It’s either AI conquering their position or an inexperienced human translator who probably hasn’t seen the film they’re translating, one of the two. Consistency is also key, since characters may use that term multiple times in the movie at different intervals, so maintaining the same correct translation is vital to avoid confusion.

However, what happens is that there are different word choices for the same term. For example, in Japanese there’s two words that mean “weapon” in English but have different connotations:

• 兵器 (ordnance, as in military hardware) - think of tanks, missiles, nukes
• 武器 (arms, think of sidearms or rifles) - basically a weapon you can use

The issue is that when watching a war film with subs, they get used interchangeably when that’s not correct, despite both words having the same definition: what matters is context. There was a scene in one war epic where the soldier said to the enemy “drop your weapons!” (武器を捨てろ) but the subs used the wrong variant 兵器 when the enemy is only armed with a normal rifle.

I mean, are there words in Finnish despite having the same meaning or translation in English: they are used differently based on a associated context and can subtitles still get it wrong?

Speaking of that, there was another scene from that movie I’ve mentioned where Harrison Ford’s character was reading through government files and one of them had the subheading Infantry Battalion as it was about the possibility of sending boots on the ground, which again in Japanese was translated as 歩兵小隊 (Infantry Platoon) when the correct word is in fact 大隊 (Battalion) as a platoon is smaller than a battalion. How does the translator not know the difference between the two?

It’s the same with military ranks as well: like I was watching an episode of 24, there was a scene where Jack Bauer contacts a surviving sailor on the submarine as the CTU were about to stop terrorists from deploying nukes. The sailor had a petty officer rank which was subtitled as 軍曹 (sergeant, in the army) when he’s in the navy! It should’ve been subtitled as 兵曹長, like the how does the translator not know the difference between a sergeant & petty officer?

Yeah, technical terms can be a bitch to translate when the translator isn’t experienced.

Like what I wrote in the thread: I was watching a Harrison Ford movie with Japanese subtitles and they translated “cook it” (as in “press the detonator”) said by a military commander during a certain scene leading up to an action sequence (special forces were about to raid a cartel compound in Colombia) literally as 料理しろ which literally means “Let’s cook” (like in cooking food at a kitchen) which sounds completely stupid when you take visual context into account. Subtitles can suck, even in Finnish for example since it’s a different language from English.

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Does that explain why Brazilian people are bad at speaking English? Also, there’s no “Th” sound in Portuguese. Don’t tell me, do they dub foreign songs into Portuguese too?

Subtitles isn’t only relating to dialog, but visual context (when you see a character doing something, the translation should also match their actions).

No wonder why English proficiency in France is bad despite being the most visited country.

I’m mainly talking about the reverse (English movies with French subtitles) as mentioned on the main thread, but can that also be wrong? Like for example, you can watch a movie set in the American South (full of it’s own slang) spoken in US English and won’t be translated well in French.

There’s a news segment about it from Australia