MovieChat Forums > Da hong denglong gaogao gua (1991) Discussion > dvd-awful subtitles!

dvd-awful subtitles!

posted 17 years ago by Elouai
7 replies | jump to latest

Did anyone else experience this? First it was things like skipping words such as "at" or "the". Then it was mixing up names, i.e. "Fouth wife" and "Second wife", which made things confusing. (I also found out they just got some names completely wrong-in the version I watched, Yan'er's name was "Yang".
Finally, I could hardly make sense of the dialogue because the person in charge of the subtitles either couldn't type or was a practical joker.
The two I remember were: Second wife telling the third wife "You will be ruing this house soon anyways" (ruining or running?)
And my favorite, the third wife telling the fourth wife "Don't be so groovy!"

What?!

How could they let this happen?

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We thought you was a toad!

[–] ljkelling 17 years ago

unfortunately, several of the raise the red lantern dvd releases are pretty bad.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raise_the_Red_Lantern#Distribution

this wikipedia page goes into a little more detail on the subject. i was lucky to recieve the mgm version (the only good one, so i've heard) when i ordered mine, because i didn't really think to check into all that before i ordered it.

[–] kawaiiprincess2004 13 years ago

I really do wish foregn films would really pick up the pace and get their english translations right. I have no problem watching chinese films since I can understand the language just fine, but it makes me cringe just seeing those god awful chinglish subtitles at the bottom of the screen. When i see that, all I can think is, "who in their right mind thought they were doing a good job translating this??" It just further puts out the stereotype of the whole "no speak english" thing with asians, which I highly dislike.

[–] jjamison-2 13 years ago

I watched it on DVD last night and the sub-titles seemed OK to me. The characters spoke as I would think they would, no American slang, etc. I watch a lot of foreign movies with sub-titles and I sometimes think the sub-titles are shorter than the actual dialogue so the words can be read before the scene changes.

[–] 13 years ago

[deleted]

[–] Moshrom 13 years ago

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/dvdreview/rtrl.htm

Both the MGM and the ERA DVDs have excellent subtitles. Do NOT settle for watching the terrible Razor-released edition. I personally feel subtitles, for foreign films anyway, either make or break a film since they're essentially the script.

[–] JaysonT 12 years ago

Well aren't you all high and mighty that you understand Chinese. Too bad most don't and suffer through understanding films like this.

[–] surfergrl70 12 years ago

I know what you mean....a few years ago I borrowed the movie from Netflix, and the subtitles were completely different from when I'd seen it on VHS years ago. I eventually found a copy in Chinatown NYC that was basically just a digitized copy of the old VHS with the good subtitles. Now that I know there's a good DVD out there, I'll order that.