Monday, December 1, 2014

Subtitles in Movies: How Accurate Are They?, We Need Characters with Disabilities Who Are Not Defined by Their Disabilities in Films, and How about Films with Gay Characters where a Big Deal Is not Made about Them Being Gay

I watched "No Man's Land" with English subtitles. Mostly the movie is in Serbo-Croatian, but there is dialogue in French and English. The dialogue in English is also subtitled, but the subtitles not not completely match what is spoken. The meanings are similar. I do not know why they are different at all. It makes me wonder if the Serbo-Croatian is correctly translated. I could understand a word here and there,but not nearly enough to know if the subtitles match the film's dialogue. I have watched some of Pedro Almodóvar's films with English subtitles. I definitely need to improve my Spanish. The Spanish spoken in the films of Almodóvar is pretty standard, yet the English into which it is translated is more colloquial. The meaning is basically translated corrected, but the tone of what is changed. It would be better if the subtitles had been in more standard English. It would match the original dialogue better.
One of things that I found interesting in watching "The Double Life of Véronique" is that when Weronika is visiting her aunt a lawyer comes to see her aunt. What I think is good is that the lawyer is a"little person," but attention is not brought to this fact. Usually people who are seen as disabled or different in such a way a big point is made about this. He is simply spoken of as a lawyer. We need more characters who are disabled, but whose disabilities are not directly referred to, characters where the main is not on the person's disability but on what the person can do. I am not at all saying that being a "little Person" is a disability, but some people may think it is. In "No Man's Land," one of the characters has been killed, and the person who killed him looks through his wallet. We briefly see some of the contents of the wallet which include a folded photograph of a nude, hunky man with the words, "Greetings from San Francisco." No mention is made of this photo. I was very glad that there were no derogatory comments. It was not treated like anything out of the usual. We also need more films with LGBTQ characters where their sexual orientation or gender identity is not the defining characteristic of the character but just something that is not brought up. It would be nice if two people of the same gender could kiss each other in reel life and real life without a big deal being made of it;



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