subtitles that they don't match the English being spoken, and sometimes the differences appear to make no sense at all (like an actor mentioning a tuna sandwich and the subtitle saying "ham sandwich").

In fact, while I was composing this message, I just saw a subtitle pop up in a scene where there was no English spoken as a character handed a tip to a bellboy, but the Japanese said "here" as he handed it over.

And how do you display those with your DVD player? Copy the DVD but replace the subtitle file?

How is that not a problem? Just because a solution exists doesn't mean there is no problem.

Does it make the movie suck?

If yes, then you should care. If these screenshots are indicative of the quality of the hole, it makes the movie suck.

This is different. Dubs usually have more mangled translations because they have to match the length of time the original line took to say, and sometimes they try to match mouth movements as best they can.

Subtitles merely have to be short enough to be readable in the amount of time you have to display them.

This isn't variation from the dub, this is taking the subtitles and oversimplifying them.

"If I wanted to read, I'd go to school."

In the example you give, from the limited context you present it I would try to come up with a sentence that contains both "strength" and "breakthrough", i.e. "We're going to need something strong to break through this".

I may not be a captioner, but for the movie "Ha-buah" (The Bubble), an Israeli film, I bought the Israeli DVD when I was over there. In it, the subtitles, for the most part, accurately convey the original Hebrew, with such jokes like whether a gay suicide bomber would have 70 virgins or 70 muscular hunks waiting for him in Paradise. The US release, which I saw when a friend had rented the DVD from Netflix, completely fudged the joke up (I don't remember exactly). I'm not sure what the case really is, but I chalk it up to having a professor or someone similar do the translations for the US release, and having an American immigrant do the English subtitles for the Israeli release.

Looks like Magnolia is on it

Take something like:
これは力で突発だ！
You could "literally" translate these words:
This (previous word is subject) strength (previous word is instrument) breakthrough is!
And then you can't even really do that because English doesn't even have the concept of post-positive particles, so you just have specify function.
You could literally translate it, rearrange it, and explicitly state the things that are naturally implied in Japanese as:
This is a situation where we should to break through with force!
Or you could translate it as:
Guess we're gonna have to flex some muscle!

Which is best?

Which is kinda funny since the title of the movie, "El Laberinto del fauno" translates to "The Labyrinth of the Faun" and there is no character named "Pan" in the film.

But as I pointed out in another comment, think long and hard about who you're hurting when you don't buy the film and download it instead. Do you want the writer, director, and actors to get more jobs and make more high-quality films?

Then buy the DVD. That's the only way to tell the people with the money what you want, they don't read internet comments.

In the film industry, generally speaking, the writer and director don't really have a lot of power at this point in the game. It's all lawyers and producers. The writer hands a script over to a director and his/her job is entirely done. They have very little power or influence (almost none, really). The director has more, but if they're not a "name" then in the end, once they turn in their footage and their cut of the film, it's out of their hands as well.

While the original writer and director of this film COULD go public and decry the translation, they also will have to weigh if that would do them any favors or not. Sure, they would win some points with the cool kids on the internet, but would they get financing for their next film? Would they be able to get hired again? Would they basically be burning their bridges and destroying their livelihood? Perhaps they're grateful that their little indie film even GOT released in the U.S. which is quite a feat, though I've heard this film deserves the accolades. Think about the chances of an American audience even seeing an indie Swedish film.

So, in the end, the power lies with the producers and the distribution company, and partially with the audience. If, as a whole, people voted with their wallets not to buy this version and wrote letters insisting on a better translation, they could get it. But I wouldn't hold my breath for it either, the distro could just write it off as a failure and never buy a Swedish film again (which, again, only hurts the original writer and director).

It's a difficult industry at best.

That, for me, is what's important. I don't care if people did or didn't like one set better. I want as accurate as it can get. Though I also understand greatly that literal translations are terrible. Several manga publishers have found that literal translations of Japanese works sell terribly because they're almost incomprehensible to people who don't understand both languages.

"Another captioner/subtitler chiming in here. Not everything can be translated in a way that preserves the emotion and music of the original language, whether in dubbing or subtitling."

This is why I prefer subtitling to dubbing, even if the subtitles aren't great. I can hear all the inflections and tonal variations in the original language. Even if I don't understand the words, I understand the emotion better.

Also, I can't stand it when the words don't match their lips moving. Even when it's in English, that's annoying. Hear me, you CGI turkeys who messed up Dr. Manhattan!? Gaaaa!

Was trying to watch a Korean DVD rental last night "Pailan-Failan" and I had this EXACT SAME problem. There would be stretches of conversations with no subtitles and where there were subs, the gaps in the conversations rendered them useless. It was like trying to solve a puzzle. After 10 minutes, I gave up.

Well I also tried it on my MacBook. Same results.

I apparently downloaded the right version (with the correct subtitles).

GREAT film btw.

WHat annoys me the most is that good foreign films dont even make it to the US market. ANd here in the biblebelt even some US films dont even make it here (because they would offend delicate sensibilities of the people around here).

That's a TON of good films people are not exposed to.

I am having to search the internet & download them illegally just to see them!

That's not to excuse lousy captioning and subtitling, however.

There are many free online 'subtitle' sites where you can find this film's original subs. Google is your friend. Just download the original .srt or .sub file to this film. Subtitles are just a small text file, after all - its not rocket science.

@wickedpixel:

Thank you, knew somebody would suggest violating the rights of the film producer.

Its stupid moves like this that make me want to punch whoever made the decision to do this. This is one of the few movies that really needs a good translation for it to be fully effective.

Talk about "lost in translation"!!!

@Jessy Irwin:
Good call (on your first post).

As much as the Consumerist 'take them down a peg' side of me wants to cry foul here, shouldn't we only really be concerned if the writer/director/etc. sees a problem?

If these folks don't see any threat to their artistic vision - they would know - then why don't we just shut up about it?

BUT, IF THEY DO....then by all means, release the hounds!

If so, we should get in touch (I mostly do video games also) if at all possible. Always nice to know somebody else in the field.

Fuck twilight.

One other thing I think should be mentioned is that nowhere does the author of the article talk about what the actual Swedish means. It's all about how inferior the new English sounds compared to the old version (and I admit that it doesn't seem as good). But I think it's more than a little strange to judge the quality of a translation without knowing what the original says.

What a let down.

Way to go, Magnolia.

yeah supposedly there's somehow some US copies with proper subs, I haven't checked my copy yet but I prempteively sent a email to dvd@magpictures.com demanding a reissue with rpoper subs. Supposedly magnolia may have had to pay the orginal swedish sub writer specifically for her work and decided to go with a cheap route. well now their getting a ton of bad PR. and even worse making potential viewers steer clear of teh DVD ruining any good faith they had on release. Supposedly the pretty bad english dub does have teh correct lines though. I was going to screen this for friends this weekend. I'll download the screener for now.

This is where piracy should be used to ensure a quality end product for the consumer and punish a distributor for f'ing up a good product....

Well this blows..hard. I was so close to picking it up on Sunday..thank god Best Buy's price gave me second thought to an impulse buy.

movie is pretty cool

I saw this movie last week and thought it was one of the best movies that I'd seen in years. I absolutely loved it. There were some weird plot holes or inconsistencies that I was left wondering about, especially between Eli and the old man. It sounds like they might be clarified in the quality translation.

(I can't believe no one else has done it yet) The publisher didn't LET THE RIGHT ONE (translation) IN

HAHAHAHA. Okay, move along, nothing more to see here.

I bought the US DVD and noticed some of the translation was off from what I saw in the theatre. I'm even less psyched now that I see it side by side.

Subtitles have hard limitations on their length (usually by an amount of characters), and it can be very difficult to do justice to the source material in the space allotted. I'm constantly faced with the very difficult choice of what to remove from the source text to fit the space limitations.

That said, this film already had a perfectly good subtitle track, so this is not at all applicable in this situation.