#subtitle Great News S02E04 | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

essays · 7 years ago

Text

Netflix Users Deserve Better Subtitles

I'm finally publishing this draft I've had since season 2 of Daredevil. I originally decided against publishing it, since I wanted to be sure about the point I was making in order to avoid pissing off a group of people for whom these subtitles might be designed. After finishing Defenders, however, it's clear that this is a serious issue that can be extremely detrimental to many people's viewing experience.

I have cleaned up some of the language and either finished or deleted some unfinished thoughts.

I finished watching season 2 of Daredevil a couple of days ago---and went straight back to rewatching it from season 1.

Because the show features a blind protagonist, it has come under closer scrutiny for how accessible the show is for audiences with disabilities. One of the things to come out of this was descriptive audio for visually impaired viewers, after the show was criticized at launch for ironically leaving out a relevant audience demographic. Be sure to check out Polygon's article on Daredevil's descriptive audio; it shows that Netflix didn't half-ass this, but went above and beyond.

What's also worth noticing is how fast Netflix were able to add high-quality descriptive audio to the show. Netflix are able to do great things if they want to.

Subtitles

Being slightly hard of hearing, and owning a home theatre surround system whose calibration is busted, I find myself relying on subtitles more often than I care for. Like descriptive audio, if you half-ass the subtitles for a movie or show, that half-assed product becomes your audience's experience of the finished work.

The first thing about subtitles is that they are not synonymous with closed captions. A third option you might see is subtitles for the hearing-impaired, which is usually a misguided conflation with closed captions.

A lot of, if not most, studios don't grasp the distinction. I can have trouble making out five words in a 50-minute episode, but I don't need someone to tell me that a car crashed into a wall. Unfortunately, I am usually only given the option of closed captions or no subtitles at all, sometimes because I'm a European, and we tend to get the worst in subtitle options; I consider myself lucky if can get any subtitles in the original English.

Netflix

Unfortunately, many of Netflix's original shows are particularly bad---yes, even with the English options.

People in English-speaking countries are most likely unaware of the reputation Netflix has in other countries of atrocious translations---and I'm talking Google Translate bad. Fortunately, their original English subtitles aren't the afterthought their translated counterparts are, but subtitles are still not a main priority for Netflix, given that they can't be bothered to get it perfect for what is literally their #1 show according to their own ratings data.

Like descriptive audio, subtitles and closed captions are not either-or; there is an art and a craft to subtitles, and failing to understand this devalues the experience for those of us who, whether we like it or not, live at the mercy of subtitles.

In most situations, I only struggle to make out a handful of words an episode, and perhaps that's just my iPod generation for you. Sometimes, under such conditions where the sound-mixing sucks (HELLO CHRISTOPHER NOLAN), hearing what's being said gets a lot harder. There are different taxonomies of subtitles, and we might consider whether the distinction between subtitles and closed captions suffices. Right now, it's as if there's an option for people who can hear 100% and another for people who can't hear 50%; why not one for 99%?

I imagine other people also just use subtitles for foreign languages they can't make out entirely. These explicit closed captions are overkill for that as well.

This either-or approach of nothing at all versus something that reads like the verbatim screenplay is borderline offensive and a dumb way to cut corners for a billion-dollar corporation like Netflix. I feel O.K. making this point with Netflix, because with them, we know the reason is not with a lack of money and resources.

Getting It Right

Use proper typographic quotes and dashes

Use ’ instead of '; — instead of --. I'm sure some subtitle systems don't support this, but put the same effort into the typography of your subtitles as you would want others to do with the books you read.

Be consistent

Speaking of notation, S02E04 of Daredevil in particular suffers from what, to me, just comes across as half-assed subtitle formatting. Sentences are broken up into one of these arbitrary fashions:

The way to do it... | is such-and-such

The way to do it | -is such-and-such (no space after the dash)

The way to do it | is such-and-such

Maybe there's a system to this, but if this is indeed the case, shouldn't it be one that's clearer to the audience? Hopefully there is a system I just have yet to see.

Don't spoil names and introductions of characters

On a show like Daredevil, you often get subtitles like:

[Masked Man]: Grumble, grumble, grumble

While this is a nice service to help people using the subtitles, it can also spoil the moment when certain characters are revealed; if a new character is revealed for the first time, or if they suddenly surprise the protagonist and audience, naming the character will ruin that moment. They often do that with these shows.

When a character is named in the subtitles before they've been introduced, it can also be confusing, leading viewers will think they missed something.

I'm also not a big fan of how the brackets at the start of a sentence are uncapitalized unless they wrap a proper name.

Also, it's weird for Daredevil to use "Masked Man" for our protagonist, since that's a description of him from the perspective of someone who doesn't have the same knowledge as the audience. It's a common refrain amongst viewers.

Don't spoil interruptions and events

Sudden interruptions and events are supposed to catch the viewer by surprise. A few subtitle antipatterns betray this maxim:

Dashes

(Conspiculously) short sentences

Undelayed subtitles---more on this later

You may have seen dashes (--) already; Daredevil S01E13 has one, but I don't want to include a screencap to reveal it for you. It's not a major event, but it has the effect of giving the viewer a brief scare.

The event is essentially subtitled like so:

We made it, we are are finally free--

This approach to subtitles means depriving an audience of visual and auditory cues and surprises.

Sometimes, they, obviously, spoil huge moments.

Subtitles are meant to support the storytelling, not betray it.

While using dashes is a special kind of explicit spoiler, subtitles can also spoil a moment implicitly. I've gone into the pitfalls of spoilers, and it's not easy to avoid, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't put in any effort.

I can see I had some more unfinished points, but I'll just leave this here and publish at 2AM, since I am clearly horrendous at ever finishing any drafts.

What's also worth noticing is how fast Netflix were able to add high-quality descriptive audio to the show. Netflix are able to do great things if they want to.

#subtitles #netflix #daredevil #defenders

19 notes · View notes