Lost in translation
Squid Game is predicted to become Netflix's most watched original series. Filmed and set in South Korea, it's dubbed/subtitled into English. But, all is not what it may seem.
The Korean-language drama is about an alternative world where people in debt compete in deadly games. But fluent Korean speaker Youngmi Mayer claims the closed-caption subtitles in English are "so bad" that the original meaning is often lost.
Oddly enough, I didn't see it as an alternative world, just an extreme take on the one that currently exists for the less fortunate in society. Perhaps that is an alternative world of sorts, albeit still of this one. Either that, or I have no clue.
As an example of the egregious failures in translation:
In one scene a character tries to convince people to play the game with her, and the closed-caption subtitles read: "I'm not a genius, but I still got it worked out." But what the character actually says, Youngmi explains, is: "I am very smart, I just never got a chance to study." That translation puts more emphasis on the wealth disparity in society - which is also a theme in the Oscar-winning 2019 Korean film, Parasite.
According to Mayer, the English language subtitles are substantially better
than the closed-caption ones, which are automatically-generated. Another Twitter user, however, claimed that the dubbed version, the one that I'm watching, is worse. Hey ho, it all seems good enough to me, an admitted Korean language numpty. Even if it does have some people worked up over Netflix's translation strategy
.
If the metaphors that Mayer complains are missed in the translation relate to the hyper-competitive nature of society in South Korea
, then it's probably a moot point. They'll go over the heads of most non-Asians anyway.
Molehill becomes mountain? Perhaps.
I suspect that Netflix's translation strategy
amounts to applying the 80:20 close enough is good enough
rule, and then counting the lucre.