I’m mainly talking about watching a TV show or movie that’s originally in English enabling subtitles that’s either in Spanish, German, Russian, Finnish, etc. and can mistakes in translation still occur? I recall watching Lie to Me with Japanese subtitles during a scene involving an interrogation but a key word within the dialog was not translated correctly based on context.
For example, the protagonist said “You’re an accessory to murder” towards the suspect but subtitles used the wrong word choice 小物 (which means “accessories” as in small goods) when the intended meaning for “accessory” from that context leans more on being a conspirator (共犯者 or 共謀) of a crime (like as in aiding the criminal).
I find that infuriating, too. Someone told me the reason is that the dubbing and the subtitling are done in parallel from the original material, instead of the subtitling being done from the dubbing text. Regardless, it’s super annoying to miss a word in the spoken dialog and find that the subtitles have a completely different sentence.
Tom Scott made a enjoyable video about it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pU9sHwNKc2c
tl:dr dubbing and subtitles are made by diffent teams and each one has their own limitations.
Dubbing has to line up with lip movement. Subtitles were in the past summeries and struggle for example when multible people are talking at the same time
That was very informative, thank you! I love Tom Scott’s videos, but somehow missed this one.
The odd thing is that he brings up the obvious question: why do the subtitlers not simply use the dubber’s translation instead of doing their own. He brings up the need in the past for summaries (which could be done from the dubber’s translation, so I don’t see the point), but then doesn’t explain why we still do the same.
It’s particularly odd because streaming brought a Renaissance of dubbing - streaming shows are frequently dubbed, dubbed to a lot of languages, and the dubbing is of high quality. On some streaming services (I think Netflix), the dubbing teams proudly have their own closing cards at the end of each episode. And yet, they continue this strange habit.