Or I could just tell you, hehe.

josephk wrote on 28. May 2009 at 16:01:


Ah. Okay. I got it now pretty much. Or as much as I can for the moment. I did look around the web a little bit tonight trying to look into this issue in vampire folklore and did find some discussion about vampires and their various inclinations and habits regarding sexuality and torture of their victims. It was something that was one of the theories I was kicking around in my head after seeing the scene that showed that he appeared to have possibly been a castrated boy. However, I don't like to just assume the obvious about anything without knowing or researching all the facts for myself.

Yeah, you're right that this movie is much more than it appears on the surface. There are many different layers to be explored. Especially after I watched it the second time I would find things that I didn't notice or give much thought to the first time. I imagine if I watch it again I will discover more things and have more questions to answer. Since I will be burning a copy of it I'm sure I'll be watching it many more times in the future.

Thanks for all of the insightful reviews and info on this film.

I'm looking forward to this book... I've found it in Swedish (audiobook) and I have a roadtrip coming up... sounds like a plan!

Glad you enjoyed it.

It seems most people don't understand the scar. I guess you could consider that a flaw of the movie. I don't know how they could've made it clearer without adding some dialogue about it or flashbacks, though, which I think would have been a mistake. I like that the issue is not addressed at all in the movie, making it seem unimportant when in fact it causes you to reinterpret the entire movie, almost.

Well, I have finally read the book (although I actually just listened to the author read the book on CD)!  Great book!  It does explain a lot of things that were fuzzy, and especially deepens the relationships betweeen Eli and Oskar, as well as the "mystery" man.

Well-worth the read.  Thanks for the enticement... now I need to watch the movie again!

Yeah, I've seen that review before. A few of those examples are really pointless. ("About twelve" vs "Twelve, more or less" for example -- they mean the same thing.) But some of the other ones are pretty bad. The more code not translated, especially!

However, you can always buy the DVD, rip it, then download better subtitles, burn it to DVD. A lot of work, but I'd say it's worth having on DVD for the better picture.

I feel ambivalent about the whole "controversy." It's true that there are some obvious mistranslations in the American DVD subtitles. But reading the comments from the people who are complaining about it, it's obvious that most of them don't have a clue how subtitles are made. Everyone is focusing on the differences between the theatrical release and the DVD, but that's in fact irrelevant. Theatrical translations are almost never used for DVD subtitles. It's not a matter of how "easy" this would be, or how much space they take on the disc. It's a matter of copyright. The company distributing the DVD is usually not the same company who was handling the theatrical distribution. So they don't own the rights to the translation. It's cheaper to pay their own translators to re-translate the film than it is to buy the rights to the original translation.

This is what happens in 99% of cases and nobody ever complains about it. There's no reason to expect the subtitles you saw in the theatre to be the same as the ones on the DVD.

From what I can tell, the theatrical translation was far from perfect. A lot of the so-called errors in the new translation I would actually consider improvements. However, there are also some obvious mistakes. The scene where the old guy pours acid over his face and yells out "Eli" is obviously wrong. (You can hear him say "Eli." He doesn't say "I'm trapped.") The scene with the Morse code is also obviously wrong.

I work in subtitling, so I know how these things are done. Both the theatrical and the DVD version were probably translated in a rush. Mistakes or awkward phrasings slipped in to both versions. There are probably just as many mistakes on all the other DVDs of foreign films in your collection (except from certain vendors who take extra care with such details, like Criterion) - it's just that nobody notices or makes a big deal about it on the internet.

So in a sense, I can understand the studio's reply. Which is not to say that I agree with it. Their reply is pretty insulting and contemptuous. I'm pretty sure that the executive who wrote it didn't expect it to be forwarded to the the customer who was complaining about it, who would then obviously post it to the internet. But these people don't give a shit about the films they release. It's just a business to them. They hire freelance translators to do cheap, rushed translations, slap them on the DVD, release it and hope nobody complains. They know that people are going to buy it anyway.

Oh, I totally agree that it's important and that more care should be put into it. You have no idea how infuriating it can be as a translator (or even just as a fan of international cinema working in the industry) to see the way these things are treated.

But that's because the filmmakers themselves are not in charge of the DVD release. The people who make these decisions are boring, uncreative, frustrated business types. Their job is to put out a product that people will pay money for. DVD sales is where the studios the easy money. The film is already done. In some cases, it's already been released. All you have to do is package it with a few slapped on special features and put it on the market. The cheaper and faster they can get this done, the better.

I think with books generally there's a bit more care put into it, probably because words are all you get, so people are more likely to be critical of it. There are still bad translations of works, but it's probably not as widespread as in the DVD world, where subtitles are like an afterthought.

I thought the English translation of Let the Right One In was all right. (Though obviously I can't compare to the original.)