So I’ve been here a bit over two months and was thinking of seeing a movie one of these weekends. I know that they show some movies in both Japanese-dubbed and subtitled versions with the original audio.
You know how some movies have subtitles in scenes where the characters are speaking a different language? (Like the colorful, stylistic ones in John Wick when they speak Russian – just the first example that comes to mind…)
In the Japanese-subtitled screenings, are those sorts of subtitles (ones that would normally be in English if you were seeing it in an English-speaking country) in Japanese? In which case I’d be out of luck since my Japanese is pretty limited (for now). Or do they keep them as they are (in English) and add additional subtitles in Japanese below them?
Like subtitles for subtitles.
Wondering about this because I’ve been thinking of seeing the Avatar sequel when that comes out, and I know that’s a movie that probably has a lot of subtitles, since they’re speaking a fictional language half the time.
6 comments
In the Japanese-subtitled screenings, those sorts of subtitles are Japanese.
I think it can vary, but IIRC, for non-English dialogue in the MCU movies, they had both the English subtitles and Japanese subtitles (usually along the side).
I’ve had both. Either no subtitles in English when another language is spoken, or both English and Japanese subs on screen. There is no way to know or to tell ahead of time.
In MOST of my movie going experiences, in English language movies where some characters speak non-English languages, it has had English subtitles written horizontally and then Japanese subs vertically on the side.
>In the Japanese-subtitled screenings, are those sorts of subtitles (ones that would normally be in English if you were seeing it in an English-speaking country) in Japanese?
No, they are in Klingon, or something. What kind of question is that?
What you are trying to ask is how, if at all, they, the subtitlers, try to get across to the average Japanese moviegoer, who may not know otherwise, that the language being spoken at a particular moment in the movie is not the main language of the movie and is, in fact, a foreign language, which would also be unintelligible to the average movie goer in the movies country of origin (and subtitled if required for plot purposes).
The answer is, as someone has already stated, the subtitles for the “foreign” language parts are usually displayed vertically on the right side of the screen.
In my experience you tend not to get the subtitles in English. For example the recent movie “Bullet Train” is an American movie based in Japan. Even in the original version in English with Japanese subtitles, in some scenes the characters speak Japanese. There were no subtitles at all during those scenes, neither Japanese nor English.