#also i'm approximating the subs and the movie lines bc i simply dont have netflix anymore lol

[aranarumei]

this is smthing i've been thinking abt recently but like. as someone who is has been a fan of like. various kinds of foreign media since i was pretty young (and by foreign here i mean things made outside of the usa and not in english, which is obviously not the same meaning of foreign for everyone) i am, in some ways, quite happy at the growing popularity for things i like. yknow anime, bollywood movies, and the like. but there is this growing frustration at seeing like... how the translation is treated, i suppose?

everyone has their different preferences for how translation should be done, of course, but nowadays it just feels like. translation happens so fast, for so many things, to the point that i lot of things i love i often feel don't get a fair shot. like. i'd say the extent of my hindi knowledge is less than 20 words. yet i will watch hindi-language movies and KNOW the subtitles are incorrect, because first off, there's plain english dialogue thats just not being relayed, or even the few words i can catch are off.

i won't speak on nuances of translation when it comes to japanese or mandarin, because it's just absolutely not my expertise, but like. there's this scene at the end of 3 idiots where the characters meet this guy who'd been nicknamed as "millimetre" when they were in university. and when they reunite, the subtitles i was watching had him say something to the effect of "i've grown up" or the like. and anyone who can like... hear the words he's speaking will catch that the line he says has the words "millimetre" and "centimetre" and its like... ahh! ah!! he's making a quip about growing from a millimetre to a centimetre! and me, who has, again, zero knowledge of hindi, can understand that's happening. but these subtitles just... breeze past that line so easily and lose like, some of the wit that makes this movie so charming. i dunno. it's just... sad, i guess. i feel insulted when i see subtitles like that, and i always wonder if people who are perhaps bilingual and fluent in both the translated and original language see misunderstandings propagate due to shoddy, rushed translation (as apart from just. differing readings of a work) and just... idk. i bet it's not a great feeling.