Using Subtitles

As most of you know, I also write for a blog called the East German Cinema Blog. And, if you read the previous entry here titled, Lost in Translation, you also know that from time to time I try my hand at subtitle creation. Recently I had the opportunity to combine these two interests when I came across the East German fantasy film, Heart of Stone (Das kalte Herz) on YouTube and later discovered that someone had created German subtitles for it. This emboldened me to try my hand at creating subtitles in English for the film. As always, first I ran the German subtitles through Google Translate and, as always, this proved to be nearly useless. It does save time with the mundane statements that crop up frequently, but is not much use beyond that. Heart of Stone proved to be even more of a challenge than Mädchen, Mädchen was.

In the first place, the language in Heart of Stone is slightly old-fashioned and uses terms that are not in general use anymore. I mean, when was the last time you discussed charcoal burning (as a profession) and horse-drawn drays? Plus, one of the main characters is a little leprechaun-like character called the "Glasmännlein." Literally, this translates to something along the lines of "little glass man." Sometimes it is translated to "Glassmanikin" and sometimes to "Glassman." You could also translate it as "glass sprite" or "glass elf." Just to complicate matters, he is also referred to as "Schatzhauser" (treasure guardian).

Complex sentences—and Heart of Stone has a lot of them—also can throw Google Translate for a loop. It has a nasty habit of tossing out words it can't fit into its translation schemes, but sometimes those words are nicht and kein, which are there to negate most of the rest of the sentence. So suddenly "I really don't care if you're a wealthy man" becomes "I really care if you're a wealthy man."

The other thing that made translation difficult was that a key plot point in the story hinges on the rhyming nature of stehen (to stand) and sehen (to see). These two words don't come close to rhyming in English, so I had to decide: do I keep the rhyme or keep the meaning? If I keep the meaning, then the main character's eventual discovery of the right word to say based on rhyme becomes incomprehensible. If I keep the rhyme, then I have to find other words that will fit reasonably well, and try not lose the essence of the recitation. I based my decision on an old translation into English that was published around the turn of the century. For this, I followed that translator's lead, which was to find a new rhyme that fit.

I eventually came up with a translation that, while not perfect, will do until the folks at the DEFA Library at UMass Amherst add this film to their collection and find a translator far more skilled than I am.

Now that we have English subtitles, the next question is, how do we use them? YouTube certainly doesn't let you use subtitles, and yet that is where the film is currently available. To help with this, I've created the following guide to watching YouTube videos with subtitles. There are a lot of foreign films on YouTube that simply are not available as legal videos in the United States.* Sometimes you can find the subtitles you need online and this will help you use these subtitles to watch the films. There are some potential problems as far as syncing goes, but that is a discussion I'll have to reserve for another day. In the meantime, you'll find that my subtitles line up perfectly with the copy of the film on YouTube.

How to Watch YouTube Videos With Subtitles

Step #1: Get VLC Player

If you haven't done so already, install VLC Player on your computer. It is available for both the Mac and the PC, as well as nearly every other system you care to name. There is no better video player out there. This is especially true for the Mac which incorporates a silly five time only region change policy on their DVD player (or I should say, use to—new Macs no longer include CD/DVD drives).

Step #2: Install a video downloader in Firefox

I recommend using Firefox and installing Video Downloader. Chrome makes capturing YouTube videos difficult owing to the fact that YouTube is a Google company, and if you are using Internet Explorer, you...well...why in the world are you using Internet Explorer? There may be a way to do this with Safari too, but I haven't fired that one up in many years. There may be a way to to it with Chrome as well, I simply didn't find one that worked for me. If you have a good solution for any of those other programs, post it in the comments and I'll see that it is published here.

Step #3: Go to the YouTube video and download

Don't worry about whether it downloads as an FLV or an MP4 file, or some other format. The VLC Player won't care.

Step #4: Download the subtitles

I've included the link for my Heart of Stone subtitles below. You can also find other subtitles at sites such as opensubtitles.org, or moviesubtitles.org. It should be noted here that sometimes the subtitles don't sync up properly with the film. I can report, however, that the subtitles for Heart of Stone are very well synced to the YouTube video. Perhaps in a future article I'll discuss how to fix it when the subtitles and the film don't match up.

Step#5: Open the video in VLC Player

It is going to want to start playing as soon as you do this so hit pause for now.

Step #6: Add Subtitles

Under the Subtitle menu, choose "Add Subtitle File..." Then locate the file choose "Open."

Step #7: Watch and enjoy!

That's all there is to it.

You can, if you prefer burn the video and the subtitles together on a disk, The subtitles are in the "srt" format, which many DVD burning programs can recognize (I use DVD Flick).

Resources:

VLC Player website

Das kalte Herz on YouTube

My English subtitles (not for distribution)

* I realize that I am treading on thin ice here as far as the legality of these videos goes. Ideally, you should always buy your videos when they are available. I've purchased many from the DEFA Library at UMass Amherst and that's a great place to go to purchase East German films with English subtitles. I've purchased others overseas when I've gone to visit Germany. The techniques I show here are to be used only as a last resort when a film is either not available with subtitles, or, in some cases, not available at all on DVD. In the end, the film is the most important thing, as far as I am concerned. They need to be seen, and if the owners of the films are incapable or unwilling to provide them, then, by all means, find an alternative method to watch the film. If , however, a film you've watched in this manner does eventually become available, you should purchase it, just as you would purchase songs you listen to regularly via Pandora or Grooveshark.

Lost in Translation

  
Recently I decided to try my hand at translating movie subtitles. Translating anything is hard enough, but movie subtitles brings a host of special challenges to the table. It didn't help that the movie I chose to translate provided nearly every single one of these challenges.

The movie was Mädchen, Mädchen, directed by Dennis Gansel, one of Germany's best young directors (The Wave, We Are the Night). The film is story of three young women, Inken, Vicky, and Lena. They are about to graduate from high school and are looking to get laid. There are several subplots involving a crucial volleyball game, the new girlfriend of Inken's father, and a lout who gets his comeuppance, but most of the action centers around Inken (the delightful Diana Amft) and her efforts to experience her first orgasm. It is a frank and funny film, but it is also pretty raunchy. The dialog is casual and realistic, which means lots of contractions and slang. Any attempt to get a meaningful translation out of the German subtitle source file by feeding it through Google Translate was bound to result in gibberish. A quick check online at the movie subtitle sites revealed that there were English subtitles already available, but they were obviously written by someone schooled in the King's English. “I have to go to the loo” wouldn't mean much to the average American, and I can't see an American girl saying, “My knickers are too tight.” Not to mention that these subtitles were not timed to the actual film, but were probably intended for a bootlegged bit torrent of the movie. I wanted my subtitles to be suitable for an American audience, and I wanted it to sync with the legitimate German DVD copy of the film.

Right off the bat, the movie presents a problem with its title. How do you translate “Mädchen, Mädchen?” IMDB lists the US title of the film as Girls on Top, which is almost as bad as the German translation of the title of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Vergiss mein nicht—or, “Forget me Not”). A more literal translation (Girls, Girls), would have been better, although the nature of English dictates a third “Girls” in the title, but Elvis already made a film with that title. Maiden, Maiden would also work, but who uses the word “maiden” anymore? I decided to not waste too much time on this conundrum and go straight to the dialog.

The film starts easily with the other girls wishing Inken a happy birthday. Things don't really get complicated until we encounter Tim, Inken's insensitive boyfriend. Tim likes to wear T-shirts with stupid sayings on them. When first we see him, he is walking into the gymnasium during a volleyball game. His T-shirt reads: “Trübsal ist nicht das einzige das Man blasen kann.” Feed this into Google Translate and you'll get: “Tribulation is not the only one that can blow,” which one could further finesse into “Misery isn't the only thing you can blow,” but even this doesn't come close to capturing the meaning of the saying, nor, for that matter, does it make much sense. The joke of the saying relies on the fact that the verb blasen (to blow) is the verb of choice for the noun Trübsal to mean to be down, or depressed, and blasen can also have the same obscene connotation that it has in English. Since the joke of the slogan is based entirely on the double entendre of “blow,” I decided to drop “misery” and find a word that would create the same effect in English, leading me to translate the shirt as “Smoke isn't the only thing you can blow.” I imagine that if this was shown in a theater, at this point, there would be Germans muttering to their American dates, “That's not what is says,” but at least this way the English-speaking viewers also have a pun to groan at.

Tim’s next T-shirt, though, proved even more problematic: “Andere Länder, Andere Titten.” Literally, this translates to “Other Countries, Other Tits,” but to translate it like that would miss the terrible pun in the saying. In German, one might say, “Andere Länder, andere sitten” to mean something along the lines of “When in Rome,” or “Different strokes, for different folks.” I had to find some way to get this across. My first thought was to take the English expression “different folks,” and turn it into something like “Different pokes for different folks,” but that didn’t really work for me. “Pokes” was too mild. Tim’s T-shirt were offensive and I wanted something equally offensive. I decided to go with “Different Cities, Different Titties,” which changes the meaning of Länder (countries) but keeps everything else more or less the same. Most importantly, it’s the kind of stupid thing that Tim might put on a T-shirt.

One of the biggest challenges with this film was dealing with obscenities. You might think that German would be a great language for obscenity, but it can't hold a candle to English when it comes to flat-out, blue-streak swearing. German leans heavily on Scheiß (shit) to convey most of the vulgar sentiments that Germans have to offer. The use of "fuck" is limited to the sexual act, and when intended as an obscenity, it is usually spoken in English. Arsch (ass) is also used a lot in German. So much so that Mozart actually named one of his canons, "Leck mich im Arsch." This translates literal to "lick me in the ass," but would translate more idiomatically to "kiss my ass." Clearly Mozart was in a nasty mood that day. Here, I had to use my imagination, and choose the obscenity that the average teenager would be most likely to use in a given situation. The problem is compounded a bit by the fact that girls don’t swear like boys do, but I decided that these girls were a little more foul-mouthed than average, especially Vicky. I took my cues from Sex and the City, with Inken as Carrie, Vicky as Samantha (of course), and Lena a little like Charlotte (Miranda gets lost in the shuffle).

Songs present a special problem in translation. If you translate the words literally, you usually lose the rhyme. Ideally, you want the translation to read like songs lyrics, yet still make sense in context. One of the best examples of this I have ever seen is in the subtitles for The Legend of Paul and Paula. Here, the lyrics of the songs by the band, die Puhdys, are translated almost verbatim and yet still rhyme. The British version of the Mädchen, Mädchen subtitles don't even try to maintain the rhyme, but I wasn't going to be daunted. I managed to come up with a pretty good translation, but I don't think the lyrics are going to win any Grammys. More problematic were the little rhymes that Inken and Vicky were creating for the personals ad. Most problematic of all was Schwengeln drängeln, which translates to something along the lines of  “pushy penises.”  After wrestling with it for a while, I decided to give up. It would have to stay “pushy penises.” It doesn’t mean much when Vicky first suggests it, but it doesn’t seem to mean much to Inken either. Later on when she uses it in a sentence, the meaning becomes clearer.

I am not 100% satisfied with my translation, but maybe no one ever is. I do think it’s a better translation than any of the others that I’ve encountered. It captures the spirit of the film and the humor in most scenes. If you have a copy of the movie and would like to add these subtitles to it, you can download them here:

Mädchen, Mädchen subtitles.