How comes for some non- English Netflix shows, the translated English subtitles, and the English dubbing do not match?

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Like they match the general gist of each other but not very close.

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10 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

They’re done by different translators. Typically a dub translator will try to match mouth movements, which obviously doesn’t matter for subtitles. This leads to the subtitles being (typically) a more direct translation.

Anonymous 0 Comments

This is a pretty common thing in many languages/translations. You usually have different companies doing the dubbing than the ones doing subtitles. Additionally, dubbing might be more inclined to change dialog so mouth movements match.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Generally, when this happens it’s because the subtitles are more “accurate” to the original language and the dub tends to take some liberties with the translation to make it make more sense in the target culture.

One example I can think of is in the anime Cowboy Bebop. In the dub a character calls something pudding and in the original Japanese (and thus the subtitles) they call it red bean paste.

Red bean paste just…isn’t really a thing in the states that most people would know about (especially almost 20 years ago). But pudding is.

Additionally, dubbing tends to try to match the mouth movements (at least for animated stuff for dubbing live action that’s less of an expectation). Whereas the subtitles don’t need to do that. That’s where a lot of the subtle variations can happen.

Anonymous 0 Comments

My (very limited) understanding is that the english dub is spoken to try and match the mouth movements of the character speaking, whereas the sub is more of a translation of the language being spoken.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Other answers already have most of it, but one additional consideration is speaking time. Not just matching mouth movements, but the time it takes for someone to deliver their line.

Some languages tend to be more information-dense than others, and some dialects are spoken at a pretty fast clip. If a line delivered in Chinese would take twice as long to say in English, they’re going to have to take some liberties to get the same information across in the limited time before the next character starts speaking, or the next scene transition, or… etc…

But since people read faster than they speak, you don’t have to bother with rephrasing subtitles if you don’t want to. You can just put up an exact translation.

Additionally, subtitles are done for the original distribution of the film, while a dub is a larger production to make a localized version. The original subtitles are often written before the dub exists, and the dub is recorded with additional considerations that often require changes to the script. They *could* go back and re-subtitle the original to match the dubbed version, but if someone’s choosing to watch the subtitled version over the dub, they probably want to read the closest translation, not a hacked up version.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Dubbing and Subtitling are two very different mediums.

People writing subtitles have much more liberty in translation, as their only restriction is the words the language has

Dubbing faces more restrictions. They have to often alter lines, or use weird prose to time the lines properly. Languages are built different, and different sentences take longer or shorter to say than their translations.

This is why people debate Dub vs Sub

Subs are typically more accurate.

Dubs can be more organic to watch

Anonymous 0 Comments

Because translation is complicated, and lip-synching is hard. As a general rule, subtitles tend to lean toward a more faithful interpretation of the native-language dialogue, where dubs will simply try to cram in a remotely relevant piece of dialogue that sounds punchy and matches the scene for time, as well as the occasional lip movement.

So, for example, in Netflix’s print of ‘Cowboy Bebop’, episode 24, ‘Hard Luck Woman opens with the line:

あんた いつ から そこ そこに

Converted into romanji, it’s: ‘Anta itsu kara soko ni’

The subtitle reads: ‘Since when were you…?’

And the English dub says, ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

Let’s break down the meaning of each Japanese word, ‘anta’ is a very informal (possibly rude) version of ‘you’. Evangelion fans will recognize Asuka’s ‘Anta baka’ which she frequently says to Shinji, which translate, colloquially to ‘Are you stupid?’ but is transliterated is ‘You idiot’.

‘itsu’ roughly translates to ‘when’ and ‘kara’ roughly translates to ‘from’, and ‘soko’ means ‘that place’ or ‘there’ (and ‘koko’ means ‘this place’ or ‘here’), and ‘ni’ is a kind of participle, analogous to ‘at’. So, word by word, we have ‘You, when from that place?’, which the translators have obligingly rendered into comprehensible English grammar: ‘Since when were you there?’ with the dangling there implied.

Since Faye is facing the camera however, the *excellent* voice acting/dub team chose to re-render the phrase to something which conveys the mouth motions Faye makes in the shot, and says ‘What the Hell are you doing here?”.

FWIW, if you enjoy Anime at all, but can’t abide reading subtitles, ‘Cowboy Bebop’ might be the single best English dub of a Japanese animated title in the whole of human history. It’s certainly the best I’ve ever seen, and a great story to boot.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Languages are complex and often there are words that don’t have a direct translation in English. So the person doing subtitle might translate it differently compared to the one doing the dubbing.

Anonymous 0 Comments

What gets on my nerves is the programmes that are supposed to be in English but the non English speakers speak their own language and there are no subtitles. I am not fussed about the native language but I then have to put subtitles on and get them for everything.

Everyone know us English are the worst at learning other languages and we need subtitles.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Different translators doing the subtitles and the dubbing. Translation is an inherently finicky thing and you can never get a perfect match from one language to the next. It’s the same reason that there are so many translations of the bible even though they are all working off of the same original text.