Subtitlers, We Salute You

Linda Jaivin is a subtitler—what she defines as “the most unglamorous job in one of the world’s most glamorous professions." But it is also a necessary one if a film is going to achieve a broad international viewership.  Moviegoers do not applaud the subtitler at the end of the film.  There are no awards categories for those who translate the dialogue in order to help the film reach a broad and international audience.  No paparazzi, no glitz, no Blockbuster employees aspire to follow in the footsteps of the subtitler. Subtitlers are behind the scenes unsung heroes.  And if they have done their job correctly, you won't even think of them as you watch the movie.  Achieving this, As Jaivin discusses in a recent article in The Age, is no easy task.  Some subtitlers do not even get to watch the films they translate which certainly makes it difficult to get the translation correct, as they often miss the subtle gestures and tones, which can totally alter the dialogue.  In her effort to justify and perhaps gain more satisfaction for her profession, Jaivin looks to Subtitles: On the Foreignness of Film, a collection of essays edited by Atom Egoyan and Ian Balfour for some inspiration:

It's got a kooky, "widescreen" format and plenty of enigmatic illustrations, as well as a lot of theoretical or simply perplexing chapters such as the one in which (quoting from the Contents) "the artist sketches the optical soundtrack of his own voice reading a poem, and then tries to play it back". It also has a few fabulous essays about the art and craft of subtitling.

One is by French/English/Italian subtitler Henri Behar (Zelig, The Hours, Life is Beautiful, Chicago, Boyz n the Hood, Shakespeare in Love), who likens subtitling to "playing 3-D Scrabble in two languages". He calls it "a form of cultural ventriloquism" and explains why a good subtitler is an invisible subtitler: "the focus must remain on the puppet, not the puppeteer".

Here is a brief excerpt about the craft of being a subtitler from Behar's essay, "Cultural Ventriloquism." from Alphabet City's Subtitles:

A large part of the basic process of subtitling is about as seductive as plumbing.  The film, transferred onto a time-coded VHS video, goes through the spotting process.  The dialogue (a printout of which is provided byt he filmmakers) is broken down into sequences whose lengths determine how many words can be printed across the screen.  Rules apply, some iron-clad: 1 character per 2 frames, less than 40 characters per line (space and punctuation included), no more than 2 lines per subtitle, and never go over a cut, unless absoultely forced to.  The spotter is a true artist: spotting requres a strong sense of language and extreme sensitivity to the rythm and flow of a film.  With a bad spotting, the subtitler's difficulty increases ten-fold—with a good spotting, it's almost a breeze. 

The lines are then translated, adapted to conform to spotting constraints, and reconciled with the time codes.  The subtitles are synchronized with the dialogue and action, and tested in simulation (a trial run, so to speak).  Refinements are made—the simulation is actually the last rewrite. Eventually, the final text is laser-etched on the print.

As Carrie Rickey, the Philadelphia Inquirer film critic, once put it, "Subtitling is a complicated tango during which [the subtitler] dances with the film until both are equal partners."  You first watch the film a couple of times and make a few notes: In scene 12, "Get out of here!" is used not as "Leave this room at once!" but as "Are you kidding?"  Then, setting the tape aside, you grab the dialogue list and start working on the text itself, trying to make sure you get it all right, checking out the puns and other Jeux de mots, focusing on the translational problems.  It is crucial that the dialogue list must be absolutely accruate.

This is not always the case.

[snip]

Subtitling is a form of cultural ventriloquism, and the focus must remain on the puppet, not the puppeteer.  Our task as subtitlers is to create subliminal subtitles to in sync with the mood and rhythm of the movie that the audience isn't even aware it is reading.  We want not to be noticed.  If a subtitle is inadequate, clumsy, or distracting, it makes everyone look bad, but first and foremost the actors and the filmmakers.  It can impact the film's potential career.