In a video making the rounds on TikTok, comedian Youngmi Mayer criticises the Squid Game translations for botching character development and deeper subtext within the show. On the flip side, in a new report published by The Daily Beast, some natives to the Korean language suggested that while the show’s translation could use some fine-tuning, the show still gets the rough point across.The thriller series has quickly climbed the charts of Netflix’s most popular shows of all time, on track to beat Bridgerton for the prime slot. Following hundreds of strangers who enter to compete in deadly children’s games to win a massive cash prize, Mayer suggests the subtext about wealth and Korean stereotypes are lost in translation. First up: Han Mi-nyeo (Kim Joo Ryoung), a gangster competitor.“Her dialogue constantly gets botched,” Mayer says. “Every little thing that she says gets f***ed up. I think it’s because she’s a low-class character and a gangster. She cusses a lot and it gets very sterilised.”Mayer then brings up an example of Mi-nyeo’s dialogue being flubbed — she says “go away” in one scene, per the subtitles. According to Mayer, however, a better translation would be “what are you looking at?” instead.“It might seem arbitrary, but everything she says is not really aligning,” Mayer adds. “You’re missing a lot of this character and what she stands for.”In another example, subtitles have Mi-nyeo saying: “I’m not a genius, but I still got it worked out.” In reality, Mayer suggests, what Mi-nyeo is actually saying is something more along the lines of “I am very smart, I just never got a chance to study.”This is a big trope in Korean films and television — in fact, Squid Game creator Hwang Dong-hyuk himself had to fight tooth and nail to even get this Netflix hit off the ground, akin to Mi-nyeo’s struggles.“That’s a huge part of the character. Almost everything she says is being botched, translation wise. The writers, all they want you to know about her is that,” Mayer says. “It seems so small, but it’s the entire characters purpose of being in the f***in’ show!”Another example Mayer brings up is in the marbles episode of the show, in which Il-nam and Gi-hun discuss the deeper meaning behind the “gganbu.” Il-nam says, per the subtitles: “Gganbu, come on, you know. It’s a good friend. One who you trust a lot. You share things with them, you see?”“They missed a small line there, but it’s literally the point of the whole episode,” Mayer continues. “What [gganbu] translates to is there is no ownership between me and you, not we share everything. That is a huge miss. That’s the entire point of this f***in’ episode.”A user on Twitter shared that this TikTok is a little incorrect, suggesting viewers switch from English closed captioning to English subtitles for a better result: “I speak both korean & english and i agree that the translations are quite off in the examples this person gives BUT this tiktok is very misleading,” they shared. “what this person is referring to are the english CLOSED CAPTIONS, which is different from eng subtitles.”But T.K., who runs the famous blog Ask a Korean, has an entirely different mindset about the show’s ability to translate into English. “Nothing so far has been completely wrong, just on the edges,” he told The Daily Beast. Still, per the writer, the show’s translation quality “dropped like a rock” after the third episode.“I get that some things are culturally difficult to explain and understand, but there are times when I feel they could have done a better job without exerting too much more effort,” T.K. added, suggesting a prime example of near-perfect translation work would be Parasite, the 2020 Best Picture winner.As an example of another flub, T.K. cited the show’s first episode, titled Hell. In the episode, Gi-hun says, per the English translation: “Out here, the torture is worse.” T.K. suggested a more accurate translation would be, “Out here is more of a hell.” That would make more sense!This article originally appeared on Decider and is reproduced here with permission
Powered by WPeMatico
