Is it just me or there is really few Spanish movies/series that actually has good subtitles? I mean if a Hollywood movie is dubbed in Spanish (Castellano) and I search for the corresponding subtitle, they usually don’t match, because the subtitles tend to be written in Latin American Spanish. I find it disturbing that the audio and the subtitle don’t match - even if I can understand the audio.
I like watching series (ie. How I met your mother), I bought the original Spanish DVD for series 3, and even on the original DVD didn’t match! How? Why? Any suggestion?
The only movie that had proper subtitle I’ve found was Toy Story, which I like a lot, but I want more.
I have found the same thing, I believe that when they dub the spanish they try to use words in spanish that match the actual english spoken in time. In other words, they want the speech to occur when the actors lips are moving. So they will change words or phrases to fit that time period. They will use phrases that aren’t “exact” translations but with very similar meaning. I have found that HBO Latino uses a more exact translation than most DVD’s. So I will record HBO and HBO Latino at the same time, and watch first with english spoken and the spanish closed captioning, then the spanish second with the english closed captioning, and finally spanish with spanish closed captioning. That is until I found this site!! Now I will concentrate more here, as I have found that an actual 1 and a half hour movie doesn’t have as much dialog as you would think.
Yes, I have seen that too, unfortunately, in the movies that I watch in Spanish, if they are Hollywood movies. It seems that different people do the dubbing versus the subtitles, so of course people aren’t going to translate things exactly the same. You have a better chance of the words matching the voice if it is a foreign film that is subtitled in the same language for that reason. Don’t be surprised, though, if the words don’t match 100%, sometimes if the actors talk really fast at a certain part of the movie, they may shorten the subtitle a bit, because most people wouldn’t be able to read the words that quickly.
"As many of you are painfully aware, most Japanese-language movies, TV dramas and animes still have no subs on the DVDs. Foreign/Hollywood movies dubbed into Japanese generally do have subs, but these are almost never exact dialogue transcripts (at least, I have never seen one), rather they are a rewording or a paraphrasing.
But why? I needed answers. So I went to my local video rental store, and asked to speak to the manager. (Names changed to protect the innocent). And I said to him, I said: “Mr Nakamura, Double-U. Tee. Eff. Why are the subs so often inexact or nonexistent?”. And Mr. Nakamura told me that the thinking in Japan’s movie industry has typically followed two distinct lines:
Hearing-impaired people can go in the general direction of heck.
Subtitles on foreign movies are not merely intended to repeat dialogue, but to convey, clarify and expound on dialogue — in other words, to pick up perceived slack in the audio translation."
I have noticed this, too. I am always watching the Bourne series over and over again in Spanish because I know the English script quite well and know what the actors are saying in each scene. I would on occasion put Spanish subs in while I have the movie dubbed. I found that, this was a long time ago, the audio and the subs did not match at all, so, I stopped using subs for movies, just for when I am watching a film with Spanish dubbs on, because 1)half the time reading the subs drew my attention away from the spoken language and what was going on in the film and 2) the audio was not parallel to that of the subs. To me, this was a better thing because my listening comprehension has gone up. So now, I don’t put subs in and only dub it.
