For example, whenever I watch an American movie with Japanese subtitles: the translation kind of sucks since there are words translated literally word by word making zero sense or lack of taking account of visual context from a scene. Depends on who translated the dialog, it could be that translators didn’t watch the movie or understand the context in specific scenes.
I recall watching Clear & Present Danger (Harrison Ford) with JP sub, there was a piece of dialog where the commander of a special forces unit gave the orders on planting explosives in which he ordered them to “cook it” basically implying on detonating the trigger but the subtitles translated this as 料理しろ which is incorrect when you account the scene’s context.
Whether you speak German, French, Spanish or etc. are the translated subtitles crap when it comes to movies where colloquialisms (slang), jokes (humor) or wordplay (puns) are thrown into the mix while listening to the original English dub? It’s because subtitles only convey a message but can miss nuances from spoken dialog via the source language.
I feel like this was true in the 90s and 00s, but since the advent of really big movies like Marvel, cinemas are less stingy with subtitles. Small ones may only do dubs, but in big cities, you’ll find places that always have subs. I don’t think I’ve ever noticed any egregious translation shitshow in the subs - maybe precisely because the industry is already used to actually translating something you could say in French. At most, back in the 90s you would always get attempts at heavily localized expressions that verge on cultural erasure (Thanksgivings episodes were always “family reunion”), not so much blatant nonsense, but now we’re more comfortable with just doing proper translations. Unless the publisher just doesn’t care to put any money in this show.
I’ve no idea what the state of subbed TV shows is right now, though. I’m sure TV still prefers to air dubs, but the relevant channels have the option of switching between subbed and dubbed, and then there was the whole DVD/BR industry that still always had subs, and AFAIK that has always worked well. Like, maybe 30 years ago your favorite show had DVDs with no English track, dub only, but that shit stopped. I’m not sure how that industry has been doing in the recent years of streaming taking over, and I don’t even know if streaming services in France have sub options or dub only…