Even the Subtitler Is Stumped: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

 

A subtrope of [[Fun with Subtitles]].

 

* An ad for the PSP version of [[Rock Band]], translating British slang for American viewers, which ends with "????".

* This is also used for several commercials that involve the memetically [[The Unintelligible|unintelligible]] [[Ozzy Osbourne]].

* There was a salsa ad that involved two people speaking very rapid-fire Spanish. The subtitles were basically laconic versions ("I like it. It's good") of what the people were actually saying.

 

* One [[Fan Sub]] of ''[[Digimon Frontier]]'' ran into trouble trying to decipher Duskmon's [[Gratuitous German]] line in episode 27 when he [[Mind Probe|begins probing Kouji's memories]]. What the subs say at that point is basically just an educated guess as no one, ''not even native German speakers'', had any clue what the heck Duskmon was trying to say, and it didn't sound even vaguely like [http://wikimon.net/Duskmon any confirmed terminology associated with him].

* One of the Chinese subs (the official ones) of ''[[Keroro Gunsou]]'' seemed to have trouble subbing Sumomo's song [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWCKgRJsJtA "My Beloved Shooting Star"]. A lot of question marks are seen during her performance.

* A set of subtitles for the first [[Rebuild of Evangelion]] movie the background text during the first launch sequence is translated as "ballsballsballsballs".

 

* ''[[Scott Pilgrim]]'' often has expository subtitles for characters, but not even the subtitles know Ramona's age, or much else about her or about other mysterious characters. On one occasion when random background characters are talking, one girl is given a name and the other is labeled, "I don't know this girl". This might indicate that the subtitles are from Scott's point of view.

** And then again, Scott learns that Knives Chau had turned 18 ''from'' the subtitles.

** The DVD commentary reveals that Pitt came up with the gibberish on his own and even he has no idea what he's supposed to be saying. There is an option on the DVD to turn on "Pikey Subtitles," which explain what his and other Pikey characters are saying, but at one point even ''they'' are stumped, and resort to the aforementioned "???"

* ''[[Godzilla]] Vs Mechagodzilla'''s Tristar subs have ??? whenever the subject of space titanium is brought up.

* Happens in ''The Comebacks'', while a bunch of locals are talking to the new coach in a barber shop.

* In the Soviet movie ''The Diamond Arm'', the foreign smugglers speak nonsensical gibberish dubbed into Russian in the background. Eventually they get into a heated debate, obviously starting to call each other names, and the translator says in a deadpan voice, "What follows is untranslatable wordplay using local idiomatic expressions."

* In a deleted scene on the ''[[Remember the Titans]]'' DVD, Coach Yoast enters a church with a black congregation singing "Leaning On The Everlasting Arms". The subtitles seem to think the lyric is "He Is Of The Everlasting Arms". They also think "peace of mind" is "piece of mind", and so on.

* The only DVD release of 1938 French film ''The Baker's Wife'' is absolutely terrible with its subtitles. It's like the subtitler watched the movie once and just didn't put in anything he couldn't understand. The worst is the baker, who doesn't exactly enunciate his lines, and so the subtitler leaves out many of his lines (and he's the main character!), including what one assumes is an absolutely beautiful speech at the end.

* Due to poor sound quality, bits of the German film ''[[Violent Shit]]'' remain unsubtitled.

 

* Even a ''book'' did this! [[The Daily Show]]'s ''America: The Book'' gave us a frustrated translator trying to tell us what all of the Australian slang in ''Waltzing Matilda'' meant, ending with "English-speaking country, my ass".

* The only translator's note in the French edition of ''[[Good Omens]]'' occurs on page 401 out of 466. It reads "Ici, le traducteur rend les armes et se borne à signaler qu'en argot américain, le mot ''faggot'' désigne un homosexuel", or "Here, the translator surrenders and will merely point out that ''faggot'' is an American slang word for homosexual". This is the scene where Shadwell misunderstands Newt about burning people.

** To be fair, it's a tough book to understand it even in English.

 

* The Eddie Murphy skit "Buckwheat Sings" - or rather, "Buh-weet Sings" - from ''[[Saturday Night Live]]''. When Buckwheat starts singing "Bette Davis Eyes," the caption just says, "?????" because he's so unintelligible.

** In another sketch, a TV translator working live for a Gorbachev speech gets confused, mixed up, and discombobulated, with humorous results. He finally pretends that Gorbachev is saying that he's so ticked at the translator that he's going to switch into unintelligible nonsense. Better yet, the sketch is partly a jab at the then-fledgling Fox network.

** They are speaking too fast for ''Liz''. The subtitles represent what ''she'' understands, i.e. not much.

** There was also the episode where Jack demonstrated how handsome people think they can speak French, but actually can't. He says something in French which gets translated to random letters in the subtitles.

* In the ''[[Royal Pains]]'' episode "TB Or Not TB," Evan tries to interpret for an Italian girl with his rudimentary Berlitz-course Italian. The subtitles for his speech are ungrammatical and in a wobbly [[Useful Notes/Fonts|font]]; the subtitles for her speech start off legible, and then degenerate into "Etc.... Etc.... Etc...." as she speaks too fast for him.

* There's a scene in ''[[Scrubs]]'' when Dr. Cox is talking to his young son Jack. He points out that as Jack is getting older, his baby talk is getting more and more comprehensible. Jack then says something subtitled as "I like pizza... ??????... lightning!"

* The reality show ''[[Solitary]]'' used this one. One challenge involved wearing a ball gag for as long as possible. Subtitles were used to translate the mumbling, but at one point, it turned into "???"

* This is played with in ''[[Father Ted]]'', where a woman is singing on TV, accompanied by another woman who is signing the song lyrics. When the singer gets to the line "Women rule the land of T?na n?", the woman signing simply shrugs and gives up.

* One Discovery channel documentary-esque show about the various theories of the origin of life had a hearing-impaired closed caption that was apparently being typed as the show went on, rather than being prepared beforehand. The transcriber apparently did not know the word "panspermia" and just skipped over it. As you can imagine, the good half of the show devoted to the panspermia hypothesis was painful to read.

* ''[[Lost]]'' frequently aired clip shows to help viewers catch up on important plot points before a season premiere, or after a long break between new episodes. These were usually narrated by a cast member or the showrunners, and those in charge of the closed captioning didn't benefit from having the script ahead of time like they did with the actual episodes. This once caused a narrator's statement that "Jack assumed Faraday's plan" to get subtitled as "JACK ASSED FARADAY'S PLAN."

* [[Skins]] has Jals rapping brothers talking in slang. This is sometimes subtitled in the regular episodes and then even with completely different lines as what they are saying. The DVD subtitles most of the time manage to transcript what they say but a rap song in season two was cut short one line in with the captioning [fast rap].

* At least a few times on ''[[The Osbournes]]'', the closed caption would simply say "Ozzy mumbling".

* In the video for ''[[The D Generation]]'''s "Five in a Row", they ran sign language translation for a parody of James Reyne that featured the translator giving up and signing "I can't understand him either".

 

* Michael McIntyre once claimed to have seen a nature documentary in which [[David Attenborough]] found and named a new species of fish. The problem was that, since it was a late-night repeat, the show was being translated into sign language by an interpreter, who apparently hadn't been prepared for this. When the newly-discovered fish was revealed and dubbed, the guy in the corner panicked, and resorted to ''miming the fish''.

* Ventriloquist [[Jeff Dunham]] has a bit in one of his routines in which his puppet Peanut claims to have deliberately rattled off a string of nonsense words, and then ''pretended'' to talk without actually saying anything, in order to confuse a group of deaf people watching the show with the help of a sign language interpreter.

* An episode of ''[[SpongeBob SquarePants]]'' has Spongebob and Squidward traversing an endless wasteland to deliver a pizza, while an increasingly exhausted Spongebob sings a rapidly decaying "Krusty Krab Pizza" jingle. Watching the episode with Closed Caption turned on results in the caption "Incoherent Mumbling."

* ''[[A Goofy Movie]]'' features the title character unintelligibly (out of context, anyhow) singing, and the closed captions say "Grandpa Grandpa." It's clear from context that he's still singing the same song, and the line is "grab a friend".

* ''[[Phineas and Ferb]]'''s song "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbugHkuFsTg My Ride from Outer Space]" causes the subtitle writer to just say that the singer is "unintelligible" when the singer sings the faster lines.

** Subtitle-free variant in another episode, in which Ferb translates his grandfather's bizarre British slang. After a particularly odd statement, he simply says, "I have no idea."

== [[Web Original]] ==

* [[Sonny Bone]]'s [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bGErn95VGQ Fun With Ahmed series].

** The [[Atop the Fourth Wall|Linkara]]/[[The Spoony Experiment|Spoony]] joint-spoofing of the ''[[Warrior (Comic Book)|Warrior]]'' comics gets in on this during the [[Ultimate Warrior]]'s rants (both the real ones and Spoony's impression of him).

* [[The Rap Critic]] and [[Todd in the Shadows]] both do this. Todd will often only put subtitles to invoke this trope, while Rap Critic will already have subtitles.

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2uT1MM2Auo Pilipinos Do Hab Souls]. Presumably, the subtitles are there so viewers can understand the comedian... except the subtitles have the same accent. [[Rule of Funny]], of course.

* Used hilariously [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFHwG8ikZAY here.]

 

 

[[Category:Translation Tropes]]

[[Category:Language Tropes]]