Subtitling is all the rage
I have been interested in languages and translation, and ways of making content from different languages available for a long time. I was very excited to come across DotSub, an online YouTube-esque platform for film clips where you can upload videos, and have viewers contribute subtitles in different languages Wiki-style (and without having to download any software). The interface can still be improved, but I believe they are hard at work rolling out a new version, and in the meantime, they’ve scored some great content. Notably, PopTech hired them to put all their presentations this year online, with professional translations in six languages (including Chinese, Farsi, Arabic, Kiswahili and French)! This is simply awesome. (And also a great tool for learning any of those languages, by the way).
“Re-interpreting the scene”
However, lately I have come across some new “fun” ways people are employing subtitles, that has less to do with translating a message, and more with playing with language and context. The first trend I noticed was taking film clips in foreign languages, and adding subtitles that were completely wrong, but matched the scene. A scene in the movie about Hitler called Downfall has received several makeovers, the best executed one, I think, is the one about Hitler getting banned from Microsoft Live.
“Re-interpreting the words into a different language”
Another trend, that I just came across through LanguageLog, is to take songs in other languages, try to “hear” words spoken in your own language, and subtitle them based on that. This apparently started with Arabic and Turkish songs being “subtitled” into Swedish, with Hatten är din being the first one. Now there is a whole list on Wikipedia of so-called “Turkhits”, which also includes a great rendering of the Russian national anthem (with Swedish subtitles). Many of these movies were creating their own absurdist music videos as well, based on the “new” subtitles.
Then this caught on in English, with especially a lot of Indian music videos, which often provide enough hilarity by themselves. Buffalax is the master of this, and two of my favorites are My loony bunny is fine Benny Lava which has surpringly well matching lyrics, and some great dancing. The other is Girly man, a real “Thriller” rip-off, with some insane dancing (although slightly less well-matched lyrics).
Enjoy, and be warned. It’s addictive. I would love to hear about versions of this done in other languages - especially I am curious if some language pairs are more “susceptible” to this than others. I wonder if for example Chinese has such a specific sound and syllable system that it would be hard to “hear” Swedish, but perhaps I could be wrong.
Stian
