Subtitled films sometimes seem to constitute a genre in their own right. They appeal to a certain type of person, and they turn off many others.
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It is generally assumed that subtitled films are intellectual and worthy: a subtitled film in black and white is even better. Every so often, a crossover comes along. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a case in point. It delights subtitle fans by being foreign and unusual, and it delights (nearly) everybody else with its good looks, sweeping romanticism and fight scenes (becoming one of the few subtitled films to make it to the top of Britain's box office ratings).
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But however much we enjoy subtitled films, there is always the sense that we might be missing something. Sometimes this has unintended artistic effect. Take the translation scene in Life is Beautiful, where a German guard asks for somebody to translate the concentration camp rules into Italian. Up steps the hero, who doesn't have a word of German, and he proceeds to invent a set of rules for the game he has convinced his son they are taking part in. At least, that's what the subtitles tell us. A man barks in German; another man prattles in Italian; words appear in English at the bottom of the screen. Somebody could be having a laugh here.
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At least subtitles are better than dubbing, we might think. But in fact dubbing is a far better way of simply translating dialogue. While no translation is perfect, dubbing at least allows a complete translation. Unless dialogue is very sparse, subtitles have to be edited down to give people time to read them and to avoid cluttering up the screen. Nonetheless, most people over the age of 11 seem to prefer them.
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We would rather have the rough translation provided by subtitles, combined with the authentic voice of the person we're watching. Implicitly, we recognise that on film and TV (as in life), what is said is often less important than how it is said and by whom.
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Apart from 11-year olds and slow readers, the only people who prefer dubbing are people with poor eyesight. Conversely, people who cannot hear depend on subtitles not only for dialogue but to convey the entire soundtrack, from vocal nuance to music and explosions. This is, of course, far more demanding. (I should know - I used to write subtitles for a living.) As well as relating as much as possible of what speakers are saying, subtitles must indicate who is speaking when this is not obvious, and also how they are speaking; all according to rigorous timing guidelines and without obscuring the picture.
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There are subtle advantages to having things written down. Subtitlers spend time agonising over mumbles and whispers that most hearing viewers will simply ignore. It is easier to remember names when you have seen them spelled out, and nuances of dialogue and plot will often become clearer, too. And how many Teletubbies viewers even know that there is a correct spelling of 'Eh-oh'?
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These advantages tend to be lost in live broadcasts, which are subtitled by stenographers who have to lie down in darkened rooms after 10 minutes work. Inevitably, these submarines are incomplete and riddled with spelling an udder miastakes. Rather unfairly, people judge live subtitles by the same standards as any other written text, and often complain about the stenographer's typos even when the actual speaker is a jabbering idiot who cannot string a sentence together.
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Ultimately, speaking and writing are two different things, and one can never fully substitute for the other. On top of a pathological need to fix unsightly line breaks, then, my subtitling experience gave me a hearty distrust of other people's textual interpretations of dialogue.
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The problem is not just about editing:
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Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player/ That struts and frets his hour upon the stage/ And then is heard no more: it is a tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,/ Signifying nothing.
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might become:
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Life's but a walking shadow. A player struts/ his hour on stage and then is heard no more - / it is a tale told by an idiot,/ full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
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Now, that's not too drastic, is it? There's no law that says I can't give Shakespeare a bit of a trim. The trouble is that you just spent several seconds reading it instead of watching the actor working his tights off. This is a play after all, not just a book. So what about:
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DEPRESSED: Life's but a shadow. One struts/ one's hour on stage and is heard no more -
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BITTER: it is a tale told by an idiot,/ full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
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You see? It's not the bard I'm killing here; it's poor Macbeth. Even if you could have the whole text on screen without obscuring the picture altogether, you would miss a lot by reading it. While subtitles are certainly worth having, there is no getting away from the fact that not being able to hear the soundtrack on films and TV is a handicap.
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By the same token, not understanding the language a film is made in will often drastically limit your appreciation of it. So if you really want to be intellectual, then next time you rent an Ingmar Bergman video, nip into the library and check out a copy of Swedish in Ten Easy Lessons to go with it. You might be surprised at what you've been missing.
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Dolan Cummings is publications editor at the Institute of Ideas, and editor of Culture Wars. He is also the editor of Reality TV: How Real Is Real?, Hodder Murray, 2002 (buy this book from Amazon (UK) or Amazon (USA)).
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spiked-issue: TV
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