As you can tell by looking at the date on this entry, I've taken some time off since Christmas. Most of it was spent working on other things, but between Christmas and New Year's I did quite a bit of vegetating in front of the TV. When I watch English-language broadcasts on Korean television, I try my best to avoid reading the subtitles, because they are so annoyingly bad in many cases. But in spite of myself, I find my eyes drifting down to the bottom of the screen. Often it's because of some odd expression or idiom in the dialogue that makes me wonder, "How in the world have they translated that?" Lots of times, though, I just happen to glance down and catch the silliest mistake made in the translation of some perfectly ordinary expression. Sometimes the messed-up line is crucial to understanding the plot or the personality of the character who's speaking.

I first started noticing these subtitle goofs when I saw the Casino Royale in which David Niven played James Bond back in the early '70s. (The movie was actually released in 1967, but in those days such Hollywood flicks didn't usually make it to Korea till several years after their release.) I saw this film in a theater with some Korean friends. In one scene that was very important to the plot, James Bond, agreeing with one of the other characters, says in that oh-so-British fashion, "Quite!" The subtitle said the Korean equivalent of "Shut up!" Obviously, the translator had heard "Quiet!" My Korean friends were totally confused as to why James Bond would say something that so grossly contradicted their expectations at that point.

Mistakes like that one show that the translators sometimes fail to think about whether a line really makes sense or not in the context of the story. That mistake also shows that the translator was not translating from a script and didn't understand spoken English very well. In other cases, it's obvious that the translator was working from a script but didn't actually watch the movie. And I suspect that sometimes the Korean subtitles were not done from the original English but from Japanese subtitles. Whatever the case, the subtitles are so bad so often that I'm surprised Korean viewers who don't speak English would find these programs and movies worth watching at all. Recently I was shocked to learn that my neighborhood acquaintances all think "Desperate Housewives" is a very serious drama and not in the least bit funny.

To give you a better idea of just how off the mark the subtitles get, here's a list of a few examples I collected over the holidays. Rather than giving the actual Korean subtitle, which might be meaningless for many of my readers, I've given the English equivalent of what the Korean said.

Original Line:

"You freaked!" (Said by one character commenting to another about her excessive reaction to a difficult situation.)

Korean Subtitle:

"You're free!" (The Korean word used was jayuropda.)

Original Line:

"It cost 15,000 dollars."

Korean Subtitle:

"It cost 50,000 dollars."

Original Line:

"Stupid!" (One character yelling at another for really screwing up in the previous scene.)

Korean Subtitle:

"Stop it!" (This might have worked if the guy had actually been doing anything other than just sitting there regretting the mess they were in.)

Original Line:

"Aren't you concerned about his well-being?"

Korean Subtitle:

"Aren't you interested in his talent?" (This mistake seems particularly odd in view of the current Korean craze for the English word well-being. Maybe the translator missed it because in Korean the word is pronounced "well bing.")

Original Line:

"The cops were going to dispose of his remains."

Korean Subtitle:

"The cops were going to dispose of his bequest." (In other words, rather than saying that the police were going to get rid of a dead body, the Korean said they were going to get rid of anything that the deceased had left to his family.)

Original Line:

Kramer tells Seinfeld that he was watching his favorite soap opera, "The Bold and the Beautiful."

Korean Subtitle:

In the Korean subtitle, Kramer says "The Bald and the Beautiful." (Okay, "Seinfeld" is a comedy, and the speaker is the wackiest character on the show, so maybe this makes for a funnier line in Korean. But the fact remains that "The Bold and the Beautiful" is the actual name of a real TV soap opera.)

Original Line:

In a science-fiction flick, somebody mentions "that robot butcher," talking about a robot that goes around committing gruesome murders.

Korean Subtitle:

The Korean subtitle has the guy talking about someone who butchers robots.

Original Line:

"They told me about the plot." (Meaning 'the conspiracy.')

Korean Subtitle:

"They told me about the plot." (Meaning 'the story line.' In the context in which this line occurred, the subtitle made absolutely no sense at all. The translator was clearly not paying attention.)

Original Line:

"Yeah, right." (Said sarcastically, meaning something like "Who do you think you're kidding?")

Korean Subtitle:

"You're correct."

Original Line:

"Big surprise." (Said sarcastically, meaning "What did you expect?")

Korean Subtitle:

"I'm so surprised."

Original Line:

"Touché" (Said in acknowledgment of a really biting remark.)

Korean Subtitle:

"Thank you." (How the translator got an expression of gratitude out of this scene is one of the mysteries of the universe that will doubtless never be solved.)

Original Line:

"This is a switch." (The speaker is telling a friend of hers that he is behaving in a fashion that is uncharacteristic of him.)

Korean Subtitle:

"This is a switch." (As in "Behold a device for turning the electric lights on and off.")

Original Line:

(Maybe I've already gone into overkill with the sarcastic lines the translators seem to have so much trouble with, but I can't resist adding this one.) "Just give me an excuse." (Meaning "You've already gotten me very, very angry, so just go ahead and do something or say something to make it worse so I'll feel justified when I slug you.")

Korean Subtitle:

"Please excuse me."

Original Line:

An anchorperson is shown introducing a TV news program. He says something like, "Welcome to the KTNV Nightly Newsdesk." The call letters also appear in gigantic letters on the wall behind him.

Korean Subtitle:

"Welcome to the KTNB Nightly Newsdesk." (Although the subtitle was written in Korean, the call letters themselves were written in the Latin alphabet. It's pretty obvious that the translator did not watch the movie.

Original Line:

This example is not a one-liner. The problem is a recurring one that is repeated throughout the whole movie. The movie is about a couple of college kids who are driving home for the holidays. The traffic is so bad on the Interstate that they decide to take a shortcut on a county road. The car breaks down in a freak accident on an isolated stretch and the guy is murdered by some sort of zombie or ghost. The chick is understandably freaked out. She is able to call 911 by using a phone company relay box on a nearby utility pole.

Korean Subtitle:

Throughout all this, including the girl's conversation with the 911 operator, the Interstate and the narrow country road are called "expressways" in the Korean subtitles. A Korean who saw this with me said: "Wait a second. I thought they got off the expressway. That road doesn't look like an expressway. How are the 911 people going to find her if she tells them she's still on the expressway?" Hmm, I guess this is another case of the translator not watching the movie.

Just one more. I've saved the worst for last. I got this one from an English-teaching program on the educational network. Why would I need to watch a program for learning English, you ask? Well, I was just curious as to how good such programs are, so I checked out a few minutes' worth of a couple of them.

Original Line:

"Okay, let's get started." (The teacher/emcee, who also spoke perfect Korean, said this with a flawless North American accent.)

Subtitle:

(In this case, the subtitles were not in Korean but were simply "word-for-word" transcriptions of what the teacher said in English. Or at least, that was what was intended.) "Okay, let's get start it."

The examples I've given are only a tiny sampling of goof-ups I've noticed. The results of an accurate, statistical survey of subtitles would probably be appalling.

Why do the subtitles get screwed up so often? I think the short answer is that the translators are underqualified, underpaid, and working against unreasonable deadlines. In any case, no matter how qualified they are, they should always work in cooperation with a native speaker of the original language. Unfortunately, the filmmakers and television producers rarely if ever provide the translator with such a resource.

You may see this as a nonissue, wondering if it's really that important for translated subtitles to be good translations. I think it is important. If it's worth the money and effort to make a movie or TV show in the first place, it should also be worth the money and effort to communicate the content accurately in the target language. Also, naive viewers, especially kids, tend to blindly trust the subtitles, believing that the big networks would surely have the means to do a proper job on them. Let's hope those kids aren't using the subtitles as an aid for practicing their listening comprehension.