Comment by 0cf8612b2e1e

I mean, subtitles are mostly the same.

Sometimes they're edited down simply for space, because there wouldn't be time to easily read all the dialog otherwise. And sometimes repetition of words or phrases is removed, because it's clearer, and the emphasis is obvious from watching the moving image. And filler words like "uh" or "um" generally aren't included unless they were in the original script.

Most interestingly, swearing is sometimes toned down, just by skipping it -- removing an f-word in a sentence or similar. Not out of any kind of puritanism, but because swear words genuinely come across as more powerful in print than they do in speech. What sounds right when spoken can sometimes look like too much in print.

Subtitles are an art. Determining when to best time them, how to split up long sentences, how to handle different speakers, how to handle repetition, how to handle limited space. I used to want subtitles that were perfectly faithful to what was spoken. Then I actually got involved in making subtitles at one point, and was very surprised to discover that perfectly faithful subtitles didn't actually do the best job of communicating meaning.

Fictional subtitles aren't court transcripts. They serve the purpose of storytelling, which is the combination of a visible moving image full of emotion and action, and the subtitles. Their interplay is complex.

> When I'm reading a transcript

That's the thing though, subtitles aren't intended as full transcripts. They are intended to allow a wide variety of people to follow the content.

A lot of people read slower than they would hear speech. So subtitles often need to condense or rephrase speech to keep pace with the video. The goal is usually to convey meaning clearly within the time available on screen. Not to capture every single word.

If they tried to be fully verbatim, you'd either have subtitles disappearing before most viewers could finish reading them or large blocks of text covering the screen. Subtitlers also have to account for things like overlapping dialogue, filler words, and false starts, which can make exact transcriptions harder to read and more distracting in a visual medium.

I mean, yeah in your own native language I agree it sort of sucks if you can still hear the spoken words as well. But, to be frank, you are also the minority group here as far as subtitle target audiences go.

And to be honest, if they were fully verbatim, I'd wager you quickly would be annoyed as well. Simply because you will notice how much attention they then draw, making you less able to actually view the content.

But then what about deliberate mishearings and ambiguous speech, like the GP said?