Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

Ever wonder who writes those subtitles? Check out this fascinating description of the day-to-day work of professional subtitlers. Guy La Roche, a Dutch translator living in France, offers a vivid look at the particular challenges of subtitling things like cartoons, Shakespeare . . . and porn:

Once I had to do a whole series of funny American cartoons for kids. In one episode the expression “it is raining like cats and dogs” was used in combination with an image of actual cartoon cats and dogs falling out of the sky that totally belied my earlier argument that I do not have to mention these creatures in my translation. After all, this time the animals were shown on screen. So what does a good translator do in a case like this?

Well, first of all you cry a little and curse the fact that you chose to become a subtitler. Next, you search your native language database for any expressions dealing with heavy rainfall in the hope that at least one of them will mention either a dog or a cat so that your translation will correspond with what is being shown on screen. In Dutch there is the word hondenweer or dog's weather, which means “really bad weather” and generally describes heavy rainfall combined with heavy winds. I solved the pun problem by feeding cats into the equation and came up with something like: “Today, it is dog's AND cat's weather.” The pun was preserved and the text corresponded with the image. Eureka!