Thank you everyone again for coming. This event is, but this is actually the first day of the Georgia Tech Media Festival, which is very exciting. We actually have several more events to come later on this week and the following month. So lots to look forward to, but it's very cool that the round table is getting to kick off the series of events. This event was made possible by generous support from the Japan Foundation. That's for which we're very grateful. And yes, so today we'll be talking about specifically translation in subtitling, but specifically in the age of streaming pump. Of course, over the course of our conversation, we will, we will just be talking about translation, subtitle translation in streaming, but we will progress through the topics. So we'll start with DVDs and so on. So I would first like to briefly introduce everyone in the roundtable. Just just to kept me out of the way. I'm chugging bay. I'm assistant professor here at Georgia Tech and I teach, I teach green studies and the Department of Modern Languages. So in no particular order. Professor premia SAR is a professor at USC. He specializes in modern Japanese literature, cinema and media history, Translation Studies. His first book, electrified voices, how the telephone on a graph and radio shaped modern Japan. 868 to 945 from Columbia University Press examines the roles played by the telegraph, telephone, phonograph, radio, and sound film and the discursive aesthetic and ideological practices of Japan. He's also a prolific translator of Japanese across a variety of genres and media, from contemporary novels to pre-modern poetry, to the subtitles for more than a 100 feature films and the Criterion Collection, the honest films library, and his translations include classic works by major directors such as cruise, AKI dot was the US Digital and Oshima Microsoft. And it's actually thanks to query that I sometimes get contacted for translation shops. So I'm very grateful for that, but it'll conduction through. Darcy packet joins us from Korea. So think she had doctors big for, for making the time. He's a film critic, lecture, and journalist who has been living in Seoul since 1997. Founder and editor of the website Korean film.org, which has been an invaluable resource to absolutely anyone studying Korean cinema, especially English language speakers. And he's also author of new Korean cinema, Breaking the Waves, published in 2009. In 2013, he found at the wildflower Film Awards Korea, which recognizes achievement and free and independent and low budget film making. And in 2019, he received particular recognition for the subtitle work he did for the award-winning film Parasite. He's well-known to preen film fence. He's become quite well now to create, built that's over the years. As a regular contributor to the green film magazine extend 821. And indeed, I actually personally recall reading your one line, five-star reviews and 21 as a high-schooler. So thank you. Professor eat Iceland joins us from Smith College. He specializes in modern Curia with specific interests and the history of film and media. Is research and teaching evolve around the problem of marginality and the green film history such as minority audiences, vulgar genre, and film-making practices largely categorized as failure. Currently, he's writing a book investigating the formation of colonial Korean cinema during the height of Japanese Imperialism. Fame. Other research projects include South Korean popular films in the 19 seventies, the history of special effects films and East Asian film and media theories. So again, one of those professors classes, I kind of wish I could take anything. But yes, thank you so much for joining us. And yeah, I I I'd like to just dive right in. And these, my first question is actually for about the process of translation in a way that's specific to subtitling. So I wanted to ask, and perhaps we could go like start with RC. How, what is your basic process for subtitling a film that you watched the entire work first before you get into anything. Okay. First of all, thank you. Thank you for inviting me today. It's a pleasure to be talking to all of you. Yet in terms of my particular approach, I actually don't watch the film before. I sometimes let me defend myself here because. I know that there are a lot of subtitle those who watched the film at least once and then kind of think about the film holistically before they start the subtitling process. The reason I don't basically, because I know that later I'm going to be going back through the film and watching it several more times after the first draft anyway. And so it's typically at that stage when I make sure that all the different elements of the film that referred to each other are accurately reflected on the subtitles. And to be honest, I mean, there are a couple of, I guess, personal reasons why I prefer to do it this way. And partly just because it, you know, it is a real challenge getting through an entire work. And one of the things that pulls me through it is the fact that I'm really curious to see how the film is going to turn it. So as I'm subtitling, I'm experiencing the film for the first time. It is kind of an unusual thing to watch a film over the course of a week. And it's extreme slow viewing in that sense. But you become kind of intimate official home in a way. And even though it is kind of strange to, to make such slow progress on a film. I've, I've come to enjoy it in some ways. And I don't know, you know, it probably doesn't make any difference, but I do find it interesting also to be subtitling a film at the moment that I'm experiencing it for the first time. So if there's a particular scene later, I'll have the chance to come back to it and to revise it and to revisit the scene. But I, I kind of just enjoy the idea of at the moment that I see the scene for the first time, can I can immediately, I'll type it out with the impression, the same perspective of the viewer who's also going to be seeing it for the first time. Stone. So that is I mean, generally the reason why I do that. You know, over the years I've I've gotten to appreciate just how important the revision processes. And so I've put more and more time into revising. And, and actually I spend a bit less time on the first draft. I try to get through it fairly quickly and not be too perfectionist. Because I think it's a bit easier to, to think about the film and I get more ideas when I'm, when I'm going through it a second If you're done. So the first draft is often just to get something down on paper and then to get also to, to deal with the timing and the spotting. And it's later when I can really kind of think about the detailed send trying to use hood. It's at later stages we can think about things like either characterization and trying to give particular voice to certain characters or, or just to make sure that, you know, all the details of the film are expressed as long as they can. Typically it takes me ideally about if I have 10 days, that's my ideal amount. I'm going often there is time pressure and sometimes I do get more time depending on what the schedule that the film is. But because most of the films that I'm working with her coffin intended for festival submissions. They're often the filmmakers are rushing to finish the film in time. And then he comes to me at the final stage, and so I have to get through it fairly quickly. Karim, could you speak on that same question? Door? So unlike Darcy, I mainly work on films that have already been translated. So I'm really re translating these films. I mean, they're canonical films. They've been around for decades. And so in many cases I'd actually seen the film. In most cases I've already seen the film before. I sit down to translate it, retranslate it. So I don't feel the need really necessarily to sort of view the film once through before I sit down to translate. Because I usually generally have an idea. Depending on how long it's been since I've seen the film. I have, I have an, already have a sort of holistic sense of, of the film before I start. But also because as Darcy said, I mean, then I was sort of nodding my head as he was, he was saying all of this. There is something about that immediacy or the freshness of I'm translating it as if you were watching it for the first time. And even if it's a film that I've seen before, if it's been years or in some cases even over a decade since I've seen the phone. That sense of freshness is still there even though I have seen the film before. And, and I think it is important actually to, to sort of be encountering each line as the viewer is, as, as the viewers encountering it. That way. I think there's less of a chance that you're going to perhaps inadvertently telegraph something that's going to happen later or inadvertently? I don't know. I mean, I guess that's one possibility is telegraphing. But I just, and then the other thing that Darcy said that I would want to concur with is that it is a it is, it is an effort to get through a full feature length film. And part of what propels you forward is precisely that sense of okay, what's going to happen next? And very often, even if you have seen a film before, you don't know the exact sequence, you don't remember the exact sequence of scenes and exactly what people are going to say, exactly what's going to happen. And so that sense of rediscovery and, and newness I think is, is very important. And again, as it Hershey's that, and I hope we don't spend the whole session here just repeating one versus 0 points. But the revision process is extremely important and that's really the time to go back through it and try to make sure that everything is consistent, right? To try to make sure that things are consistent in terms of the, the sort of the voicing of the characters to try to make sure that things are consistent in terms of the information that needs to be conveyed at that particular moment. Because in some cases, and what I what I just said earlier about telegraphing notwithstanding, sometimes having that knowledge of what's going to come later is very, very important for translating a particular line of dialogue. You know, clearly and effectively in that moment. Because sometimes it can actually, I don't know quite how to, how to say this, but sometimes you have to prepare the viewer for what's coming later. And trend subtitle translation is never literal. It's always a kind of paraphrase because of the very extreme limitations in time and space. The constraints are very real. And so a lot of what you're doing with, with subtitling, especially if you're talking about more complex utterances and not just like readings are exclamations or what have you. But with complex utterances, you're really paraphrasing. You're not, you're not translating. Paraphrasing. You do have to make some hard decisions about what you're going to leave out. And knowing what's going to come later can help you make those decisions about what to sort of gloss over, what to sort of leave out and what to, what you absolutely have to make sure that you leave in when you're translating a more complex, structured dialogue. But again, it starts, he said that that's, that's something you can really address just as well in the revision stage as you can in the initial run. And I think you can probably address it better in the revision stage, precisely because you've gone through the whole thing with it. You've gone through every single line carefully by that point. And so all of that information is still fresh in your mind. Whereas if you just view it ahead of time without translating it, then you can, you can forget a lot of things even because viewing a film is a very different thing from, from translating it. And you just have a much clearer map in your mind of where the film is and where the film is going when you've done that initial translation draft? I think. So. I would just like to follow up with you cream because I feel like as you say, you're translating slash re, translating some really canonical works and Japanese cinema. And I guess one thing that I'm immediately curious about is what are some of the what what are some of the biggest issues are like recurring issues that you've seen in the older translations that you're maybe trying to improve on. So many of these films were translated before even the age of VHS, before the age of home video in any format. And in the old days, I mean, my understanding is that what subtitled translators would do is they would get a dialogue list. And that dialogue list would basically have a number next to each line of dialogue with the number of feet of film that had utterance took. And so translators would have to sort of do this calculation where they would have to figure out how many characters you could fit into how many feet of film. And in some cases they wouldn't even be able to screen the film before they translated it. So they would actually just be working with this dialogue list. And not even knowing what's on the screen. That you know, that there's of the film that they're supposed to be translating. And so sometimes this creates some really almost, I mean, really comical sort of issues where for example, a lot of times Japan, japanese does not specify number, right? So singular or plural. And so if somebody has translated the film without having actually seen what's going on, like the context of the utterance, they might not know what the correct number is. In that case, when they're rendering into English, English doesn't let you get away with that, right? Like you have to specify in every case whether something is singular or plural. And so in those cases, some of these older films that were translated by people who didn't even have the chance to watch thumb. Is these little gremlin creep end of things like they don't actually get the number right. And those are extreme cases, those are really severe cases. But most of the time I think the most general pattern is that the older style of subtitled translations tends to be much more domesticating. So there was much more of a tendency to leave out specific cultural references. So you take something like Buddhists term like Bodhisattva, right? And this is something that translators in the fifties and sixties would just automatically assume that their viewers, they're not going to know what this word means, right? And so then they're going to gloss it as, as Buddha or God or ST or something. Some sort of really inexact approximation in English, which completely sort of erases the very specificity of that term in the original. And so what I've been doing since the beginning and I've been doing this since about 2005, is pushing back against that with these existing translations and saying, you know, let's, let's try to leave that. Let's try to use the more specific terminology and let's try to use more specific cultural references here because this is not the 1950s. I mean, first of all, there's Buddhism and American house. So a lot of people actually are familiar with some of these terms. But also just, just knowing that in many cases people are going to be viewing this at home. Not in the theater, although I mean, many of the films that I translate also get shown in retrospectives and things like that theatrically. But, but just the fact that people have a Google now, people are watching at home. And my general philosophy is that when you domesticate, when you erase what's there in the original, people don't know what they're missing. They don't know what they're not getting. If you introduce a term, a culturally specific term that they're not familiar with, they may not understand it right away. And in the course of watching a film for the first time, that could always be a problem. So I try to, I try not to push it too far. But if you gloss it, if you domesticate it, then they don't know what's there and they don't know what they've missed. They don't know that they don't understand something that's there, that they don't really have a very specific and concrete understanding of what's being referred to. Whereas if you have the more culturally specific term or the term and in the original language, even if they're not immediately familiar with that term, then at least they know that there's something going on, right? And if they want to know if they feel that that knowledge is necessary for their appreciation or understanding of the film, they can look it up, right? They can Google it. It's looking things up these days is much, much easier than it ever has been. I mean, who in the 1970s had a Japanese English dictionary and they're home, right? But who's an audit? A student of the Japanese language. But these days everybody has a global encyclopedia in their pocket and they can look up any word in any language and immediately know what it means. And so these, I think these technological developments have made it easier for us as translators to push the limits a little bit in terms of confronting viewers with culturally specific terms and ideas and concepts that they might not necessarily already be familiar with. So I want to kind of collect this Question for Professor song because I feel like you and I are probably more familiar with the consuming of Subtitles. And I guess thinking about what Professor, Yes, I was just talking about. The cultural specificity first says More something, a language lending more comfortably in the target language. Do you personally have a certain preference or like, are there instances where you've kind of noticed a clash on that level in the subtitles themselves. So I mean, I'm more on the side of, as you mentioned, like on the side of consumer of Subtitles, then the producer of subtitles, I've got my experiences so limited Legos 20 years ago I have done some part-time job for this corner. Bad translation for very nice movie to ruin all the appreciation of audience experiences. So I don't really have much to talk about the process itself, but still, I am not sure if that's really tricky. Question raised. Like I remember, there's one discussion about. The new translations of crosswalk it as movies by Linda Hoagland. There was quite a huge controversy about her translation. For example, these 950 is Japanese gangsters are speaking like 930 Chicago gangs in on subtitles, right? And then that has been quiet. I mean, that's a good advantage of that is to make the movie more familiar to these American audiences who are familiar with the 1930s noir films and the conventions in there, how they talk. But on the other hand, that kind of limits the way in which the film is assessed. It's on its own. Like that. When you read the subtitles are speaking like 930 noir films, then you associate that Japanese film with the style and standards of evaluation that is tantamount to this 930 American gangster noir film. Though. It's not just about kind of removing cultural specificity or is not just about approaching audience is more closely. It's also about huge influenced and a subtitle can make upon this impression about this whole movie. So That's kind of in some other issues are I don't have a personal preference. It depends on the movie, right? So sometimes it's really important to make it much more accessible, but also at another time it's more important to leave the cultural specificity as I read all for the audience to look up after watching the movie. So what Professor Thor has taught, remind me of the discussion of Marcus known it is on this notion of all satellite, rough translation and abusive translation. And then what I'm hearing from Professor sounds more like an abusive translation, which is kinda trying to abuse the language to bring our older kind of different kind of says that the list that only that language can have. But I'm not really sure, maybe. So the translation matters here because it actually gives us an access to this foreign films. And then if, I mean, depending on how we defined an axis baby, that preference might be different, I think. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, so one example I did want to bring up with this conversation was one fairly infamous controversy in South Korea over subtitles, was with Sofia Coppola's film Marie Antoinette storing Kristen danced. Though. I watched that film in theaters with the Korean subtitles. And then I just went home and watched it without subtitles because the translator had sort of taken the liberty that I think also imposed their interpretation of what Coppola was trying to do in that film. And what the translator had done was extensively used, a kind of very internet based girlish slang throughout a lot of the kind of, uh, perhaps in today's terms, it might be considered Tumblr language, like young teen women language. And it was sort of first of all, there was an uproar because it felt very incongruous to see that kind of language in subtitles. No one, not a lot of people have really ever tried to do that before. But second of all, it was sort of immediately assuming this was what Coppola had intended essentially to portray Marie Antoinette as somewhat vapid or trend. Very, very now, very end of her time. A young woman in her time, which brings in all sorts of uncomfortable assumptions about what teen girls are and what they're about. But yeah, so many people thought it was a massive overstepping on the part of the translator. But having said that, I obviously there's some, there's a lot of space for discussion with how much localization is done in these cases. Because in my head I always usually frame it as the the breast giver versus the wet nurse debate. Like do you preserve the original translation of a term like breast give her, which means milk nurse, Bob. And in doing so kind of preserved be a literal translation, the original sort of literal word meaning, but then in doing so, somewhat other, that term savant exoticized the term and the, and the, and the topic. Or do you localize it to wet nurse, which is a much more familiar word in the English language. But completely erase this the specificity of a term like breast giver. But I mean, there's no fantastic answer to such a. Such a question I feel like it and it ultimately as sort of a very much a your mileage may vary palm situation, but I guess I can open up to everyone. But thinking about these uniquely linguistic situations that translators come up against. One of the questions I had was thinking about uniquely Korean or Japanese expressions and cultural concepts. Is there anything you really think is untranslatable? Maybe I'm jumping for the first time. Um, I mean to a certain extent, let me, To me, one of the things that I struggle with most in, in translating Korean dialogue, and this will be no surprise to anyone I think who knows Korean, but because they're different registers in Korean, capturing that in English dialogue is quite a challenge. And in particular, when a character may suddenly switch to a different register. There, there are moments in the Korean dialogue where it comes across like almost has a slap in the face. The fact that to switch to a more informal urges to the, you know, that feels disrespectful sometimes. But it's very subtle in the way that it is actually expressed linguistically. And an, a big institute to put into English. I mean, there, there are ways that you can try to do it just in terms of word choice and sometimes in the way that characters refer to each other. Where the titles they may use when, when speaking to each other. But you can never, I think, really fully replicate that slap in the face. And it's one of, I don't know. I mean, always in in doing subtitles, you can never You never be a 100 percent effective. It's, it's a tough job to, to work in if you're a perfectionist because nothing's perfect and in subtotal for translation in you're always deciding what to sacrifice so to give up. But yeah, but for me that yeah, it's not any one specific word per se. But yeah, the way that Korean language is used and the way that relationships between people or subtly expressed and all the different registers of language. I mean, that's the biggest challenge for me. I think. This is sort of a perennial controversy within translation. Write this. On the one hand, there's the sort of like the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, right? That there are these sort of like ideas and words and concepts that can't be carried over from one language to another. And then on the other hand, you have a more kind of universalist conception of language, which argues that basically anything, you know, given enough space like given enough words, enough sort of paraphrase or loss or description that you can sort of just at least you may not be able to find a word, an exact equivalent in the target language, but you can, you can find ways around that. You can sort of describe what's being, what's being said. Of course, the fact that that can be done doesn't necessarily mean that you always want to do that or even that you can do it in the context of subtitling where you're very sort of constrained again, in terms of time and space. I don't think I've really encountered any situations where it's basically impossible to convey the most important points of what's being said. Like the, just the, the essence of what's being said. I don't think I've ever encountered cases like that, but I constantly encounter cases where there's some nuance that's being lost. Either some sort of association, some very sort of faint association that a native speaker might have with that word or that, that, that, that word carries in the original. And of course in Japanese, you have the same problem as in creating, have these different registers of language and you have the humble forms, the honorific forms, the polite and humble forms, the different and very different levels of honorific. You have gendered language in Japanese, right? Which is actually fairly recent innovation. And by recent, I mean, you know, since the 19th century of the 20th century, early 20th century. So it's, it's, it's a little bit of both, you know, I I don't think there are any impossible nuts to crack with the exception of wordplay. So also, yes, a judo for example. His screenplays which he co-wrote with no da, Como I believe was named as a screenwriter. And the way they would write their screen places, they would go to an in someplace and they would do what in Japanese they call consummate. Which means you basically get, can you sort of lock yourself up, you get canned in a hotel room or in an inner something and you just keep working and writing until you finish whatever it is that you're working on. And so he and his his co screenwriter would basically, they would, they would sit in, in an, in for about a month and go through a huge bottle of SA k basically every night. And I think part of how they got themselves through this process was just coming up with puns. And then putting these puns and other forms of wordplay into, into their screenplays. And most of that wordplay is just completely untranslatable. I mean, there's just, there's just no way took ticket to recapture that word play. I mean, in rare occasions you might be able to find sort of like a close approximation in English to what they're doing there. But most of the time you just have to, you have to find some way around it. It's really only wordplay that I think that that really becomes a very important sort of problem or obstacle because, because the wordplay, it's meant to be funny, right? It's meant to be humorous. And if you can't really, we create that, that wordplay in the, in the target language then some of the humor and some of that effect, right? That sort of affective charge of the film gets lost. So you can try to maybe do like it, not try to translate the word play, but to come up with wordplay in English, that sort of creates the same kind of effect on the part of the viewer. But, but again, that's, it's, it takes a sort of a lightning bolt of inspiration to come up with things like that. And sometimes that comes in, sometimes it doesn't. But I think in most, in most cases, really, there are ways, there are ways to convey just about anything. With the exception of wordplay. Emphasis on do you have well, I I mean as chemists as, it's kinda, it's perennial. And a controversy whether there's a translog, but there's an intrinsic ability versus transferability. But maybe I'm more on the side, like nothing is translatable, but everything is translatable as well. Like translator is incredible because, because there's only a kind of different forums that have some specific ideas, right? So the how the forum is expressed might be different culturally and that's where we find it really hard to translate. Though that's kinda balance. I think they're making out of this tightrope walking on that. But, but I think more important, I think here is that question. I mean, as an academic matter, translator myself, myself as an academic is this question. So what are we translating in terms of subtitled translations? So he's like, but it's only words. And then dom experiences kinda more than just reading the words, were listening to that sound. And then in that says, translation is just one of the parts of the experience. And then when it comes to subtitled translations, it's really, it becomes a really easy target for criticism from so many audiences. Because it is meant to be mistranslation. It is meant to be on a bad translation though. So I, so I rather have a question to these practical to a translator is about how do you, I mean, so what do you translate? I mean, that's I mean, this is a crescent that's too broad, I think. And then I know I understand you're more focused on this dialogues, but still when you're translating, I think you might have to put in so many things into consideration. Not only the word limit, but also this would read them and this kind of change of the seas or the cuts and so on. So what do you mean? What do you think you are what do you put prioritized when you translate those dialogues test my I mean, for the question. Yeah. For me. I mean, it's always context-specific. And I think that's one thing that I kinda, I kinda joke about it. Like when, when Bruce Lee talks about martial arts, how he doesn't pursue one particular form of martial art. That he has a fluid style and he takes things from many different. Many different martial arts and be like water. I think that that's a good approach for a translator because there are certain situations where it makes sense to, to adopt a certain strategy. And then in other situations where even if you're translating basically the same words, because the contexts within the film is different. It makes sense to do it in a different way. And yes. I mean, the and it's always a struggle to fit things within the available space. And so there, there are a lot of judgment calls that you make even in the simplest, simplest lines of dialogue. And to a certain extent, those are creative choices as well. Because they affect how the film is going to be experienced by the viewer. I think I'm quite fortunate in that. I'm working on contemporary films. I'm working directly with the production companies and the filmmakers themselves. And so I'm often able to, to ask or to sit down with them and to hear directly from the filmmakers what they want to emphasize in a particular line of dialogue. And it's always kind of a fascinating process for me to hear what it is that they want to emphasize what they feel is most important. But it is very different from direct you to Director Tom. Directors prefer that you preserve the structure of the original dialogue, even if it comes across as somewhat awkward in English. There are other directors who really strive to create a natural flow within the dialogue. And they're willing to sacrifice a little bit of the original structure where it play. In that sense though. So yeah, it is. I think there are no rules. I think whenever you try to come up with a specific rule or guidelines. And these days I'm also teaching translators as well. Had a workshop. Further. It's run by the literature Translation Institute of Korea. But I find that I'm constantly saying to my students, I'm not teaching you one particular strategy. I'm just giving you a whole bunch of options and then you have to kind of decide for yourself what's most appropriate in each one. Yeah. And then again, especially for me, I often don't make the final decision. And so it's the director might be deciding what to do in a particular way. I mean, these questions about to what extent to preserve the strangeness of the original, like to translate in a way that feels somewhat unfamiliar to the audience, which preserves the meaning. I mean, I tempted to fall on that side of that. Yeah, I'm quite comfortable with translations that sacrifice a bit of the, the natural flow of the language. In return for preserving some of the cultural specificity of the, of the dialogue. But I may be working with a director who doesn't, who doesn't agree with that. Or even just the sales company or the production company that I'm working with. They often may have some suggestions or preferences in terms of how things are handled. Well, yeah, it's quite a very inconsistent sense of how I approached Kareem. Do you wanna door? So I think the, I think the final frontier in machine translation. And i'm, I'm going somewhere with this. I didn't just randomly. But I think the final frontier of machine translation is actually going to be subtitle translation. Because when you're translating subtitles, you're not just translating a free standing text, right? You're translating a text which is embedded in an auto, audio visual context. And sometimes the images are going to give you cues on how to translate a line. Sometimes the tone of voice is going to give you a cue on how to translate a line. Sometimes the body language of the performers going to give you a cue on how to translate a line. So 11 line that I often use as an example when I talk about subtitled translation is there's a line in the film late spring where the character of naughty call finds a pair of, I think it's a pair of gloves that belongs to her father. And she she takes out the pair of gloves and she throws them on the table and she says height in Japanese. Which if you'll look in a dictionary, high would be translated as yes or in some cases, no. I mean, a Japanese is a little bit wonky this way because, you know, when, when, when you say yes, Basically what you're saying is what you just said is correct. But then there are other sort of contexts in which height is used. And I was sort of scratching my head. How do I translate this line? She's just saying she's throwing the gloves on the table because her father had been looking for these, you know, looking for them. And she says Hi and I'm just thinking, what, what would, what would an English speakers say in this situation? The solution that I came up with was ta-da. So that that was one That's one example of how her body language, right. And her facial expressions, the way she the way she heard of non, kind of nonchalantly through the items on the table with this sort of mischievous look on her face and the way that she was just sort of like surprise here it is, right? In that case, I set aside any kind of fidelity to that, to the literal meaning of the Japanese. And I, and I tried to come up with something that would be appropriate in that context. Right. In that kind of in terms of in terms of her effect, in terms of just that the meaning of that, that moment. Right? And so in many lines, what you're really trying to convey is information. You need information to move the narrative forward. You need information to move the characterization forward. You need information just to get your bearings in the world of the film. But in other cases, what you're conveying is not information so much as a mood or a kind of something emotional. I mean, films are very effectively charged. Works. I mean all works of art are, but there's something, there's something really special about cinema, right? I mean, in terms of the way that an unfolds in time, the way that it brings sound and image together. The way that it brings, it is the Giza jumped back Tomorrow Wagner term in German, it's the complete art form. And because it's the complete art form, you, you can't be too wedded to the purely verbal. You have to find ways to weave the verbal in with the nonverbal or to find ways to make the verbal convey things that that might be non-verbal somehow. And that also includes things like rhythm. Rhythm is actually one of the things that I really try to pay attention to when I'm translating. I don't try to recreate the grammatical structures. So Japanese, because that's just insane. Japanese is a subject object verb language. The verb comes at the end. You don't know what's happening. You don't know what action is taking place until the end of the 10th. With Japanese, you try to pull that on English speakers and they're going to, they're going to throw something at the television. And then they're gonna, they're gonna complain about you online. You can't do that. So what I tried to do is I, you know, I, I tried to make the grammatical structures, the syntax as natural as possible and English. But I try to recreate the rhythm of the Japanese and you can, It's actually easier than it sounds. I mean, people who translate song lyrics do it all the time, right? You have to, when you're translating the lyrics of a song to be sung in a different language, you have to find approximations that kind of match that rhythmic outline. Same thing with not the same thing, but kind of a related process is dubbing, right? With dubbing, you have to figure out ways to translate things so that you're going to match the, the, the lip movements. So one of the things that I do pay a lot of attention to is rhythm actually. But yeah, so it's, as Darcy said, it's really, every line is a different challenge and no one rule is going to work. For every case. Some cases you want to focus on just getting the information across. That's the most important thing. In other cases, it's, it's the, it's the mood, it's the rhythm, or it's something else. But you just have to, you have to exercise your judgment and your creativity. So perhaps one way we could, at least one thing we could tease out from what you both commented on is there's through the imperative of information, but also the imperative of performance. There's very much, as you say, the, the audio visual performance that is so much more than merely a line of text. And as you were speaking, I was thinking to myself, the experience of watching Snow pure served with a mixed Korean and American crowd. But 70 percent of them, obviously that's in both Korean and English. And I remember thinking like, oh, that line doesn't quite land for English speakers when I'm near the end of the film. Press Evans as character asks the security all security expert, played by so gung-ho. Open that door, open that final, final door and go who has had it with him telling him to keep opening these doors. So he stands up and the English line is something like what a crazy about doors. But in that moment I just remember laughing and the CRE, and audience laughing and the English audience going, Why are you laughing? Because in that moment, so encompass the village came out, which she had been kind of suppressing. And he'd been speaking a lot of his lines with a generic standard Korean speech. But then in that moment you here just a bit of the lived and he you'd like as he loses his temper. And that's part of that performance. And it's a tickles create audiences. But again, it's a moment that doesn't quite transfer. But I did want to. In one additional thing I think we could bring up here is the trickiness of Subtitles and translation in general, in the presence of multilingual situation. So the slope here, which I just mentioned as an example of that, but Darcy, but we've worked on The handmaiden, which literally had to color code to differentiate between the Korean and Japanese, which I thought was actually quite crucial to understanding the film. I was, I recently taught push Option city of sadness, which if anyone's ever studied Chinese or Japanese, you quickly realize, wow, that was useless because this film is in Shanghai, knees and me none and the hook in and all these other Chinese dialects that you have not studied. So for standard Mandarin, studying people, it's like why don't understand a single word in this bill. But that those subtitles, the version that I watched, didn't differentiate at all between this kind of cacophony of languages that happens in that film. And you really kind of lose something with, with a lack of awareness of that, with a lack of awareness of difference in these languages kind of bumping into each other. So, yeah, I guess I wanted to ask Darcy about the handmade and, but also karim, You and I had a pretty interesting conversation about the translation of Oceanos, the title. But when she must build gimbal these diary, because that was kind of it in a slightly interesting multilingual situation as well. So yeah, I think if you could speak on those. Yeah. I mean, working on the handmaiden was quite an interesting experience for me. I don't speak Japanese, but of course, a large portion of the text is in Japanese. And in this case, the approach that we took to that, the director said that because he had written the original script in Korea, he asked me to translate his original dialogue as he had written. And then it was later checked by a Japanese speaker to make sure that there weren't any kind of discrepancies that came up in the translation process. I believe it was the director's idea, the two different colors. And, you know, it was there's a there's a subtitle that appears at the very beginning of the film where he explains or where it says, Korean dialogue will be subtitled and white. Japanese dialogue would be subtitled in yellow. To explain this to viewers. And I wasn't aware of a similar approach taken in, in previous films. I mean, there may have been, he may have seen this in another film and decided to, to replicate this. But certainly in reading the reviews of the film, this was also seen as being kind of unusual but effective because being able to just look at the subtitles on that to see the different colors. I think it's important that you know, because you have cream characters who were pretending to be Japanese and might switch languages at crucial moments in the film. You can't always be explaining this within the host. So the color was really helpful in that sense. I do believe that there's certain DVD releases, like in the US, I think there was a DVD. They didn't preserve the colors. And so that's a shame in that case. But it did seem to set off a trend to some extent. I mean, one thing I can't really talk about it in too much detail. I I wasn't the translator, but I was kind of a consultant for Pachinko, which is opening scene, an Apple TV and which also involves multiple languages. And in this case. Japanese translation in Korean translation we've done separately, but all were based on the toilet that was written by the show runner. But being Pachinko is 12, uses different colors in the subtitles to represent the two different languages. And, you know, just yesterday I read a review of the, of the series and Hollywood Reporter. And they also mentioned the fact that the colors and the subtitles helped to help the audience to understand what is going on Linguistically. Yeah, And in general, I mean, I've ended up working in quite a few films that do contain multiple languages, English or Japanese. And it always kind of adds a different dimension to the whole process. I was on an AS panel some years ago when there was a night. I have to apologize that the name of the presenter escapes me, but this person was talking about films that were made a film, I think it's single film that was made in Malaysia, I believe. And this film had multiple languages. I mean, so there was like Chinese, there was mallei, there was English, and some others. And in some places where you have these very kind of multi linguistic societies, you have films like this that have not just two languages or three languages, sometimes four or five languages. And in that case, actually in the case of that film, they did use color-coding for the different languages. I think that becomes much more necessary if you have more than two languages. I mean, I think it's good even with two languages. It was a great idea. And I actually, I just taught the handmade. And in my Intro to East Asian cinema. I want to thank Darcy for that wonderful translation because my students love that film. I love that film. And I think the, and it's surprising that, that the Japanese was, was actually translated from the Korean original before it had been translated into Japanese for the dialogue in the film because the translations are, are, are very accurate and very solid. But I guess that checking process really worked. So I think it's, you know, there are a lot of different, I think what's happening now is that people are becoming more open to some experimentation and even some play with, with subtitling and ways that maybe they were, they were not before. And using color-coded subtitles. This is, I think one example of the ways in which viewers are sort of being, I guess I taught by the films and taught by the translators to engage with, with foreign films or films in a foreign language and in sort of new ways and perhaps more conscious ways and more engaged ways. And I think a big part of this has been fan subbing, fan subtype fans who were doing subtitles, particularly of very popular content like Korean dramas and Japanese anime. And so you have these communities of fans and they're, they're basically, of course this is all wildly illegal home, but, but I think sometimes the production companies sort of turn a blind eye to this because it's, you know, it's, it's like free publicity in a way too. And these fans are so eager to get their hands on this, on the content even before it's gone through the official distribution and translating channels. And you have these sort of collectives of sub Tyler's who vie with one another for supremacy in the, in the realm of fans being. And they're competing with one another and they do all sorts of fun and interesting things with with like doing footnotes as subtitles that are like explanatory footnotes of things that are going on. And I think that these conventions or sort of this Wild West defend subbing was one of the inspirations for Mark nor Ness, who was actually on this panel with me in terms of his, his ideas about abuse of subtitling that Professor Song mentioned earlier. And so it's, you know, it's, I think, I think we as commercial translators for subtitles, we can't quite take those liberties because the people who, who pay us to do this work, they're not quite as adventurous. I think as fans suburbs are, as fan communities are in terms of and, and they, they imagined their viewers to also be fairly hide bound in terms of what they're willing to accept in terms of subtitling conventions. But I think. There's a lot of inspiration to be had from what's going on in this kind of underground scene of subtitle translation. And so I think, you know, let, let, let the children lead the way so to speak. They have a lot of good ideas about how to address some of these issues. And I think we as professionals, paid subtitles can, can learn a lot from them. But the next stage is convincing the suits, right, to, to allow us to do this. I mean, that's really as much as I I don't I don't agree necessarily with everything that norm that says about, you know, that the value of abuse of subtitling and in fact, Mark himself has kind of walked back some of the claims that he makes in that book. I mean, I've talked with him about it and in subsequent presentations he's sort of rethought some of his more doctrinaire pronouncements about corrupt subtitling versus abusive subtitling. And I don't I don't really consider myself an abuse of subtitle are in this sort of very, you know, in, in the way that he describes it in the book. But I think there are, there are ways that are not too abusive, not too off putting that we can, we can address some of these challenges in innovative ways of doing it. I mean, one of the beauties of streaming is that if you're streaming, like, let's say on the tablet, right? One idea that I, that I've been sort of kicking around is if you're if you're watching something on a tablet, you can just sort of like touch the screen. And then you can have like a pop-up note, like a pop-up explanatory note. So if you don't want the notes, you don't need the notes. You can just you can just watch it like you would any other subtitled film. But if, if there's something that's of interest there, you can sort of maybe there might be like a little dot or something that you can touch and then like an explanatory note will come up. It's like what Amazon does with their X-ray, right? With the X-ray where they'll show you like you can get the bio IMDB entry for the actor in that scene or things like that. So I think we can, we can try to think of ways to leverage the technology to make subtitles, to make them richer, and to sort of provide something for everybody. So for those people who just, just want the bare bones, they can just get the bare bones. But then for those people who want, who want more to give them that option, criterion did an experiment some years ago where they actually included two different translations of a Kurosawa film, Throne of Blood. So they had one translation by Donald Richie, and they had another translation by Linda Hoagland for that film. And both of them were on the DVD. So you could basically, when you're watching the DVD, you could choose which translation you wanted to watch it with S. So it was like basically like a supplement, like an extra. And of course, if you're going to buy the DVD and you're going to watch the film multiple times. Why not watch it with both translations? And you can sort of compare the two, see which one, see what the differences are, see what the sort of different nuances are. They never actually repeated that experiment for reasons that I'm not entirely privy to. But, but I think, you know, there are a lot of these possibilities and I think the major obstacle is basically getting the people who, who make the financial decisions, who tend to be rather conservative about a lot of these things. To, to persuade them to lay out a little extra money so that you can actually include some of these things as perks, as bonuses. I mean, this is a fantastic segue into some of the main concerns, our subtitling and the age of streaming. I'm actually very glad that you brought up and submit something because it represents part of the larger picture here when it comes to the undervaluing of labor and digital spaces, the undervaluing of translation as labor as well. As you say, it's quite advantageous for anime companies or whatever companies, whatever media production companies to sometimes just turn a blind eye because it's, um, it means people start to watch their show a bit more and then later on they can copyright claim whatever they choose. And and, and I do want to sort also acknowledged the fence I'm in community itself has sort of something we could maybe you all learn from a fantastic sense of humor about itself. In that one of the best memes to come out of fan subtitles as a character from, I believe, death now it's saying the light, how it's all according to qa qa crew. And then the translator footnotes and ka ka, ka is like a plant, but in Japanese. Hm. And it sort of brings to the fore, again, the concern about authorization that we've touched upon. There's a lot of jokes and the fan solving community about the anime fans up in community about sort of the fan translators thinking some terms are simply to Japanese to translate NACADA, we can not translate Narcan. We cannot translate true friendship and the Japanese in the home. So there's, there's some fun like working. There's some processing of these exact issues that we're talking about in the subtitles themselves sometimes, which I think is fantastic. Um, but yeah, I mean, this sort of brings us to the, the necessity that seems for a disruption in the current state of things with streaming subtitles specifically. And I guess first I wanted to ask about how much experience anyone on-the-ground people has with that or if there's anyone any stories they heard, any anyone they know who has done translation stuff specifically for extrema. I myself haven't I haven't really worked in that particular system whereby the subtitle work is done through a vendor. And so I mean, most of the subtitles that we see on Netflix will be commission through a vendor and not directly hired by Netflix. Peas, there are a number of very large vendors who work throughout the world and so translators can sign up to them. And obviously, depending who takes the big cut, which affects ultimately third, the amount of money that the translators are able to make. And yeah, I mean, so I can't really speak too much in terms of personal experience. I've had conversations with people at Netflix about about subtitles. I know that at least in the Korean context, I think they do think a lot about subtitles, but it's a challenge to because they're not directly overseeing the process. I think that it's a theory challenges in that sense. I do sort of. Yeah. Personally, I'm not very comfortable with this vendor system and the outsourcing system. I think that there should be a better way. Could both improve kinda the labor situation for translators and then also improve the quality of the subtitles. But, but it is true that in subtitle translation, the system is extremely important. And in order to get a good translation, you need to get translated, but you also need a good system in place. And with an ineffective system, even kind of, you know, very good translators. Sometimes in the process of moving through this, you end up with problematic subtitles. And creating a good system. It's not easy. Netflix is an expert in various fields. They've created a platform that's very effective. In recent years have become quite effective at producing content. And yet I'm not convinced that they're experts in the subtleties of translation and the best way to create a workable system. And I'm not sure if I want because of their power, I'm a little bit suspicious of them as well. I mean, Netflix does have a very extensive set of guidelines further, for all the subtitles that appear on their service. Everything down to like if you use an ellipsis, it shouldn't be three separate talks. It should be the special character for an ellipsis. If you two characters speaking within the same subtitle. They use hyphens to do that. And in the Netflix system, there should be no space between the hyphen and the dialogue in English. It's the opposite in Korean. And so the two minute detail of it, they give instructions about how different situations are to be handled. In. Some of those are simply questions of formatting. In other cases, it does kind of limit, I think, the choices of the translator. And so these guidelines which are meant to prove the quality of the subtitles, I think sometimes Sometimes work against the translator. But also yeah. I guess I'll say it it's recorded, but there have been instances where subtitles that I've worked on. I gotta come from the director and independent direction was very upset. We'd worked in a couple of years earlier on the subtitle translation of his film. And we sat down together and gone through it line by line and discuss the nuances of the translation and come up with a transition that we were happy with. And then a couple of years later, Netflix required for streaming rights to the film. And they said, Well, we have our own kind of subtotal guidelines. And so we may need to go through and adjust the guidelines or adjust the subtitles to match our guidelines. And it sounds like the kind of tasks the subtitles out and retranslated or are they gave it to somebody who just went through incomplete. And the director is very upset and called me first. And then in this case, he told Netflix that he wanted to pull it off the surface unless they restore the original subtitles. But this is quite rare. And I I think because of Netflix in size, they sometimes act in ways that I think they overestimate, competes in some cases in terms of Subtitles and the system. As far as I can see, if the system that's in place at Netflix has not yet developed in a way that ensures consistent quality subtitles. And I don't see that at other streamers as well. I think it would be important. The next step would be to put in place a working system way that ensures a more consistent quality and subtitles, which benefits citrus more as well. Because ultimately, if you're going to attract high-quality translators, you need to, to pay them more. You need to give them better working conditions. At the moment. I'm lucky because I work directly with production companies, but translators working within the streaming universe are not adequately compensated. Well, this actually brings them. That brings us then to sort the question, I actually thought we might deal with this, the invariant, which is the question of ownership over translation of Subtitles and professors. All I'm actually particularly curious to hear like what you think might be it do to you. If you also see a sort of a difference between how translation of subtitles versus translation of literary texts has treated and where, what, where that discrepancy comes from. Row that I think of credit. I mean, tough and very tricky question because I think the inquiry and contexts, I think subtype rulers were not necessarily your famous at all. They were famous in that, in case when they made a mistranslation, for example, there was a huge controversy a few years ago about this marvel film and game. Avengers Endgame. How an amino end game, all the previous dominant appending the sample. Anyway. So that epithet, that installment of Avengers movie ended with this one line. I think it's endgame. And then that was translated into Korean Commonwealth though. There's no hope. And then all the fans were infuriated by that myth translation because no hope there's not a correct translation of Endgame, which I don't necessarily agree, like it may be different. You'd have different biases, but that's my personal opinion. But anyways, became a huge commotion. And lot of people when onto the blue house to make a petition to remove this top Tyler's out of this kind of companies though. The top Taylor never to translate Marvel movie again, kinda petition. So it was kind of crazy. So that's where I made the top petal width. All right. All right. Thank like how they are treated in reality. So though, I think it was really fortunate situation that Arctic pocket you have kinda get what you are able to be named as one of the huge contributor to the success of Paris a retiree. And I really appreciate that. But that's kinda been issuing regarding the ownership kind of not to mention the harsh working condition of audio visual translation. I mean, frankly, I I I actually did. So when Netflix was launching their sub-title production company called her Miss, I actually tested myself to apply. And there was like a series of restraint examination of the intrinsic, their college entrance examination. You get a series of clubs to translate time to get the bread, sometimes you don't. And then I completed that. I got contacted to be one of the English to Korean compilers. And then I talked to so many other people who are already, who are already in the industry and then they told me to decline for JavaScript. So I mean, that's what I think Thursday pocket was trying to explain, like to get a better substrate for translation, you need to pay better wage to this, I'm sorry, pillars. That's kinda very minimum. On another note, I think. But streaming services are much more, I think investing into this this job I think. But, but, but I see where there would be really interesting would echo with what Curium has said. This kinda different ways of utilize the technology. I remember it was vk.com, I think, where, I mean, they're starving. It's just kind of integrated into their service. They're already array. And then not only defend sobbing, But also they also enable this kind of and commenting on the real-time commenting. And under video. Though, most of the comments under real-time video, our world, I kinda, I'm sharing their thoughts and emotions and how they react. But also sometimes I see some footnotes type of information that we can see from the movie, like the stopcock windows up kinda comes out and then the comments comes up as well to explain further about them. Situation where the cultural specificity situation and so on. And so that's kinda another kind of interesting development that we can also find under online as well. But yeah, as he has say a lake that industry wise, I think it's quite I mean, there's not much I think bigger change in terms of that. Working conditions. A condition further translators, I think so. I guess like so with the question of ownership, One thing I learned was that in France, subtitles are actually guaranteed royalties for their work. And their subtitle translation is treated to the same standard of copyright as published material, which I think begs the question, are these weird trend where subtitled translations fits in in the larger landscape of translation. I think someone needs to meet them. And I guess I am curious if this is something you, you, you, you, you consider to be a workable model or a model that you would like to see implemented. Yet, Francis, a really interesting example and I'm quite envious. The situation inference. I mean, yeah, I mean, as far as I understand, the way that it works is that individual translators may not. It's not so much that the French translator of a certain film will get paid with every, every time the fulfillment broadcast on TV. But there is an organization which collectively takes in the royalties for the industry as a whole and then distributes those royalties to translators. And I'm not aware of any other country that does that with media translation. In Korea, thirds. I mean, there's actually a similar thing for actors. And so when a film that actors have appeared in is rebroadcast on TV, there is a similar organization that collects those royalties and distributes it to actors who have signed up with their organization. So in theory, it would be possible to create a similar type of thing, but it would require a tremendous amount of effort. I do expect there will be pushback from the pig. Content companies, because obviously it, it would affect their financial bottom line. I do. It is interesting when I sign contracts for subtitle work. I've noticed that there often is a clause within the contract from the bigger companies asking me to voluntarily give up my copyright. The subtitle translation. To structure it kind of is a work for hire type of contract. And this may be something that lawyers are recommending that they do. I've been kind of curious whether this is something that I should try to push back against. You in a practical sense. You know, a subtitle translation isn't something that can really exist independently of the film itself. You, I can't imagine a publishing a book titled Translation and having people read it without seeing the film. And so in that sense, a subtitled translations. And what different from other forms of transactions that can exist independently. And if and so in a practical sense. So whether I have a copyright for my work or not, I don't think at the current moment it would make any difference. When it would make a difference is if a situation like grants were to be realized in Korea, then in that case, I would need to be sure that I retain the copyright for the work that I do. But this would require a lot of collective action on the part of translators. And there's one interesting, and I guess, somewhat unfortunate aspect of the way this works is that translators don't typically know each other. It's not a job where you're working directly with anybody else. And so you have are these individual translators who are connected, who were contacted directly by phone companies. And despite, even if you've worked in the industry for many years, It's unlikely that you've met too many other translators. And so it's hard to organize any kind of collective action when you don't know each other. One thing I've been wanting to do when the pandemic finally sub-sites that it's easier for people to meet kind of in person is to organize some regular meetings among translators and subtitled translators. And so if nothing else, just to treat experiences and stories and to talk to each other. But I don't really know exactly what other translators are being paid. And it would be really helpful to sit down and to, to speak with people about that in detail. That's another aspect of the work that I think provides a bit of challenge in terms of this type of collective action, are pushing for better working conditions. Think it makes subtitled translators little bit more. I guess, vulnerable to this kind of poor working conditions than, than it might be for other types of work. I think this is particularly pertinent, considering streaming will only get bigger from here. It's only going to enter more and more markets from here. And again, the role of translation can't be overstated. As, as these expansions go on. Actually one of the pin my research, I learned that one of the main reasons Disney Korea, Disney Plus Korea has been struggling somewhat. And it's early sort of in its first like launch here in the Korean market is specifically, sometimes the subtitles have been noticeably shoddy. So I do hope that consumer feedback is a big part of this change, but I felt, with the time remaining, I could start reading out some of the questions from the chat and some of you could respond as you as you like. So one question we had some earlier was, how do you translate or do you translate slang and pop culture reference says use if they're used in the original language. Do you try to, again, that this is a sort of why should we contextualize it in the target language for that, in fact, easier to just leave them out of the films that Oh, well, I mean, since the films that I translate our tend to be older, that whatever slang appears in those films is going to be quite dated. I mean, so one way of approaching that is to sort of do what Linda Hoagland tried to sort of tried to do with trying to find a historically equivalent type of slang. And then sometimes you can and sometimes you you cannot. But it's, you know, I I I tried to do it, but I tried to do it with a light touch. Like I don't I don't try to sort of slather it in, in slang and in these, in these sorts of references. Because in most cases that's not really what's important about that particular line of dialogue. I mean, it's just there as a kind of color or flavor. But but yeah, I mean, in some cases it is, it is, it is necessary. And then you need to sort of find those those historical equivalence for them. Yes, lying is something that I always kind of kind of thinking about. Them in general, I don't tend to use a lot of slang in my translations, even when the original dialogue has a lot of slang. And I think that one of the reasons for that is just because of audience. And I'm very aware of the fact that the people reading my subtitles that are not 100% native speakers of English. America is not the primary target market of a lot of these films. I mean, with Netflix, it's changing. And obviously in Korean, content is becoming more globalized year by year. But for a typical phone that may screen it on the film festival circuit and then later may end up carrying some distribution deals. I mean that they're probably going to be more viewers in Europe and Asia than there are going to be in North America or in primarily English, English speaking countries. And so if it's slang that's widely recognized around the world and then I'm comfortable using it, but I am a little uncomfortable with using something that non-native speakers will struggle to pick up. And that, and I mean, that's, that's a personal choice. But also many of the companies that I'm working for also express kind of a similar preference that they don't want me to use really obscure language or things that will kind of alienate an international audience. And so that's something that, that is on my mind. Yeah. I think it's still possible sometimes to express the flavor of the original dialogue are the important meaning of the dialogue and in a way that is kind of more accessible. Not to simplify that, to use simple language to express kind of complicated emotions are our expression. So that's usually Michael. Sometimes in the subtitling process, I'm sometimes side will be there during one of the post-production processes where the subtitles are being kinda put onto the screen. And so I'll be sitting with someone from the sales company. And A's are native speakers of Creon who speak English at a very high level. But if at 1, they asked me, what does that mean? Often, I realized that it's perhaps more difficult than I thought. I might rewrite the lineup that moment just to make it a little bit more accessible. All right. I'm just trying to parse through what we've maybe perhaps already answered and our conversations. Yeah. There were questions about like, why there isn't already what Curium has mentioned as sort of being able to highlight something on a subtitle and get a bit of a footnote. So clearly there's a demand. I would have loved this as I would still love this. So clearly, there's a curiosity about this. But I think it's important to emphasize so many of these decisions are to the platforms themselves. And I mean, also I think the suits themselves. It's very possible that there's still a sense of, well, certain audiences don't like to read subtitles or certain preconceptions about the accessibility or popularity of subtitles. I think these are, these factors are definitely in play. Are there any canonical Chinese or Japanese films that you see as impossible or very difficult to translate. In particular, any non comedy word play-based films that you still see, it's very challenging to translate Chinese, Japanese, or Korean. While karim, You mentioned as a prime example, where that Are there any other accounts that people wanted to mention? I mean, I don't I don't think one can make that kind of blanket assessment about an entire thick. I mean, every film is going to have lines that are harder to translate, lines that are easier to translate. I mean, there are certain films. Certain films are certainly much more difficult to translate than others. So for example, the films of ocean Minogue saw are very, very verbal. And oftentime, often the, the characters will be sort of delivering dialogue. I mean monologues that are actually almost like, kind of like philosophical treatises. So films like that, that are, that are incredibly dense, that are sort of trafficking in really complex ideas that sort of managed to pack a lot of information into a very sort of compact space. I mean, in terms of what you're what you're either hearing or seeing on the screen. So I don't think there's, there's a film that's untranslatable, but certainly some films and some filmmakers tend to make films that are very verbose and very dense in terms of like they're very intellectual. And, you know, it's one thing. I mean, it's hard enough to translate philosophical works when you have the luxury of being able to use as many words as you want. But when you have the constraints of subtitling and you're trying to sort of convey dense intellectual ideas. Then those are generally the hardest films that I've encountered. Bit, yes, professor. Well, I mean, we aren't kinda generally talking about this kind of feature length fiction films. But now when it comes to documentary films, non-fiction films, there are lots and lots of words and you can't really deliver every word on disk, limited space of subtitles, right? Especially if it is a Korean documentary film that is about activism, for example. Like there's quite a lot, so many organizations with long names like cussing and that should be one of which is the preparation committee for the students committee for something comedian. So you can't really translate that. We're going to put that under subtitle, then you can't really make any sentence out of it, right? Oh, that's kind of some kind of challenges I think you will easily find. And another thing, this isn't my personal experience 20 years ago and I happened to translate living carnal by Saddam acquittal, which was happened to be translated by Marcus Norris into English. And then back then I wasn't really good at Japanese. Still, I'm not good at is yet. But I was at a very basic level Japanese thought I received this English dialogue list, which was done by Mark, was known as, which is quite famous for his in his proud abusive translations. Though, this documentary, film is basically about this kinda rural town who is affected by this pollution. And then with lots of, lots of local dialect, which is so heavy that even contemporary Japanese people wouldn't understand their dialect. Though the director actually didn't put any kind of standard Japanese dialect into japanese subtitles. But we'll try to respect that decision. The English subtitle or market has tried to also made this fragmentary information and deliver instead of kind of making a full sentence out of it. So I have this dialogue list with four fragments of English, that English words and all that kind of dialogue that I can understand. Though, it was quite difficult decision to, for me to actually find out a better subject cannot translation that thing. Though, when it comes to kind of documentary films, non-fiction films with so many words and the words are so important for the films, then it might be quite challenging for one eye. I'm like, I feel like I wouldn't know how to go about perhaps is are certain films, some of the films that I think use specific historical incidents or events as sort of the subtle backdrops. And there are references in so embedded in the film that may be recognizable to native audiences. But unless you have like a page, long footnotes, it's not necessarily something you can, can like for, for, for, for non green or non-Japanese viewers. It's very possible o, like they're shooting at the civilians are out there. There's, the cab driver is everywhere or sort of things that are immediately signifiers of history and certain cultural contexts completely lose that. And I've always wondered like something like peppermint candy, for example, which sort of floats around historical events and historical flow. There's no dialogue that really refers to anything specific either. Though. Those are films that I look up and I'm like, wow, I don't know. Okay. There were some questions about translating the various specific aspects, like quotes or sayings, that very poetic aspects. Or there was also a question about onomatopoeia, the medic words, these very language specific situations. What are your strategies? There? Are the other peers really quite a challenge. I've never done with 2D translation. I know the translators who were convert tunes. That's one of the primary tasks that they struggle with, is how to express this kind of thing in English. But with subtitles, I think it's often it is a real challenge to to express that. And when you try to do it, then it becomes really distracting. I think. Because onomatopoeia is used to much greater extent in Korean that it isn't English. I mean, my usual approach is to try to find a verb has a similar type of sound as in something like buzzing or something like that. And, you know, It's not always possible to find a good one, but but I I tend to focus on trying to express something like that. Yeah. I mean, that is a different issue and it's going to push this off in a different direction. But, but I like this. Regional dialects are a whole other type of challenge that if you try too hard, then I think that sometimes you went up or ruining the experience for the audience. But it is a real question because, I mean, ultimately you have to think about, you know, from whose perspective are you? Are you translated? Sometimes I'll translate a film that's set in a small rural community. And everybody in this community are speaking with a regional accent. And for a viewer from Seoul is watching this film, you're kind of constantly aware of this regional accent as you're watching the film and the filmmakers kind of play it up a little bit, sometimes an exaggerated for effect. And yet from another perspective, from the perspective of one of the characters in the film, everybody's just speaking normal language. They're not speaking a strange accent from, from their perspective. So it seems to me to make a lot more sense to translate from the perspective of the characters. And it may not be necessary to try to give a sense of an unfamiliar dialect within the translation itself. Where it becomes a particular challenges when you have two dialects, the kind of clash in a particular scene and that becomes the point of the sea. And in that case, you have to try to find some alternate way to approach that. One of my old professors at Indiana University years ago, I, I studied linguistics. Professor who was kind of a mentor to me. It was also a translator from polish to English. And I met him a couple of years ago and I asked him how he handles translating dialect and he was very direct and just saying, don't try to do the translation within, within the text itself. If it's important that they're speaking a dialect and find another way to signal that to the audience. But don't try to mimic. I like to because that will ultimately distract the viewer. And sometimes it comes across as someone to meaning to the characters as well. And I think you probably bring in, again, a set of culturally specific sensibilities about dialect and true uses dialect. What region you're using as a stand-in for what character? Uh, with with these attempts to find correspondence. With something when subtitles, oh my God, I actually literally just saw this happen with the new Steven Spielberg West Side Story. When subtitles of English language films say yelling in so-and-so language as opposed to translating the foreign language lines. Is that omission purposeful or is it more because the subtitle crew did not think there was a piggy not need to pay the translator. Literally this happened with like there's so many moments or the closed caption just says yelling in Spanish as opposed to translating. This, which I think is actually kind of unconscionable for West Side Story. But yeah, any, any thoughts on this aspect? Well, I mean, I try never to do that. But there are times when if you have a lot of people who are speaking at the same time. And you know, like sometimes you have like crowd scenes where there are a lot of people are just saying a lot of, a lot of people are speaking at the same time. And very often those, what they're saying is not going to be in the screenplay, it's not going to be in the shooting script. And you can't even really, even a native speaker Can't quite disentangle everything that, you know, everything that they're saying. So it would be very difficult to sort of capture everything that, you know, in that kind of hubbub of what's being said. But what, what I tend to do in those cases is to just translate fragments like snippets, you know, sort of have like ellipses and have like a fragment, a few fragments of what people are like if they're complete intelligible utterances to translate those. But you, obviously you can't, you can't you can't get everything but simply just slapping, yelling, and Spanish, you're yelling in Japanese. I think that is that is indeed unconscionable. Well, I think we've covered most of the questions that were asked in the chat, which was very active. I think yeah, I think if there aren't any further questions, we can close that out and people are here. I'd like to thank the invited participants for their time and their wonderfully interesting and insightful answers. And thank you everyone for staying with us for almost two hours. This was a really fantastic conversation, but I'm kind of thrilled to be part of yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for inviting me. It's been a pleasure to talk. Thank you. Thank you very much. It's, it's really been very enjoyable and very interesting. I've learned a lot too. Thank you, professor. Thank you, sir. I came here to learn and I learned a lot. Thank you. I'm also sorry, like my register but dress foot cliff searching because they're like tarsier, period. And then I mentioned, ultimately I told you you're going to love the brain for a moment. Though, you know, code-switching and action. I don't know what you call up that. Yes. Thank you everyone for being part of tonight. And I hope everyone has an enjoyable rest of the evening.