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AI could end foreign-language subtitles

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Re: AI could end foreign-language subtitles

#151

Post by erik_seaberg »

bovermyer wrote: post #133

A couple points here. 1. AI might be able to prevent bad dubbing/subbing, but it will not be able to compete with _good_ dubbing/subbing in our lifetimes. There's an artistry there that no AI can match. 2. I love subtitles and prefer original audio + English subtitles in anything foreign-language. Besides the voices matching up to the movement of the actors' lips and thus not breaking my immersion, I also adore heari…

Few in this thread mentioned immersion as an issue. Subs are fine for comedy and drama, but I don’t understand how I could watch an action spectacle or travelogue and feel like I’m there when I’m looking away for floating words. Same reason I don’t want a movie audience to draw my attention and remind me the screen is fake.

Re: AI could end foreign-language subtitles

#152

Post by divbzero »

The article would be far more convincing if it argued that AI could end foreign-language dubbing. Distaste for poor dubbing only partly explains the demand for subtitles. Film aficionados would scoff at the idea of abandoning the original audio, and even casual appreciators of film recognize the value of hearing the original tones and accents.

Re: AI could end foreign-language subtitles

#153

Post by lisper »

shkkmo wrote: post #106
zeroimpl wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A pet peeve of mine has been subtitles which flip the order of words, particularly when the sentence is broken into two lines. Like the spoken text in foreign language is “A murderer is... Joe” but it gets translated to “Joe is a... murderer”. The other day I happened to see live content with closed captions, and I thought I would love the option to see subtitles like this, where words are translated precisely when s…

But translation doesn't really work like that. There are significant tradeoffs between verbosity, cadence, meaning and subtext when translating. The different contraints are why the forieng dubbibg and foreign subtitles are usually quite different. You generally only see word for word matches with subtitles when the subtitles are in the same language as the original lines spoken by the actors.

And the GP's example is the perfect illustration. "A murderer is Joe" sounds really weird. No native English speaker would ever say that. They would say, "Joe is a murderer" or "The murderer is Joe" or even "One of the murderers is Joe." But never "A murderer is Joe." Maybe in a Victorian novel, but not in a movie.

Re: AI could end foreign-language subtitles

#154

Post by TT-392 »

the_af wrote: post #130

I like listening to the original audio of foreign movies and it's partly how I learned English, and how I pick up random words from languages I can't really speak. I also respect actors and actresses enough to appreciate their performance includes their original voices. I'm a fast reader and subtitles are like a second nature to me, to the point I don't "remember" having read them (likewise I sometimes don't remember…

I have got pretty serious dyslexia, and thus I have problems with reading subtitles fast enough. As a child this basically meant no subs for me. So I definitely see the value in dubs.

These days I have gotten a bit faster at reading and I got things like more readable fonts to help me (also, some subtitle systems are just terrible, I often torrent stuff that is on netflix despite having an account because their subtitle system sucks).

Yet, I am from the Netherlands, and here, with basically nothing except media for children being dubbed, I have gotten better at reading them and used to it. And honestly, despite the effort I have to go through, I totally agree. It is totally worth the extra effort. I'll always prefer the original language, no matter the quality of the dub.

Language is just an important part of the culture of the original content.

Re: AI could end foreign-language subtitles

#155

Post by isoskeles »

tompetry wrote: post #80
aeturnum wrote: post #3

This would be a lovely option to have and I find it hilarious that anyone imagines that subtitles are some kind of problem we are trying to get out of. Adding text to movies has a huge array of advantages: it preserves the original performances, it makes the dialog accessible to people with hearing or auditory processing disabilities, they can be multiplexed in a way that audio cannot, etc. Obviously it would be wond…

I am very surprised more people watched the dubbed version of Squid Game over the subtitles. I saw a friend watching the dubbed version and to me it didn't "preserve the original performances" as you say. Surprised subtitles are a barrier, I enjoy them personally, but I guess they have the data to know. I have tested out services that translate your "own voice" to another language and it was pretty cool, although I c…

Knowing what was intended to be said is great, and subtitles, for whatever reason, seem to convey this better than dubbing. Also, I feel like I can hear the emotion in the original actors' voices better with subtitles and no dubbing, despite being incapable of understanding the language. In that way, I agree it preserves the original performances.

However, moving pictures will always be an artform that are heavily reliant upon the picture part. With subtitles, I lose my ability to focus on minor but important details in film. During dialogue, this includes subtle facial expressions. I also pay less attention to all other visuals, which I find difficult to do without subtitles off entirely. I feel like I miss out on a lot of potential beauty in cinematography with subtitles enabled. (Although, to be fair, there is usually less dialogue in parts that emphasize on cinematography / setting.)

Anyway, just throwing in my two cents. I used to think people who disliked subtitles were expressing some broader dislike of foreign films, so I found their opinion perplexing or even stupid. But I've come to that side of the aisle myself, not because I dislike foreign films, but because I realize that reading a small bar of text at the bottom of the screen will always handicap my ability to take in the original experience as intended by the director of the film (in 99.9% of cases).

Re: AI could end foreign-language subtitles

#156

Post by zxcvbn4038 »

This would be interesting if it worked - I recently re-watched The Expanse in German with subtitles on but it wasn’t very helpful as a lot of the time they simply gave up and used the English terms. Some are a bear to translate - try saying “donkey balls” in German, “eseleier”? The captions reverted to English and I didn’t really pick up what the voice track said but wasn’t even close.

I had much better luck with Star Trek TOS, very little deviation between the English and German dialog, and the subtitles matched up well with the spoken dialog. Much better for learning - though “er ist tot Jim” doesn’t quite have the same punch IMO.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOtx4Jk-OaQ

Re: AI could end foreign-language subtitles

#157

Post by PakG1 »

derekp7 wrote: post #132
creakingstairs wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I've moved to New Zealand, I was taken aback at how many people just could not stand subtitles. This and your mention about 'barrier' reminded me of Bong Joon Ho (director of Parasite) calling this out: "Once you overcome the 1-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films."

The problem I have with subtitles is the same reason I could never enjoy comics / graphic novels. I can either read and process the text, or look at / process the action (pictures). For me it is the same thing as trying to pay attention to two conference calls at the same time with a phone in each ear (is it just me that can't do this?). And it isn't just the mental processing, the rest of the screen sort of disappea…

This is really interesting, as I've not heard many people say this. I wonder how common your experience is. Perhaps some people have a more narrow field of vision, or I wonder what else might cause it.

I can only say that I absolutely prefer subtitles 100% of the time because the original performance is usually better. Good voice actors are not cheap, besides the fact that the sounds don't match the lips when it's a different language speaking.

Re: AI could end foreign-language subtitles

#158

Post by devmor »

erik_seaberg wrote: post #151
bovermyer wrote: post #133

A couple points here. 1. AI might be able to prevent bad dubbing/subbing, but it will not be able to compete with _good_ dubbing/subbing in our lifetimes. There's an artistry there that no AI can match. 2. I love subtitles and prefer original audio + English subtitles in anything foreign-language. Besides the voices matching up to the movement of the actors' lips and thus not breaking my immersion, I also adore heari…

Few in this thread mentioned immersion as an issue. Subs are fine for comedy and drama, but I don’t understand how I could watch an action spectacle or travelogue and feel like I’m there when I’m looking away for floating words. Same reason I don’t want a movie audience to draw my attention and remind me the screen is fake.

You just aren't used to them. When you were a child, you probably weren't used to understanding the words you heard and paying attention to the scenes.

I'm partially deaf so I watch everything with subtitles or captions, and don't miss a thing.

Re: AI could end foreign-language subtitles

#159

Post by devmor »

Gigachad wrote: post #150
bovermyer wrote: post #133

A couple points here. 1. AI might be able to prevent bad dubbing/subbing, but it will not be able to compete with _good_ dubbing/subbing in our lifetimes. There's an artistry there that no AI can match. 2. I love subtitles and prefer original audio + English subtitles in anything foreign-language. Besides the voices matching up to the movement of the actors' lips and thus not breaking my immersion, I also adore heari…

> There's an artistry there that no AI can match. This has been said a few times already and been proven false. The quality of GANs is moving at a staggering pace.

How can something that can't be proven true be proven false? "Artistry" has no concrete definition and is entirely based on the opinion of the viewer.

Re: AI could end foreign-language subtitles

#160

Post by js2 »

Delk wrote: post #87
jonpurdy wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think there's a lot of gatekeeping about this. People - perhaps rightfully so - believe subtitled versions to be more ... "pure" than dubbed versions. Well, they are more pure than dubbed versions. There is so much nuance and tone in the original language that is either left out or changed in the dub. Not to mention word order (subject-verb-object in English/Chinese, subject-object-verb in Japanese/Korean) that f…

There's often a lot of nuance lost in translated subtitles as well, in my experience, often because dialogue written for one language can't be coerced into natural dialogue in a different language without significant changes. Keeping the original audio track does preserve the direct relationship between the actor's tone and expressions, of course, and it could also be something closer to what the original makers inte…

> There's often a lot of nuance lost in translated subtitles as well.

Famously, the closing dialog for Breathless, er, À bout de souffle doesn't translate to English.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peS6ADDysms

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breathless_(1960_film)#Closing...

(It should go w/o saying reading this is a small spoiler and you should most definitely see this film first if you haven't. I happen to think the American remake is trash, but my dad loves both it and the original. In any case, it is among a small handful of films that I consider perfect.)

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