Small talk makes me sick ([info]cadeira) wrote,
@ 2009-06-18 10:55:00
Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend  Next Entry
Entry tags:language, silver screen

¿Qué? - Untertitel sind beglückend

For the last days I have been working extensively on a subtitling project. La decima vittima (The tenth victim) is an Italian film with Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress. Very James-Bond-like, 1965 social critique with laughs and a bit of sexy romance. The tag line actually is: 'It's the 21st century and they have a licence to kill' Dudun!
I got the German subtitles which were the result of a workshop at my university and had to put them into the film with Adobe Premiere and Encore for the cinema screening on sunday (anyone of you near Duesseldorf on that day? Entry is free. Next week Spanish film Padre Neustro.) It was a lot of fumbling with anti-aliasing of colors and fonts and codecs which meant fun and frustration was guarantied for all.
I´m really into the whole idea of subtitling movies and there are also aesthetic film theories about the whole perception side of it. (book tip: 'Subtitles: On the Foreignness of Film' published at Alphabet City. 'Taking subtitles as their point of departure, the thirty-two contributors to this unique collection consider translation, foreigness, and otherness in film culture.')
Ever since I watched the English version of 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' on which someone had put hard (not removeable) Swedish subtitles, I know that the Swedish word for 'girl' is 'flicka'. I thought it was an amazing to see how the brain deals with the superimposition of mere writing on a screen.
What are your thoughts on the aesthetics of subtitles? Do they distract you from following the actual pictures? I think it´s a whole different viewing experience and I´m absorbing two (or three when I´m watching english or french with dutch subtitles like on the ARTE channel) languages at a time and feel how they struggle in my brain for some kind of weird dominance. It´s thrilling to see how much you actually understand of a foreign language. Basically to get your way around in Spain/France/Italy you only need to know one Romanic language properly and the rest kind of comes on its own. At least when I´m reading Spanish or Italian stuff, I can extrapolate so much from German/English/French I understand a lot than I thought I would.
Also: Subtitles as a source of humour.


(12 comments) - (Post a new comment)


[info]muhsilisk
2009-06-18 11:18 am UTC (link)
Ah, thanks for distracting me from a fiery rant I was just about to write.

My first impression always is that subtitles can be really distracting. If I don't need them, if I'm, for instance, watching a German movie and having English subtitles (or vice versa), I'm incredibly annoyed. A while ago I was watching a German documentary that had English subtitles (this one) and I found it extremely hard to pay attention because I was checking the translation all the time.
The other thing is that if there are subtitles, I have to read them; even if I don't need them. Same with that documentary; I had to read those English subtitles, I don't know why. And of course I can't really concentrate on the pictures as much as I want to.

I only like subtitles for learning purposes. If I'm learning a language and I watch a movie in that language and then also have subtitles, I think this is a really good way to learn a language. But otherwise... no. I don't really like them. I want to concentrate on the whole film and subtitles put the main focus only on language, which kind of disturbs the experience of watching a film.

The list of subtitles as a source of humour reminds me of a documentary on the "Viva La Vega"-DVD by Kaizers Orchestra. One band member was talking to another (Norwegian, of course), I think it was about socks, and he just wouldn't stop. At some time the subtitles just changed into "bla bla bla..."
I think it went further on like this for about three minutes.


(...I still want to write that rant.)

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]cadeira
2009-06-21 10:34 am UTC (link)
I´m an awful person for inviting people to leave their opinion and not answering. Sorry.
My first real conscious encounter with subtitles was in the film 'L´auberge espagnole' where there were five or so languages in the shared flat. I remember coming out of the cinema grinning like mad and the subtitles were part of why I liked it so much. It had a huge influence on the comedic intentions of the film.
And I too read them even if I don´t need them but usually they help me to understand a bit more than I would without them. Americans mumble a lot and British people are faster than a TGV.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]georgeodowd
2009-06-18 07:38 pm UTC (link)
I tend to watch foreign films so frequently now that I really don't notice the subtitles anymore. At least, not when the soundtrack is in a language I don't know. Then I sort of seamlessly superimpose the English on top of it. If I'm watching a French film, however, a lot of times I will get distracted by a questionable or non-literal translation. I'm surprised by how often I will pick up on some subtle nuance in the French and find that it has been dropped from the English subtitle.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]cadeira
2009-06-21 10:42 am UTC (link)
Urgh. Sorry for being so late in answering!
What you say! It´s a marvel what the brain does. It´s nearly like it fades out the language you don´t understand and treats the subtitle like the spoken language. Unlike with dubbed audio where I can get really cross if they make stupid translations (I CAN SEE AT THEIR MOUTH SHAPED THEY DIDN`T SAY THAT, STUPID DUBBING PEOPLE), subtitlers have like fifty-five rules they have to look out for. The interconnection of the two language centers in the brain with the visual center ask for very specific moments before and after a cut for the subtitle to change. Also duration, colours, character counts of subtitles - it´s all so complex and restrictive that I can see why sometimes they would change things around. Like, they couldn´t give you one metaphor after another in fast succession because the brain wouldn´t be able to compute them.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]georgeodowd
2009-06-22 05:07 pm UTC (link)
You know, I hadn't thought about it that way, but it totally makes sense. About the rules and cognitive load and whatnot. Now I am all interested in reading more about language processing in spoken v. written.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]usomitai
2009-06-18 09:50 pm UTC (link)
My feelings on subtitles depends on a lot of things!

If I don't speak the language the film was made in, then I definitely want them-- though I'm happy that with DVDs, we also get the option to remove them, case I want to gawk at an especially pretty moment and/or vid.

When I need subtitles, I like them best in white with a black outline around each other; that way, no matter what colors there are in the background, you can still read them. I've seen a lot of movies with white-only subtitles, and when the screen got bright, I couldn't read anything.

If the movie is in English or Portuguese, I often prefer having the subtitles on anyway, since often I'll not understand what was said, particularly if they talk v. fast or if it's not an accent I'm familiar with. Sometimes it's a bit bothersome, though, to have them on, since my eyes are drawn automatically to the text; I usually end up reading more than listening.

If I'm learning the language the movie is in, I loooooove subtitles. I'd hump them, if I could! <3 It's a great learning exercise.

YAY TL;DR. :D

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]cadeira
2009-06-21 10:51 am UTC (link)
As I´ve mentioned above the first time I too wanted to "hump" subtitles was after watching 'L´auberge espagnole' or 'Una casa de locos' in the cinema. I can only recommend the film. It´s like it was made especially to cognitively work with subtitles. For the film I´ve just subtitled I´ve chosen a light pink/almost white text with dark brown outlines because if you take black/white the contrast is so stark that you´ll get ugly pixels aroud the text.
May I ask what your native language is because to be perfectly honest I still haven´t figured it out.
If I watch films alone I take my time to go back and watch scenes without subtitles if I think I have missed pretty pictures but I usually don´t do it when I watch with other people. I would feel like such a nerd in those cases XD

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]usomitai
2009-06-22 06:02 pm UTC (link)
Sounds like a good choice, on the subtitles for that film. :D I'll see if I can get a copy of my own, to watch (with subtitles in a language I'd understand ^_~).

"Native language" is a strange term to apply to me... English is my first language, which I learned because when I was a baby we lived in England. However, I am Brazilian-- I was born here, my parents are from here, etc-- so Portuguese is my native language, even though I learned it only at age 8ish.

If I watch films alone I take my time to go back and watch scenes without subtitles if I think I have missed pretty pictures but I usually don´t do it when I watch with other people.

It's cool that you go back! :D I would, too, but I'm too, erm, lazy and impatient.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]silke09
2009-06-18 11:17 pm UTC (link)
A year ago I watched maybe 3 or 4 movies a week, and almost all of them with subtitles, even the English ones. Around that time I remember at least two dreams in which there was subtitle-like writing. :) Like seeing tetris blocks when you close your eyes.
Like georgedowd I now take subtitles in without really noticing them unless something is very obviously wrong.
And I´m really glad about this, because by now I just can´t watch dubbed movies any more. Just the other day I decided to watch Che by Soderbergh in German to accommodate a friend´s friend and it was so horrible, I couldn´t believe I used to think it didn´t really matter.
The voices were incredibly wrong for the actors, half the time I had trouble knowing who was speaking, and worst of all, they used that terrible overly correct German you only get in dubbed movies or tv shows.
But, though I don´t want to keep harping on that movie, I also watched let the right one in in German and it was just fine. Probably partly because Swedish is so close to German.
I´m not sure I can see subtitles as an aesthetic plus. But I also think it´s amazing that the mind can process two languages at once and somehow mesh them together. I think it has something to do with the fact that one input is visual and the other auditory.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]cadeira
2009-06-21 10:59 am UTC (link)
I had a great experience yesterday. My bf who doesn´t really speak good English has succumbed to my wish to watch the films and series we have in English. A day before we watched Thelma and Louise and Susan Sarandon has this awful Southern American accent of which you don´t understand anything if your ears are not trained. And he moaned that he didn´t like watching films if he didn´t get 5% of it and then yesterday evening we switched on the TV (we positively never watch the actual TV programme) and there was a dubbed movie with Jean Reno or something. And I just sat there thinking "Oh gawd... this is so stupid. I think I might bleeding internally from the stupidity of the dubbing (and the movie itself.)" And then suddenly he switched it off, glaring at me like I have infected him with the "Dubbing is so silly"-virus. XD I loved it.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]silke09
2009-06-21 01:21 pm UTC (link)
I don´t know if they award you some kitchen appliance for sucessfully recruiting someone to the Omu, like we gay people get a toaster oven, but there really should be.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]cadeira
2009-06-21 07:28 pm UTC (link)
I already wear a halo, that´ll do.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

(12 comments) - (Post a new comment)

Create an Account
Forgot your login or password?
Login w/ OpenID
English • Español • Deutsch • Русский…