MovieChat Forums > Wild Zero (1999) Discussion > how accurately translated was the cursin...

how accurately translated was the cursing in the subtitles?


I'm generally not bothered by profanity when I watch movies, because most of the time it's done realistically in a way that is really spoken by people in real life. But I thought the profanity in the English subtitles (particularly in the dialogue with Toshi and Hanako) was way too excessive, and I have a hard time believing that was how they actually spoke in Japanese. So, if anyone who knows Japanese well is reading this, was the translation accurate in terms of the profanity? Or did the translators who wrote the subtitles just go overboard?

reply

I'd say the translators went over board with profanity. Japanese in general doesn't have that kind of strong cursing. There are certain dialects in Japan, especially in the Kansai (Osaka/Kobe) area, that are considered to be more "colorful" than the standard Tokyo dialect, but English has far more ways to say something bad.

reply

Having lived in Japan for over a decade, I can say that the subtitles (minus the typos) were very well done. In Japanese, the cursing comes more from the WAY something is said, other than having actual words to convey the meaning.

In my opinion, the subtitles are spot-on.

reply

The profanity in the translations was used to convey a low level limited vocabulary use of the Japanese language. In Japanese there is not so much "profanity" as we would refer to it in English, but actual different ways of speaking for men (including men to men, men to women, men to children etc), women (same as before), higher ups, low class, tough guys, shy people, respectful types, etc, with not only different inflections but using completely different words. Toshi & Hanako spoke like uneducated trash, thus the insertion of profanity to indicate tough/trashy communication without varied vocabulary when translated.

reply

I know this is an old thread, but I just watched this last night, and I noticed that at one point the subtitles had Guitar Walk say something like "these zombies have me scared *beep* BUT what the character audibly said at the exact time the subtitles showed up was "Lock and Loll!!!" So I'm thinking the subtitles were of the variety that paraphrased the movie rather than a literal translation. Still better than dubbing, though.

reply

The subtitles that I saw were pretty bad, the profanity is overplayed immensely for some reason.

Perhaps mmodde is onto something, but even then, it's *way* overboard to convey such a simple point that could just as effectively been delivered without the use of caps lock and excessive cuss words. I'm not likely to credit the translators for very much in general though given the low quality of the translation itself beyond the cussing (skipping and/or entire dialogue segments with nonsense), so yeah. Most likely they were just goofing off, perhaps they thought it would add to the humor of the film.

reply