123
votes
Accepted
Why didn't silent movies have subtitles?
Film was exposed only once and the quality was not good enough to film the projection of a movie in order to add subtitles underneath in a copy.
The only editing tool was cutting and that's why movies ...
- 1,494
55
votes
Why didn't silent movies have subtitles?
You're right about the cost. As recently as 1970, subtitles were expensive. Eg polish budget film Hydrozagadka had an actress recite credits instead of displaying text - just because it was cheaper.
...
- 1,652
29
votes
Subtitling vs. dubbing and vice versa
In the US, Europe, Canada and other countries with nearly 100% literacy rates, dubbing vs subtitling is certainly a matter of preference.
Subtitling allows the viewer to get a more exact translation ...
- 26.4k
27
votes
Why didn't silent movies have subtitles?
Intertitles were never called "intertitles" during the silent era. They were just "titles". We call them intertitles now to distinguish them from subtitles and the main titles of a film.
Subtitles ...
- 1,582
24
votes
How much Cantonese and Mandarin is in Everything Everywhere all at Once?
For anyone wondering, I went to the cinema to watch it, and while I was able to follow and did enjoy it, it was incredibly frustrating not knowing what was being said for large portions of the film.
I ...
- 491
23
votes
How exactly are subtitles and closed captions written for movies?
There are two main types of subtitling and several ways of attaching them to videos.
Types of subtitling
As you've noted in your question, sometimes subtitles have sound cues and sometimes they do not....
- 26.4k
23
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Why were there no English subtitles provided during the conversation between Michael and Sollozzo?
A couple of reasons...
Firstly, Coppola states somewhere in the DVD commentary that the actors spoke too quickly for the subtitles to be read properly and that was a distraction for the audience, so ...
- 133k
18
votes
Subtitling vs. dubbing and vice versa
The debate of dubbing vs subtitles is well discussed, including numerous studies and polls of movie goers. It's an opinion that is split by demographic, by country, by certain distributors.
...
- 12k
16
votes
Accepted
How is the audience supposed to follow the story around Daenerys?
Daenerys speaks High Valyrian to her dragons, Dothraki to her Khalasar and Low Valyrian to other characters in prior seasons. All* of these interactions are subtitled, by default.
In your German ...
- 14.2k
15
votes
Why didn't silent movies have subtitles?
The purpose of subtitles is to generally allow audience members to mentally pretend that the words they're hearing are actually in their own language. In most cases, the purpose of intertitles is to ...
- 805
12
votes
How exactly are subtitles and closed captions written for movies?
I have a friend who works at a company that does subtitles for TV.
He has dictation software (Dragon), trained specifically to his voice. He listens to the TV show, and as he listens, he repeats the ...
- 428
12
votes
Accepted
What is the term used to refer to foreign/alien language only subtitles in a film or TV show?
They're called Forced subtitles
From Wikipedia
Forced subtitles are common on movies and only provide subtitles when
the characters speak a foreign or alien language, or a sign, flag, or
other ...
- 53k
8
votes
Why didn't silent movies have subtitles?
It seems to me that, in addition to the various other reasons mentioned, that even if it were a viable option to use subtitles, they might not have been preferred to intertitles for silent films, ...
- 423
8
votes
Accepted
Why were Stargate's subtitles redone?
In modern broadcasting, subtitling is a separate data stream accompanying the audio and video, and it is rendered using whatever font is configure in the subtitling device.
This is a more efficient ...
- 5,001
7
votes
Subtitling Standards
There is no single standard for style formatting of subtitles or captioning. As @BCdotWeb stated. It is dictated by the company you work for. Much like any other type of writing, there are multiple ...
- 67.8k
7
votes
Accepted
What is the purpose of the specialized subtitles during "The Boogeyman" song?
If you had noticed, there are two words that are highlighted in the song's subtitles, The Boogeyman and Take.
According to legend as we used to hear, The boogeyman punishes children for bad behavior. ...
A J♦
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6
votes
Subtitling vs. dubbing and vice versa
There are times where subtitles are actually more accurate than dubbing. With dubbing, the voice actors have to stay as true to the mouth movements as possible....sometimes even also the sound of the ...
- 425
6
votes
Words on the screen in John Wick
I can't find any articles that have found hidden meaning (in terms of word re-arrangement) for John Wick's impressive subtitle typography, but I did find and article from a website called Videomaker ...
- 23k
6
votes
Subtitling vs. dubbing and vice versa
Coincidentally I recently watched Wolfgang Schmitt discuss the pros and cons of dubbing vs subtitles on his YouTube channel (unfortunately, and ironically, not available in English). While he ...
- 58.7k
6
votes
How exactly are subtitles and closed captions written for movies?
Many pieces of subtitling software help you sync stuff faster than doing it by trial-and-error, by allowing you to import your movie and showing you a waveform of the audio. It's easy to visually ...
- 61
6
votes
Accepted
Avatar TWoW subtitles
You seem to be referring to SDH subtitles - for the deaf or hearing-impaired. These tend to also indicate things like voice stresses, significant background sounds, music indicators, etc. They're like ...
- 53k
5
votes
How exactly are subtitles and closed captions written for movies?
It's not that big a deal.
Ever sit through the credits of a movie? No? There's a reason for that. There are often literally a thousand people named, because they are all involved in the movie's ...
5
votes
Subtitling vs. dubbing and vice versa
There's a certain interesting idea behind dubbing rather than subtitling.
As a part of the Marshall Plan (if I remember correctly) after World War II in certain countries it was part of the agreement ...
- 209
5
votes
Accepted
Why don't cinemas project subtitles off-screen?
I'll get to a nifty solution that meets one of your examples a bit better towards the end, but in the meantime....
There are likely several reasons (this hasn't been done very well until recently):
...
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4
votes
Why didn't silent movies have subtitles?
Also films were made for an international audience. Intertitles could be cut out and new ones put in for each language.
- 41
4
votes
What language are the mother and boys speaking in "Life of Pi" when talking about Hindu gods? Looking for dialog
It's Tamil. In that scene, she was telling a myth story to her young sons. (In that story, Yashoda is Krishna's foster mother, Krishna is an infant boy). I don't know if you want the script in native ...
4
votes
What are the last (two) lines of George Cukor's movie "A Bill of Divorcement" (1932)?
Just from listening to it - a cleaner copy than the youtube but still pretty old & crusty - I can get most of it, but I'm uncertain on the very last line.
It's my sonata, isn't it?
I'd forgotten ...
- 53k
3
votes
Which translation is more correct, the dubbing or subtitle?
Watching movies in different languages that I can understand, more or less, my point of view (I watch movies that are not in my native language with subs, with my girlfriend who speaks something else, ...
- 585
3
votes
Accepted
A question on a quote from "Richard Deacon - In Between"
The video you posted is unavailable, but it seems the trailer contains the quote you're talking about (at timestamp 0:15):
I'm pretty sure what Deacon says is
What's ...
- 5,860
2
votes
Why didn't silent movies have subtitles?
I suspect that part of it was that, for an artistic standpoint, lack of dialogue was just part of the medium and they were all about action and gesture and writing a dialogue script wasn't part of the ...
- 3,090
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