DVD subtitles

[Josh2007]

I have enjoyed all 8 series of the sci-fi series Stargate SG1 and the related 3 series of Stargate Atlantis, and maybe owing to China's space programme, I think these series are quite fascinating to Chinese at the moment, and I have lent them to many people. But the subtitles are really, really bad:

There was one part in one DVD, where someone said "if we survive this, you are THROUGH", meaning of course that the person would be fired/sacked/dismissed. The translation said "你通过了". Another part said "that has a nice ring to it",commenting on a odd choice of words. That was translated into "上面有个漂亮的圆环". It is a source of considerable frustration to me that some of these subtitles cause Chinese viewers to misunderstand key parts of the plot...

[liuzhou]

You are lucky that the translations at least relate to the movie you are watching. I have some DVDs where the subtitles are from totally different movies.

[mr.stinky]

picked up an irish zombie movie last night (how come so many zombie flicks in the

dvd shops anyways?), it was originally in english - well, a sort of almost english

they speak in ireland - subtitled in chinese, and then it appears (from comparing the

translations) that the chinese subs were then translated into english. at times it

seemed there was no relation to the action on the screen. the film would be 'dead

meat', re-translated as 'meat of the dead.'

[muyongshi]

It bugs me too and it always makes me think that maybe I could make money in just being and editor for translations but then I think about how they will just look at the bottom line and I will be way to expensive...

[shanghaikai]

I've run across several DVDs where not only the Chinese subtitles are poor translations of the English dialogue but the English subtitles are poor translations of the Chinese subtitles rather than transcriptions of the actual English dialogue!

I hate DVDs in China.