Lost in Translation: The unsung art of subtitling

Read through the list of the winners of the International Booker Prize, you will find the author, their book’s title, and the novel’s English-language translator. Look through the list of the nominations or winners of the best International Film at the Oscars and you won’t find the name of the individuals who translated the dialogue and provided the English subtitles. Whilst film as a medium doesn’t rely on language as much as a novel does, one can assume that the Academy are making a judgement on the quality of the picture’s screenplay based in part on the dialogue that goes along with the cinematography. Who is bringing international films to English-speaking audiences? Does the film world not owe them their dues? Think of all the foreign-language films holed up in archives or that never find distribution after festival season. Perhaps the solution to the problem of accessing these stories is to recognise translation and subtitling as the art it truly is.

I had been watching Hiroshima mon Amour on the service Kanopy when the question of translation attribution first crossed my mind. Resnais’ film was a set ‘text’ for an essay I was writing as part of my degree; with any other source in translation, I would be expected to give credit to the translator. Yet I couldn’t find a name – not in the credits, nor listed on the streaming service – and turning to the internet only left me with more questions. In the streaming age, it is easier than ever to access international film, hours and hours of which are nearly always available subtitled.

Mubi have in house subtitlers/translators that help provide their catalogue with subtitles for a range of different languages, but if the responsibility falls on the streaming service to translate the story, does that not mean that our experience differs from platform to platform? Take Amazon Prime; for a large portion of its English language catalogue, there are no subtitles, and in the cases that there are some, they are usually only available in English. If you wanted to watch Bicycle Thieves with the native Italian, you couldn’t – a staggering reality when considering that more people, especially young people, are using subtitles when streaming, even in their native language. In this sense, the Anglocentric film world does not seem to care about allowing the non-English speaking world to access English-language film, while also displaying continued disinterest in improving accessibility.

Similarly, it would be a touch Anglocentric to expect that in the production of an international film, the filmmakers and production team automatically hire someone to translate the story into English. In the publishing world, this is a job that falls on the team behind the scenes rather than the artist. Yet in allowing distribution companies, streaming services and anyone with a second language (and access to YouTube or the Internet Archive) to have the control over the translation and subtitling process, I can’t help but think perhaps we are all watching slightly different versions of the same film.

At least with dubbing there is an element of standardisation – but in attempting to watch a film in one’s mother tongue, we lose the inflections and quirks that cannot be translated. Growing up watching Studio Ghibli, I always chose the dub over the sub; I came to know Calcifer as Billy Crystal, yet of course, originally that was not the case. There is a linguistic hypothesis, Sapir-Whorf, that claims the language we speak influences our perception of the world around us. In watching Howl’s Moving Castle in English, am I fundamentally changing my perception of the story, or is that giving too much credit to the language in what is ultimately a visual medium?

It might feel like quite the group effort when it comes to subtitling films, yet if the responsibility to provide subtitles falls solely to the companies hoping to draw in audiences and box office returns, will there always be films left inaccessible. Will we always only see the International films that win prizes and make money? I think of all the English-language films released in the UK each year and wonder: if there is the same quantity of French, Spanish, Arabic or other non-English films being released in the same year, are English-speakers not missing out on a whole world of cinema?

Even English subtitles on English language films open up stories to those who otherwise would miss out, such as viewers with limited hearing or neurological processing conditions. In every sense, subtitling improves access. As Bong Joon Ho emphasised in his acceptance speech at the 2020 Golden Globes, once we overcome the one-inch barrier of subtitles, “you will be introduced to so many more amazing films” yet we take the words in front of us for granted. In deciding Parasite was deserving of the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, we can assume members of the academy read/watched a translated version. There is no doubt that Parasite was deserving of the award, but to what extent is the person who made it accessible to the English-speaking world also an artist? They didn’t create the story, yet is the best screenplay declared the best wholly through the story? What about dialogue and capturing colloquialism, capturing regional accents or translating words with no direct English equivalent. Perhaps the question should be: what is missed through bad translation and subtitling? How many characters with regional accents are reduced to RP English in their translations? Think in reverse, how could a subtitler capture a Scottish or West Country dialect in French?

Perhaps something will always be lost when watching a film in a language you do not know, and English-speakers should try watching international films without the aid of subtitles, digesting film as a purely visual medium, returning to the age of silent film. But a better way forward would be to start celebrating the work of the subtitler; to praise their contribution to the global cinema landscape, and their vital role in bringing stories across borders.