MovieChat Forums > Monsieur Lazhar (2012) Discussion > Subtitles!!!

Subtitles!!!

posted 12 years ago by blufftoni
23 replies | jump to latest

I watch many films that have English subtitles, and these were some of the worst I have seen (or not, as the case my be).

When you have a predominently white landscape, white school uniforms, light coloured walls - it's not the best idea in the world to have white subtitles.

There were a couple of scenes where, unless you spoke French, you struggled to know what was going on.

It didn't spoil the enjoyment of the film, which is wonderful, but it would have been nice for the distributors or studio to have put a bit more thought into it.

[–] mikeyflatley 12 years ago

ive seen worst...try readin da subtitlez in Reprise. i didnt have any trouble readin subtitlez 4 dis movie tho

I live, I love, I slay, and I'm content

[–] KhaledKalache 12 years ago

you watch the movie in cinema or what?

it's amazing movie

they care about the tiny details .. see in the box of Apricot when the teacher take something covered by jornal it was an arabic magazine called (al khabbar) one of the most 3 popular magazine in algeria ..

[–] nattylap2 12 years ago

I saw this otherwise excellent movie in a packed house with a discussion to follow. But the only thing anybody wanted to talk about were the lousy subtitles. Half the time you were only guessing at what the characters were talking about. What were they thinking????

[–] maho-morita 12 years ago

Saw it last night (5/3) with a friend. Can't agree more about the subtitles! So frustrating trying to figure out white letters on a predominantly white background. The movie was great, but I feel like I missed out on the details.

[–] Anaheim92807 12 years ago

I had no problem reading the subtitles when I saw the film 3 days ago in Orange County, CA. Perhaps they heard your complaint and fixed the problem. I went to a matinee. There were a lot of seniors in the audience. I heard no one mumbling about being able to read the subtitles.

[–] fanaticita 12 years ago

I saw it last night and didn't have any trouble seeing the subtitles. They were perfectly clear and readable.

[–] Ambrosia-I 12 years ago

I'm going to see the film today so I'm hoping the subtitles will be OK and you were just unfortunate. But this has happened to me before in a Spanish thriller I saw - there were a lot of subtitles against white backgrounds and, having very little Spanish, I really struggled.

[–] blufftoni 12 years ago

enjoy the film - it is absolutely terrific

all it would have taken was a little black box around the subtitles

[–] Ambrosia-I 12 years ago

Luckily, the subtitles were fine where I saw it. They were white, but they had a sort of black edging so they were completely visisble. You're right, it was a terrific film and I thought Mohamed Fellag's performance was wonderful, as were those of the children. I shed several tears.

[–] blufftoni 12 years ago

there's the difference, when i saw it, the subtitles were white with no edging and just bled into the background

i thought the ending was magnificent and a perfect example of why sometimes you don't need dialogue

[–] TheCineSinge 12 years ago

The only problem I had with the subtitles is that, on occasion, I think they might have been translated better and there was one scene where Lazhar was speaking to himself and it wasn't subtitled which annoyed me a little but as for being able to read them, I had no problem with that.

[–] MontanaJones 12 years ago

So just to understand, the problem with the subtitles wasn't bad translation, poor English, etc. (as is so often the case)but just a problem actually viewing them.

MEDINA
SOD

[–] blufftoni 12 years ago

the problem was the subtitles were written in white text for a movie that takes place during winter in Montreal so has a fair amount of snow in it, the sets are mostly white or light colours and it's set in a school where most pupils wore white shirts.

[–] mekare-5 12 years ago

I had no trouble reading the subtitles, but I did notice that some things were poorly translated (as they often are with subtitles). My limited knowledge of French tells me that 'drole' means 'funny', but this was translated in the subtitles as 'droll'.

[–] 12 years ago

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[–] l-van-wiele 12 years ago

I disagree. The subtitles were awesome. It's not always the best option to literally translate sentences to another languages, as it often doesn't give the right "feel".

Best example was the sequence where Lazhar visits Claire for the dinner.

He keeps referring to her in the polite tense (using "vous") but she says: On peut se "tutoyer" which means, you can use the unpolite tense ("tu"). But since "tu" and "vous" don't have equivalents in English language, they changed the entire sequence to him calling her by her last name, and she saying "You can call me Claire".

I think this was pretty brilliantly done by the translators.

PS: I know the word "tense" is misused here, but I don't know the general term in English for words such as I, You, He, She, They,...

[–] sillyhat 12 years ago

They are personal pronouns. "Vous" is the polite second-person pronoun.

[–] zwot 12 years ago

But since "tu" and "vous" don't have equivalents in English language, they changed the entire sequence to him calling her by her last name, and she saying "You can call me Claire".

I thought the subtitles, in terms of content, were much better than average. I can see why, now that you've pointed out the above example.

[–] emvan 12 years ago

No problem with the Blu-Ray subtitles. Seems like they may have fixed this.

Prepare your minds for a new scale of physical, scientific values, gentlemen.

[–] bernebner 11 years ago

Blu-Ray subtitles were white with a black border and extremely crisp and completely legibile.