Started watching that new Korean drama on Netflix and something felt off about the subtitles

So I finally sat down to watch The Atypical Family after hearing everyone rave about it for weeks. I'm maybe 4 episodes in and I keep noticing the subtitles feel... clunky? Like they're translating things too literally and missing the actual meaning. I lived in Seoul for a year back in 2016 so I catch some of the Korean, and there's this one scene where a character says something that should be a joke but the subtitle just says "I see." Totally killed the moment. My buddy who works in localization says different streaming services use different translation teams and some are way better than others. Anyone else run into this where bad subtitles just ruin a show for you? Which services do you think have the best translations?

2 comments

2 Comments

river18211d ago

Wait you actually caught mistranslations yourself? That's wild, for real.

lisa_jones2110d ago

Oh absolutely, @river182, I found a few in some older J-drama subtitles once where they translated "onee-san" as "ma'am" when it was clearly a sibling thing. It drives me nuts cause it changes the whole feel of the scene. I remember catching one where a character said "gomen ne" and they made it sound super formal when it was a casual apology between friends. Little stuff like that makes you wonder what else you're missing, you know?