Subtitling from a language you don't speak through English is both painful and immensely exciting (anti-pivot colleagues, feel free to read something else).

So, recently worked on a series about a Japanese-Korean friendship, with very simple, non-technical, everyday dialogue. Yay! But still so many decisions.

One of which had to do with ritualized expressions. Some were straightforward, like itadakimasu (literally "I humbly receive"). In Greek we use "καλή όρεξη" (bon appétit) before starting to eat (or with the mouth already full with the first bites). And even though the literal meaning is completely different, the function is the same.

Then there is tadaima (“I’m back”), said when returning home. In Greek, you simply greet ("γεια", "καλησπέρα"). But reducing tadaima to a greeting felt too flattening. So I chose to explicitly mark the return with the literal "γύρισα", which is entirely plausible and unmarked - even though less frequent than a greeting.

This is the exciting part, taking care of little things.

The painful part is having to rely so heavily on the English template. You don't know the author. You don’t know what has already been filtered or flattened. And if a marked expression appears, is it in the original or has it been introduced? So you need to make sure you study the characters, try to reconstruct intention through image and tone. When you work from a language you speak, the inferential load is much lighter. You’re not reverse-engineering someone else’s decisions.

Would collaboration solve this? Absolutely. When you can consult the source-language translator, the uncertainty fades.

PS: The decisions don't take too long, it takes much longer to articulate it.

#pivotsubtitling #japanese #greek