Subtitles - A real struggle or an excuse for a cultural myopia?

"Once you overcome the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films." A groundbreaking statement in a pioneering moment.

Bong Joon Ho, the South Korean director of the four-Oscar-award winner feature "Parasite," said that during his acceptance speech at the Golden Globe Award for best foreign-language film. Parasite was also the first non-English speaking movie to win The Academy's 92nd Oscar Best Picture, which is considered the most prestigious honor of the ceremony, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and of course, Best International Feature.

Three days after the award, The New York Times released an article titled "After 'Parasite,' Are Subtitles Still a One-Inch Barrier for Americans?"

But are they really "barriers," or are they self-built fences of cultural myopia?

***

Born and raised in Vietnam, I grew up with translation. It was not until a recent decade that original Vietnamese products, in any form, started being intensively encouraged and thriving. Yet, imported materials still take the dominant role in our daily life. Technology devices in my house are mostly bilingual, if not entirely in English or Chinese so my parents would have to write the Vietnamese manual themselves for my grandparents to read and use them correctly. Apart from what is broadcasted on the national television channels that my family watch together every dinner, the rest of my entertainment is primarily from foreign countries: movies, music, games, etc. We attend and listen to exotic languages every day, sometimes unconsciously, until it becomes familiar regardless of how much we understand them. The moment marked the point when I officially escaped "illiteracy[1]" was not the Spelling Bee or memorizing the alphabet. It was being able to read the Disney cartoon subtitles fast enough to fully understand what was happening on the screen – one of the most significant milestones in my elementary school. Thanks to my parents, I was able to approach English education from a very early stage. And with any kids growing up adapting it as a compulsory second language like me, the question "can you watch movies with English subtitles?" is a standardized test to assess your academic level. We don't normally "turn on" subtitles; it's a part of the screen. Some may turn it off; that's a choice of privilege.

Never have I ever thought the two yellow lines at the bottom of the screen could appear as such a nuisance.

It was not until years later, as I am currently studying in the US, that I realized how different the options are. Despite their interest in cinema, many of my friends feel reluctant to watch foreign movies because of the "distracting" subtitles. The action would demand total attendance to both on-screen kinesis and the texts simultaneously, which is regarded as "too much effort required," according to them. I found this reactance fascinating yet controversial. Americans, or citizens of any English-speaking country, grow up with the advantage of securing their mother tongue as the transitional bridge between different cultures. Theoretically, they do not have to learn other languages to accommodate themselves to the world. It's their choice to know more, or not. However, supposing those are all prevailing rationales, are subtitles indeed a strange thing to their daily lives?

Language is not always word – some are recognized, and some just exist. We come across a myriad of them throughout our life, probably more than we are aware of, and comprehend them in different ways, with varying combinations of senses. Math lessons require students to listen and comprehend the lecture while figuring out the symbols – language – they have never seen before. Pianists need to look at the music sheet and the keys when they begin practicing. Deaf and mute people use sign language, which requires both conversation partners to look at each other's hands and faces for thorough understanding and politeness. Drivers need to pay attention to the street in front of them, to every signal along the way, sometimes to some huge billboards on the highway while speaking to someone else in the car. Speaking of billboards, we don't need to look separately at all the visual elements of an advertisement to understand what it is about – two glances are enough, taking you less than 1 second. Our brain, eyes, and senses can be trained to multitask as if they are all "synchronized." Thus, if reading subtitles were that big of a deal, environmentalists might not have to worry about global climate changes because driving personal vehicles would be no less of a burden for a significant English-speaking population. With that being said, what seems a passive consequence of cultures turns out to be a choice of ignorance, or simpler, an excuse.

A substitute that can be taken into consideration is dubbing, given that you were willing to sacrifice the soul of the movie. Different spoken languages have their signature tone and pitch, which helps characters express their emotions more intensively. In fact, many cartoon characters, especially in the 2D-animated era, either speak gibberish or animal sound. There's no need to understand word-by-word what comes out of their mouth to perceive what they are trying to communicate. A casting director does not only cast actors for their visual but also for voice. Each individual has their own expression nuances, thus representing a unique personality. On a broader scale, there is a gut feeling that each language carries its entire social and cultural characteristic in merely how it sounds: Multi-layer and self-interpreting. Listening to a language is like tasting a flavorful bite. I always say, "you are not allowed to describe food" because everyone's reception is exclusive to themselves. The more you eat, the more you know about a society, the more you recognize the people who created it – even if you did not know them personally at all. Like painters and fine art, sometimes you can reasonably assume how the artists view life, their lives, treat themselves, respond to thoughts and raise opinions via their stylistic choices - their artistic language. From the most mundane habits like eating, playing, and working to abstract concepts like social standards, class structures, customs, and traditions permeate every fraction of language. Despite how absurd all the similes are here, I should not list a particular example because it will seem like a stereotype. But it is not. It's the quintessence of language, the ability to contain, condense, and release. Hearing a foreign language is like Alice in Wonderland looking through the keyhole. And the language barrier is the giant door. Though it appears that you are hindered from accessing whatever is behind the door, the closer you look (or hear), the further your imagination can take you. Dubbing, however, robs the keyhole away. It shows you a parallel "Wonderland," allowing you to understand everything but the essence of the original version. In filmmaking, there's a golden rule that audio is more important than video because it is tightened with the authenticity of the story. No matter how abnormal it may appear initially, you may get used to the visuals eventually because we encounter new images every day. But once the audio feels "off," you lose it. Spoken language is an art performance. You are not just giving people words; you deliver an entire culture in how you speak. Since no art is comparable to one another, finding an alter ego voice to represent a culture's performance is putting too much responsibility on one's shoulder. Dubbing works for those with little to no initial expectations, like children. It deviates you from the exclusive feeling of the original material – it tells you how to feel. The deeper your sensitivity to language is, the more you realize how coercive dubbing is. That sensitivity is a gift of cultural pride and a fastidious curse, simultaneously. And should you have it, the dubbing voice should be in your head, not borrowing from somewhere else.

"So how is subtitle different and how to "do" it?" you may ask.

In a recent podcast episode, Trinh Lu, an honored elderly Vietnamese translator/writer, considered the novel "Norwegian Wood" (original by Haruki Murakami) “easy to translate” - it was one his most important translated work, along with the all-time-favorite Gatsby and many other classics. "… Because it was immediately "played" in Vietnamese when I first read it." he said, "Everything just happened naturally. I could instantly realize the character's intention in his narrative voice, that he might talk like this but was giggling from inside. Not every book does the same thing." Though this process particularly, or translating generally, seems irrelevant to cinema, it is actually a form of reading subtitles. His imagination is the movie, the texts on paper are subtitles, and the character's voice in his head is he dubbing himself. To understand this process, you must put yourself in the shoes of a foreign language learner. When we are initially accustomed to the language, that you may know the definition of each word but not yet get the meaning of the whole sentences, you will read THEN translate them (as two separate processes) into your mother tongue to fully absorb it. It can happen with the experienced learners as well when the literature style is unfamiliar or absurd in a way that it requires more thorough reading to get the author's intention. Nevertheless, when you are familiar enough and have established a particular connection with the language, you read and think in it as it was the voice of your consciousness. Then the tongue is yours, everything goes "clicked! Aahh I get what you mean here!" Subtitles, in turn, basically do the first part for you. The rest of the work is just glancing, listening to pitches and tones, and enjoying the cinematic "meal."

However, not every subtitle is good at doing its job. The job itself is not easy and simple as often regarded, either.

Trinh Lu was a great translator because he could smoothly transition a foreign literature piece to "a great novel" for Vietnamese, not merely a dictionary-translated version. A great translation should be seamless, that although people acknowledge that it comes from an exotic place, they can still appreciate it borderlessly. Regardless of literature or movies, subtitles play an important role in spreading cultures most transparently and genuinely. The difference between a language student who's searching words in a dictionary and a literary translator is that a proficient translator must also be a writer. To translate a book from English to Vietnamese is easy, I would say, enough. But to sell a translated book that the readers can feel at least 80 percent of how they should feel reading the original version is not an everyone's capability. According to Trinh, when he fully immerses himself in the book, he develops a sense of internalization. He tries to understand not just the language they are speaking externally but also what they are thinking, intending, and feeling internally. To do it genuinely, he never waits until he finishes the book to return and translate it but always does it while he's reading through each page. By doing so, he remains his real excitement and suspicion without orienting toward the ending. Nevertheless, translating narratives is always a tricky task. Selecting words across different languages to transfer the culture equivalently requires a deep understanding of both sides. Trinh said one of the most challenging jobs when translating a novel is choosing personal pronouns and vocative terms. In Vietnamese, besides genders, we have different ways to refer to a person based on their position in the family trees, intimacy levels, relationship, favor, etc. Each has its own nuances and expression. For instance, if you want to refer to someone as "him," you can use "anh ấy" with a simple, neutral, respectful meaning; meanwhile, if you use "hắn ta" – the readers will know there's something wrong about this guy. Examples can go on until forever – The power of language's diversity. Reading translated work is a complicated process. We read it with our culture wisdom and a curious mind, though having to accept that it may or may not deviate from originality to the extent that we can never know[2]. Finding a great translator to translate a great book is as essential as finding a great diplomat for your country.

And that's how movie subtitles should work for people as well. It's a multitask process of reading it with eyes, turning it into your own voice (I would call it "mind-dubbing") and "absorb" it – understand, pertain, interpret and/or apply. Similar with literature, a subtitle maker should also be a screenwriter. Since most of movie subtitles are for dialogues and we have matching visuals going right on the screen, accuracy in verbal language is highly essential. As mentioned above, spoken language is contextual art performance. With each era of history, generation, social class, culture, etc., our society develops a distinct linguistic style, especially slang. "Urban dictionary," as what we are now familiar with, is a thing that has been updated constantly from the dawn of language across countries. That is to say, when we translate movie language, it's crucial to translate the entire culture of it as well. Imagine making subtitles for a gangster movie, knowing that Vietnamese curses are different from English, how weird is it if someone translates them word by word, or eliminates them all? Wrong use of aforementioned pronouns and vocative terms will also interfere with the audience's view on the relationship between characters or easily break the verisimilitude.

***

I was raised in a non-religious family. A part of our family participates in Buddhism, as most Vietnamese do. We practice a small portion of it, primarily just for the ceremonies and traditional festivities. My maternal grandmother is the role model who inspires me the most about who I am today. And different from most people of her generation, she doesn't believe in spirituality. While making traditional food, she often shrugs and says, "you don't need to believe in such thing to survive." With all respect to other religious people, I grew up and was comfortable with knowing little to nothing about religion. It is, sometimes, an intentional avoidance.

The other week before the 94th Academy Awards ceremony, I decided to watch all Best Picture-nominated movies. One of them was Belfast, a film about a neighborhood in Belfast in 1969 during The Troubles. Like any typical Oscar movie, the first 15 minutes of the movie are the hardest to endure because it decides whether you are going to stay. After 10 minutes hearing a lot about Catholics – Protestants relations, which I knew nothing about (history generally), I intended to exit because I thought it was about religious conflicts. However, I felt a sense of guilt for a couple of seconds. "An ignorant action" I suppose. I went on Google and typed: "why do people have to know about religion." Yes, I literally did that. You can still see that in my search history now. And the first answer came up with "Understanding religion helps us to understand other people and their cultures. Religion concerns what people believe is most true and most meaningful in life…"

Simple. How simple is it? In comparison with "understand other people and their cultures," my concern, if it was even called so, equals nothing more than laziness. I spent the next three hours of my life watching Belfast – and I'm so glad I did. But I still think about it – about how I was so hesitant to watch a movie because of something I have always assumed that I don't want to know about or need to know about. So what's the matter? Time? No. I would have watched TikTok for the next hours if not Belfast anyway. Nothing.

Subtitles? Nothing.

One-inch-tall yellow barrier? Nothing.

Culture difference? Nothing.

How pathetic are we, our species, with this entire language myopia?

In the movie Drive My Car, the 94th Oscar winner for Best International Feature Film, relationships and the loss of connection are two significant themes. It talks about how good people are at coming up with "personal reason" to disconnect themselves from others. Sometimes we delude ourselves that those excuses are valid enough, that it is the only way to solve the problem, or it’s other people that disconnect themselves from us - the "victim syndrome." The more we believe in it, the more blindfolded we are towards what's actually happening, until it's too late. Then, when we think everything has already settled, we are (assumingly) stuck with it. We think that the most desperate loss we have with other beings is when they are no longer in this world. But is it really? Between a person whom we drown in grief and reminisce about to a certain frequency and a foreign stranger standing next to you in the subway, who is further away? That stranger could be someone who could help, or be finding you to return one final letter from your long-gone beloved that he found in her office drawer. But you may know nothing because of language.

Nevertheless, there's another important element in this excellent movie: a play of universal language. Kafuku, the main character, is a theater director preparing for his new play – the unique version of Uncle Vanya. He casts the actors and actresses with people from all nationalities speaking English, Mandarin, Japanese, German, Indonesian, Malaysian, and a mute girl using Korean Sign Language. The way they practice for the play is also abnormal: Everyone will sit in the circle and do table reading with the dialogues in their native tongue, which is also remained in the final play, with the most neutral, emotionless tones. Kafuku's method goes against the normal Method acting we are frequent of, which requires the actor to immerse in the role entirely. He wants people to submit themselves to the text without any preconceptions. They will not apply external emotions to the dialogues; it provokes them, reveals them – subtitles of emotion. Additionally, in the play's final performance in a theater, we can see a screen dropped down with four different lines of subtitles. According to The New Yorker, the movie's subtitling game itself is also really strong. It requires three distinct typographies: roman type for translation from Japanese; roman type in parentheses for translations from all other languages; and italic for translations of sign language, as well as from signage. To even mention the issue of distraction in this situation, I would assume that's nonsense. Nothing. And above all, the ending scene of the entire three-hour-long movie is the performance of Kafuku himself as Vanga, and the mute actress. Though the audience does have a voice translator for her performance, I don't feel like it would be much different if they didn't. Then, the most powerful language is not even verbal – it's the eyes and delicacy in gestures. It's the universality of language.

A century ago, Charlie Chaplin fought for Silent Cinema because he thought cinematic language should be universal, that people across the world should be able to enjoy his movies because it's all explicit in his movements. Today, we sit in our room, hesitant not to watch a movie, which may or may not be a masterpiece of another culture, just because of… nothing.

[1] In this context, the author does not limit this term to the inability to read and write but to consume “essential” information and knowledge from mass media – a “survival” skill of modern society. [2] Perhaps you can read the same book done by different translators to compare, if not learn the language yourself!