Behind the scenes with a subtitler

You need an ear for tone, a sense of context, and an ability to translate smoothly, writes DH journalist Pranati A S about her hustle with films

It was the summer of 2018. I was lying on the couch of my home in Bengaluru with a plate of cut mangoes by the side, and scrolling through Facebook. An old post by a friend appeared on the timeline — he was the person behind Rally for Subtitles, a group that has been demanding movie theatres to play subtitles.

The post, actually a meme, was about how he was manhandled by bouncers at a leading multiplex in Bengaluru when he demanded subtitles for the Malayalam film Thondimuthalum Driksakshiyum (2017). As a cinephile myself, I can attest to his disappointment. Although the CBFC (Central Board of Film Certification) certificates carry ‘with English subtitles’ on them, the theatres don’t play them.

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Kannada film Nathicharami was taking shape around the same time. The director, Mansore, who’s also my uncle, had invited some of us to watch the first edit copy of the film. That’s when it hit me that I could probably write the film’s English subtitles.

I had finished my postgraduate exams and didn’t want to take up a full-time job yet. With a lot of discussions happening about subtitling online, I decided to pursue it for some time. And since Mansore didn’t have anyone else on mind, I bagged the assignment easily.

Debut project

I opened two windows on my laptop — one to play the 1 hour 53 minute-long film, another to translate the dialogues on MS Word. I went through Kannada-English dictionaries and a thesaurus to find the right words. What I thought would be a day’s job took me one week! I attached the subtitles file to the email, sent it to the film’s editor Nagendra K Ujjani, and anxiously waited for his feedback.

He expected the subtitles to be ‘time-coded’, he told me over a call the next morning. I did not know what that meant or how I was supposed to do it. But he was helpful. He asked me to instal ‘Subtitle Edit’ that is used to synchronise the translated text with the dialogues.

Soon, Nathicharami was selected at MAMI Mumbai Film Festival. I landed in Mumbai and the first thing I heard a random person, now a good friend, say: “The subtitles of Nathicharami are well placed”. His words still ring in my ears. Surprisingly, at the Q&A session of one of the film’s screenings, a woman in the
audience asked, “Why were there subtitles for a dog barking?”

Subtitles do more than just break language barriers. Audio descriptions like ‘phone ringing’, ‘indistinct chatter’, and ‘leaves rustling’ allow viewers with hearing impairment to grasp the mood of the film. Non-dialogue information such as the background music, speaker identification, sound effects, or ambient noise such as the barking of a dog are important to add, I had gathered while researching for my maiden subtitling project. I would watch films on Netflix to understand how to write audio descriptions.

Tricky part

Translating Kannada idioms into English was challenging. Some directors expected me to translate word for word. On explaining, some understood, others remained unconvinced.

The same is true for translating songs. This takes me back to 2019 when I subtitled Shubhamangala (2022, Kannada). It had a song Muttinanta maatu written by Jayant Kaikini. I was excited because he is one of my favourite lyricists. Kaikini’s lyrics are charming but when it came to subtitling, I found myself staring at the screen blankly. My coffee had also turned cold. I managed to come out of the writer’s block and impress the director. Following is a sample of a verse I translated:

Original lyrics (transliterated from Kannada)

beesuvanta gaaliyu spoorthi needide
haguraagi hamsadante neenu moodide
tiLi neeli neeru ninna kaala sokide
biLi teeradalli baanu dere haakide

English subtitles

The gusting wind has become an
inspiration
You appear as graceful as a swan
The crystal clear water too has
fallen for you
The sky has glided down to camp
on the shore

Word for word translations are boring to read. So when I translate songs, I make sure they read like poems. However, often a poet’s imagery is lost — I couldn’t fit in Kaikini’s image of the water caressing the girl’s feet.

Likewise, Samarth Madhusudhan Rao, one of the leading subtitlers for Kannada films, likes to find out the perspective behind the lyrics. He takes the help of the lyricist to understand the lines if they are in other languages, or another dialect of Kannada. “Sometimes the cultural references don’t translate well into English. In such cases, I try not to appropriate too much. Also, overtranslating can ruin the
essence of the original lines. In such situations, I stick with the regional word as it is,” he says.

Similarly, when I subtitle in Kannada, I retain kinship terms like ‘ajji’ (grandmother), ‘amma’ (mother), and ‘maava’ (father-in-law). One can find Spanish or Italian words in many films and TV shows. Remember ‘abuela’ from the American rom-com ‘Jane the Virgin’. It means grandmother.

Industry trends

The subtitling industry in India has grown lately. Being a linguistically diverse country, a film is subtitled in many languages. Apart from dubbing, OTT platforms are getting films and series subtitled in at least five languages — English, Kannada, Telugu, Hindi, and Malayalam being the top choices in India. Farzi (2023) has subtitles in four south Indian languages and Hindi. Many Korean dramas have Hindi subtitles. One Japanese series Evangelion has subtitles in 30 languages from around the world.

The demand has accelerated in the past five years. Rao explains, “With OTT platforms becoming a major part of show business, and subtitles becoming the doorway to foreign films, filmmakers in Karnataka are particular about English subtitles.” They also need subtitling done upfront to showcase films outside the state for pre-release business. What’s more? Today, subtitles are also censored. According to CBFC, this is to curb the ‘mischief’ done by some filmmakers who insert additional words after a film is certified.

I learnt about this when my subtitles file for Bheemasena Nalamaharaja (2020, Kannada) came back to me with a note from the director: “The censor board refuses to accept ‘f***’ in the subtitles. Please change them to suitable words (sic).” I had to come up with a number of words that could be used instead. I fell back on Osho’s words — the advantage of the word ‘f***’ is that one can use it in many contexts and the interpretation will never go wrong, neither would it sound monotonous. And I settled for ‘damn’ and ‘s***’ .

An America-based entertainment company provides subtitling services in about 20 languages for major production houses like Paramount, Universal, Disney, Warner Brothers, Hotstar, among others. Lately, the company has partnered with Amazon and is catering to the Indian market. Their senior territory relations specialist Clement Sushil Raj Vincent gives a lowdown on the long road that subtitling entails.

First, the company gets the translation done by specialists. Then subtitlers input the text using a tool called Sfera. The POS (Positioning of subtitles) team runs a quality check, scrutinising the positioning of the subtitles, lip sync, burn in texts, etc. It is forwarded to territory approvers in different countries to review. The file is examined one last time before it is rendered and delivered in a format that meets the client’s demand, and is delivered under maximum security. Then it proceeds for certification in every country.

The company handles about 500 subtitling assignments a month. “Apart from full-time employees, we also have freelancers. Since this is a skilled job, we look out for people with a basic degree in any discipline, a larger understanding of the language, keen interest in films, and a basic understanding of the art of cinema,” he continues.

Poor pay

After subtitling a handful of projects, I thought I could make a career out of it. Short films would take a day or two of my time and feature films two to three weeks. But even after three years of experience, I wasn’t being offered a better, higher remuneration. And since the pandemic broke out, I would get my fee in instalments. Some production houses still owe me money.

This is a common grievance among independent subtitlers. Big budget films want subtitles done just to get through the censorship and so they refuse to pay well. I have refused many films because the producers were offering Rs 10,000 to Rs 15,000. On the other hand, despite working on low budgets, independent filmmakers have paid me more because they understand the value of subtitles.

“Many production houses don’t even include subtitling in their budget. Sometimes they find someone within the team, or outside to do it at a minimal cost,” says Rao.

In such cases, it’s not uncommon to see many subtitles that are well, just, google translations. Many of these unintended funny lines have now been immortalised as memes on the Internet.

Irrespective of the payment hassles, I can say that subtitlers do not like to compromise with the quality of translation. Such as Rao, who has subtitled over 50 films in the past six years. I couldn’t cope with the chaos. I went on to programme for film festivals, and subtitling became a side hustle. It remains a hobby as I work with this newspaper now as a journalist.

Raghavendra Mayakonda, a freelance subtitler from Davanagere, says that Indian and Bangladeshi agencies exploit and deceive freelancers. “They send machine-translated subtitles for proofreading because the rates for proofreading are three times cheaper,” he says. However, he says foreign agencies pay well and are professional. “Most of the time AI tools do a good job of generating subtitles if the speaker is a native English speaker. My job is then to adjust line breaks and correct any mistakes,” he says.

Disappointments galore

Translation has been a vital part of my life. From reading Manga comics in school and translated books of many Kannada writers later to becoming a fan of the works of Japanese author Haruki Murakami and Spanish poet Pablo Neruda, I’ve been reading mostly translated pieces. Later in life, thanks to subtitles, I was able to delve into world cinema. Iranian, Palestinian, South American, Bengali and Malayalam films are among my favourites.

So when I went behind the scenes, subtitling for Kannada films, especially indie films that would make it to MAMI, International Film Festival of India, New York Indian Film Festival, and Indian Film Festival of Melbourne, I was thrilled. When ‘Nathicharami’ won five National Awards, an English news portal called me for a brief interview and credited me as being one of the reasons the film had reached a wider audience.

However, this journey has not been without its disappointments. During preview shows, all technicians are invited to watch the film and check for errors. But subtitlers are often forgotten at this stage. Sometimes, my subtitles were reworked without my permission. When I questioned the directors, they shrugged it off saying they were not aware. Other times, instead of fixing grammatical errors, the editors had added more errors, and translated the songs literally. It was also upsetting to see a perfectly synced file ending up with distorted synchronisation on the screen.

A basic rule is that subtitles should be short and jargon-free so audience can read them quickly and look back at the screen. But some editors add long subtitles that run from one end of the screen to the other. Of course, there are exceptions who ask us to come down to the DI studio (digital intermediate studio) to check if the placement and formatting of subtitles are right. It takes extra effort but I am always glad to go through it.

Even biggies like Netflix goof up. For instance, while reviewing my English subtitles for ‘Nathicharami’, they wrongly changed a character’s name from Mandanna to Vandana. In another reported incident, the team of the Malayalam film Thallumaala (2022) slammed Netflix for butchering their subtitles, including songs that were translated down to their literal meanings.

At one point, subtitling got monotonous. I would feel lazy to start a project. I would dash to cafes around Bengaluru for a change of environment and some strong coffee to fire up my mind and motivation. Perhaps it was the kind of films I was getting. A lot of Kannada films have chauvinistic dialogues and double entendres. For instance, in one of the films, in a classroom setup, a girl complains of nausea and the male professor misrepresents it for something else! I find this sickening. But sometimes you are just caught unaware.

An acquaintance introduced me to a guy at the Bengaluru International Film Festival in 2020. He was making a film that he planned to send to many festivals and even submit to the National Film Awards. It would be a 12-part film, he had told me excitedly. With that sort of a build-up for his “magnum opus”, I agreed to write the subtitles. After two months, he sent me the first part of the film and also gave me the cheque with full payment but on a request that I could encash it only after finishing the work.

That night, I started watching the film. Just 15 minutes into it, I pressed the stop button. I was shocked. I was embarrassed. It was soft porn! I didn’t want to work on it but could I go back on my words? A friend calmed me down and said, “See you’re not reviewing the film or promoting it. This is your profession. You cannot differentiate between the content. If they’re paying you well, just do it.” I agreed and finished subtitling it quickly. I usually demand opening credits, but not this time!