What I find about watching sub-titled movies is that I wind up concentrating on the bottom 2 inches of the screen, and not paying enough attention to what the actors are doing or their facial expressions. I miss things, in other words.
Fahim, on the other hand, dealt with it by learning Tamil and then Hindi to watch Tamil and Hindi movies without having to bother with the subtitles.
I’m wondering if that’s what I’m going to have to do. 😛
We don’t get dubbed movies here very often. We had one the other day, and it was kinda funny. The original language was English, but it was a Hong Kong release of the movie with Chinese dubbed. Chinese was the default language (not just for voice – for all menu selections, too!), and the Chinese voiceover was fantastic quality. Fahim switches it over to English, and it’s muffled and almost impossible to figure out what’s being said.
And it didn’t have English subtitles. Go figure.
Oh hey, I just remembered something else.
Some of the English movies we have to watch sub-titled because it’s a camera copy and the sound isn’t that great. But then, whenever the guy in Thailand or Malaysia or wherever it is who does the sub-titles is doesn’t understand the word, he just fills it in with whatever he *thinks* he heard.
So if the line was, "Go ahead. Make my day." It might wind up sub-titled as, "Go to lead. Cake my lei." Or something equally or more stupid than that. It’s amusing, but also frustrating. Cuz, after all, what’s the point in having sub-titles at all if that’s what you’re offering?
That’s part of what I find fascinating about foreign films. Sometimes, Fahim watches Hindi, Tamil, or Sinhalese movies that don’t have subtitles. And sometimes, when I’m sitting beside him and I watch a few minutes, I can get the gist of what’s going on by speech patterns. Granted, facial expressions and other body language helps, but inflections help a whole lot more.
And I’m also reminded of the James Bond surfing movie with subtitles that talk about Confuscious and red roses. Like THAT ever happened in any James Bond movie! Explanation: sometimes, the wrong subtitles are put onto the wrong film. Or closing credits. Or both. *shrugs* We have about a half dozen or so movies that all have the same closing credits. Eh.
