#SUBTITLES

[ramenheim]

*Me busting this out on Shudder*

netflix subtitles are great for when you want to read a caption with like 50% resemblance to what's being spoken

[roseillith]

THE STUART HALL PROJECT (2013) dir. JOHN AKOMFRAH

[babyrubysoho]

Guess who just spent a month making Japanese subtitles for the entire DT Richard II play, because I am simply that determined to force two specific friends to watch it and fangirl with me and talk to me about my fic XD

I started out using the classic professional Japanese translation of the original play (by Fukuda Tsuneari), which is written in period-accurate Japanese. When I showed one of my friends the subs she said "period Japanese is too hard!"

(This is a page of Henry's speech to Northumberland and York just before capturing Richard at Flint Castle... Yeah, holy wall of text!)

So now I've cobbled together a modern Japanese version using a mixture of adapted lines from the original translation, bits from The Hollow Crown (which is the only Japanese-subtitled version of Richard II one can buy, though that version leaves out half the lines and is much more forgiving on the subtitler cos they all speak so bloody slowly and with...I'm gonna say minimal energy😂), and a soupcon of super-abbreviations of dialogue that is waaaay too long in Japanese to fit on the screen.

Some of the jokes of course don't land in translation, which is too bad cos this particular production really leans into the gag potential of the play; e.g. puns like rain/reign😁

(Classic usurper humour XD)

Next step is to show it to my most patient friend and have her check it for errors and places where over-long lines can be made more succinct in a natural way. I won't lie, this project is fun as feck!

(The subs look giant cos my friend has poor eyesight🤣)

[thebelchers]

[gallavanger-mars]

[Image ID: Three frames of a cartoon, with subtitles reading "intersex, moving with the wind and setting out towards Japan", "start up the engine", and "increase the soup". There is a fourth image, which is an edited version of the third frame, where the caption says "decrease the increase". End ID.]

This may be unnecessary context, but I've seen a couple tags asking about what the hell the original images are coming from, and since I happen to be a fan of the series I figured I'd give a little context.

As some people have correctly identified, the cartoon is Mazinger Z, from 1972. This isn't relevant to the soup being increased, but Mazinger Z is the first ever piloted giant robot anime, which I think is very neat. However, as many people have already figured out, the subtitles here are awfully translated.

There's actually additional history to the subtitles, because they used to be sort of a meme (speaking only from research, I wasn't online or in these circles when they were really popular), and they were called "crabstick subs". They were called this because a remote-control staff device was called a crabstick in the first episode's subtitles. For some reason. The term was popular enough that it referred to any weird subtitle, not just one in Mazinger Z.

[Image ID: A frame of the Mazinger Z cartoon, depicting the antagonist, Dr. Hell, holding a staff, subtitled "Only with this crabstick, I can control the enormous Mechanical Beasts Army". End ID.]

Crabstick subs are not the only subtitles that exist for Mazinger Z, of course, and I've been watching it with way better subtitles (done by Discotek Media, I think). Naturally, I think it'd be fun to go and get the better subtitles for the Soup Increasing scene, and compare. Here they are, from episode 65, The Balloon Bomb Carried by the Wind:

[Image ID: The three frames of the cartoon with different subtitles. They now read "Take the underwater fortress Bood to Japan!", "Yes, sir! Iron Masks, start engines!", and "Submerge!" End ID.]

First I'll address some missing elements. "Intersex" referred to Baron Ashura, the character in the second and third frames. They are literally half-man-half-woman, split down the middle. The newer subtitles did call out Baron Ashura's name, though that was moved to the previous set of words. "Moving with the wind" likely refers to the titular Balloon Bombs, which were carried by the wind. Somehow that got mixed into the commands for Baron Ashura.

And the star of the show... "increase the soup"... is "Submerge!"

This is a command for the underwater fortress Bood, which is like a big evil submarine. If you think about it "increase the soup" does make sense for a submarine lowering into the water. The soup level, the water level, is increasing comparatively to the vessel.

[shesnake]

We Are Lady Parts season 2 episode 6 "Glass Ceiling Feeling" (2024) dir. Nida Manzoor

[martanis]

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Cast Recap Season 1

[marypickfords]

Women of the Resistance (Liliana Cavani, 1965)

[dduane]

“I can now say with absolute confidence that many AI systems have been trained on TV and film writers’ work. Not just on The Godfather and Alf, but on more than 53,000 other movies and 85,000 other TV episodes: Dialogue from all of it is included in an AI-training data set that has been used by Apple, Anthropic, Meta, Nvidia, Salesforce, Bloomberg, and other companies. I recently downloaded this data set, which I saw referenced in papers about the development of various large language models (or LLMs). It includes writing from every film nominated for Best Picture from 1950 to 2016, at least 616 episodes of The Simpsons, 170 episodes of Seinfeld, 45 episodes of Twin Peaks, and every episode of The Wire, The Sopranos, and Breaking Bad.”

😡

[incognitopolls]

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[389]

[royalarchivist]

Technoblade: I'd just lurk in his stream chat, and he'd mention like "Oh yeah, Technoblade–" blah blah blah, and I'd be like [Leans into the mic] "Hello." And he'd be like "HEH?!?!"

Phil: "Hi mate."

Technoblade: You thought you could say my name without me being there?

Phil: "I'm always watching, mate."

Technoblade: [Laughs]

[burgertv]

[roseillith]

PERSONAL PROBLEMS (1980) dir. BILL GUNN

[chronicsymptomsyndrome]

“alt text for more info” “turn on cations for more info” no actually this is not where more info goes. These have a very distinct purpose. There are plenty of other places for more info. If you’re going to make your post inaccessible, the least you could do is not use accessibility tools at your own leisure for whatever purpose you see fit.

[smoov-criminal]

was thinking about this earlier, i think it's fuckin stupid that speech to text software, subtitles, etc censor curse words by default. disabled people are not children, we can handle curse words of all fuckin things

and while we're at it, aac software should include curse words, again many aac users are not children and deserve the same options for communicating as speaking people do