Reading Between the Subtitles
Growing up in a city where I was always surrounded by Asian American peers, I was exposed to all sorts of Eastern media from a young age. I frequently utilized subtitles to watch my favorite anime, and the highlight of my day would be laughing over the newest episodes with my friends. It didn’t matter that we spoke different languages, watching these films actually served as a common ground for us to learn more about each other and the unique appeal of our distinctive cultures. There was even a sort of pride that my friends and I took in watching shows with subtitles instead of opting for the dubbed versions. We liked to think that maintaining the original character voices made us cooler than the rest of the viewers and gave us a sort of edge despite the struggle of faulty translations present in any version of a series.
Unfortunately, the problem with inaccurate subtitles is something that has always plagued fans of foreign media. I can still remember getting frustrated over the choppy grammar and inconsistent word choice translators would provide, and even when I couldn’t understand the original language I could tell that I was only getting a piece of the whole story. As a bilingual Korean speaker this disparity is especially apparent when watching Korean shows and reading translated manhwas. It would be nice if these slight distortions had no overall impact, but the consequences of these simplifications range from an incomplete understanding of the plot to a personal attack on Korean idols for mistranslations of their native language.
As Kdrama audiences expand across the globe, the popularity of shows like Squid Game are shedding light on these longtime issues. After binge-watching the series days after its initial release, I can definitely say that the captions felt like a simplification of the spoken Korean. From the exclusion of honorifics to unnecessary censorship of curse words, there were many times where I wondered why the translators chose to word things the way they did. I felt like additional information or rephrasing was necessary to really understand the weight of what was being said, and these little differences resulted in an imperfect understanding of some of the central characters.
Podcaster Youngmi Mayer emphasizes some of the specific differences many Korean speakers noticed after watching Squid Game and utilizes her viral TikTok to point out the distorted characterization of Han Mi-nyeo, a middle aged Korean woman who kept viewers on edge with her witty lines and unpredictable whims. An example Mayer points out is a scene where Mi-nyeo is attempting to recruit people to be her partner and is translated as saying “I’m not a genius but I can still work it out.” Mayer then reveals that Mi-nyeo was actually saying that she’s smart and was just never given the chance to study. Although the change might feel insignificant, Mi-nyeo’s original line alludes to the issue of Korean class struggles and the film’s overarching theme of the negative consequences of capitalism. The nuanced meanings and metaphors script writers establish through the dialogue are oftentimes lost in translation.
Mayer’s initial criticisms had been about Squid Game’s closed captions, and many viewers were surprised to find out that there’s a difference between Netflix closed captions and regular subtitles. In the scene mentioned previously, the English subtitles translate Mi-nyeo’s lines as “I never bothered to study but I’m incredibly savvy.” Although this interpretation is better than the cc, the normal English subtitles still remain lacking in many ways. As someone who was previously unaware of this distinction, I was surprised to find out that closed captions are for those who are hard of hearing and require text descriptions of other important sounds present throughout the movie. Closed captions are based off the dubbed version of the film and are said to be significantly worse than the regular English subtitles despite being the defaulted Netflix option. Dubs are especially inaccurate because they require that translations only take up as much spoken time as the original dialogue, but there’s a simplification that occurs in both dubbed and subbed versions of shows as a result of poorly compensated translators and an emphasis on subtitle character limits.
It’s necessary to treat anything you read or watch as windows into different worlds rather than stagnant objects, and this especially applies when watching something created for native speakers of a different language. Foreign media provides an entertaining way to familiarize ourselves with cultures we would otherwise never interact with and help disrupt the Western-centric view of the world that so many of us maintain. The limitations of captions apply to any language, and being part of online communities where people are willing to highlight key cultural contexts illustrates the collaborative nature of media consumption and the easy access we have to various perspectives. New TV programs like Squid Game are sparking important conversations all around the world and clearly emphasize the need for subscription services like Netflix to improve their Asian content.
