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French subtitles | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Music, Movies, TV & Radio |  | |
| juman Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 5209 days ago 101 posts - 129 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: French | Message 1 of 10 14 June 2012 at 6:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I have been watching quite a lot of french film with subtitles and does anyone know why
the subtitle most of the time is so far off from what's actually is said? The subtitle does seem to be close to the same meaning but the wording is way off... and this in quite a lot of the movies I have seen. And much more then I have seen in other languages... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5000 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 2 of 10 15 June 2012 at 4:10am | IP Logged | |||||
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Depends on the maker of subtitles. If you are getting all your French subtitles from one
source, it is quite possible you are taking them all from the same person who just happens to not be too good at making them. Try another subtitle website, or just try to search it a bit for alternatives. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| juman Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 5209 days ago 101 posts - 129 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: French | Message 3 of 10 15 June 2012 at 7:20am | IP Logged | |||||
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These are subtitles that comes with the movie.... I haven't downloaded them
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| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4630 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 4 of 10 15 June 2012 at 10:43am | IP Logged | |||||
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I have noticed the same thing especially for French movies. I think it partly has to do with timing. To be able to keep the space of spoken French, they abbreviate, cut out words or chose different wordings to convey the meaning.
As an aside, I work in French and English, and it stirkes me how the same text is always 20-30% longer in French than in English. Seems that you need to use a lot more words in French to convey the same meaning. That may also be a challenge when writing subtitles. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| juman Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 5209 days ago 101 posts - 129 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: French | Message 5 of 10 15 June 2012 at 12:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks Ogrim, that could explain some of it... I just find it interesting (and a bit
frustrating as I need the text to follow the dialog). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4669 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 6 of 10 15 June 2012 at 1:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I believe it is because the primary audience of French movies with French subtitles are deaf or hard-of-hearing people (and not language learners). For those people, subtitles are the only way access the spoken content of the movie.
As noted above, it needs to be short enough to be read quickly (and also not to take all the space on the screen?), and not to reproduce exactly what was said. You can consider that as a "translation" from Spoken French to Written French, just like a translation from French to English would be completely different words. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5523 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 10 15 June 2012 at 7:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I worked really hard to find movies with good subtitles (or even any subtitles,
and it's not easy. You may have more luck with recent TV series on DVD, which generally seem to have subtitles, which in turn occasionally correspond with the dialog. *sigh* Right now, I'm relying heavy on a box set of Buffy contre les vampires from Amazon.fr and this marvellous discovery: Buffy transcripts! There's also a set of Amelie subs floating around on the internet. If you find any other cool series or movies with word-for-word subtitles or transcripts, please do share. :-) Edited by emk on 15 June 2012 at 7:05pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| PillowRock Groupie United States Joined 4725 days ago 87 posts - 151 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 8 of 10 15 June 2012 at 7:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
Naturally, what all counts as a "cool movie" will be a matter of personal taste. However, quoting myself / re-posting what I posted in the other "TL subtitles" thread:
Maybe the reason that those sourd et malentendante subtitles stay truer to the spoken dialog than most is that they are comedies where the style of humor relies very heavily on the exact phrasings? Note: They do still sometimes shorten a quick flurry of words, such as taking a very quick "Non, non, non, monsieur" and transcribing it simply as "Non". That is one that I don't think would throw off a language student, though. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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