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Originally Posted by Nosferatu@Cult Labs  I don't have those Bruce Lee releases, but subtitles like that are completely unnecessary. The ones that are different and unintentionally amusing are the ones that say things like 'Ominous Music' or 'Funky Jazz'. |
But they might not necessarily be unintentionally amusing. I recently signed off on the subtitles for
It Came from Beneath the Sea, where at a very early stage the submarine captain expresses his dislike of the piped muzak and asks for something livelier. But aside from that, he doesn't verbally describe what's playing, and if you can't hear it it's useful to know that the first is "(HAWAIIAN LOUNGE MUSIC)" and the second is ("LIVELY JAZZ NUMBER").
What I tend not to do is subtitle non-diegetic music unless it really is absolutely essential - but if the music can be heard by the characters, there's every reason to describe it.
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Originally Posted by Justin101 One of my favourites recently was 'speaks in Spanish' haha |
But again, there's a reason for that. If you're deaf and you see someone apparently saying something, you'll need to know either what they're saying or whether you can disregard it - hence "(CHATTERING)" or "(INAUDIBLE DIALOGUE)".
Although I got so annoyed by the constant references to "(SPEAKS IN ITALIAN)" in
20 Million Miles to Earth that I ended up transcribing the Italian and that's now part of the SDH subtitle track - italicised to make sure that it's clear when a foreign language is being spoken, but otherwise you're reading exactly what someone with decent hearing is hearing.
That's not practical for all films - the opening subtitle in
Curse of the Mummy's Tomb, "(SPEAKS EGYPTIAN)", is remaining like that, and I similarly didn't transcribe Tom Baker's incantations in
The Golden Voyage of Sinbad because he cheerfully admitted that they were made-up gibberish, but in the case of an Italy-set film like
20 Million Miles to Earth I found it beefed up the flavour of the subtitles enormously. A case in point: when the Ymir escapes towards the end and goes on the rampage, one of the scientists either "(YELLS IN ITALIAN)" or, in my version, goes "
Misericordia!" - and there's no question which I prefer.