It’s like the first time you saw a cowboy flick, or a gangster film, or your first horror movie, and suddenly had a whole genre to dive into. Regardless of whether you climb the barrier of subtitles or take the ladder over them through dubbing, foreign films open up a whole new world for you.
I’m not getting into subs v dubs either, because it has nothing to do with the Train to Busan remake, and it’s a silly, Coke v Pepsi argument. Watching a foreign film with subtitles is like watching a remake anyway, only one much more reverent and true to the original. It’s about translating the nuance of the actor’s dialogue, and understanding the intention of the words rather than the meaning.
Subtitling is not just running the script through Google Translate then throwing it up on the screen. The phrase not only points to how accessible foreign films are these days, its on-the-spot creation highlights the artistry behind subtitles themselves. Next: My Most Anticipated Game Of The Year Is The English Localization Of This Chinese RPG I don’t speak Korean, but as I understand it, the director’s words were slightly less poetic, and were turned into this scathing soundbite by his translator, Sharon Choi. Except Bong Joon Ho didn’t actually say this. With Parasite taking home trophy after trophy, he was well used to giving speeches by the time the Golden Globes rolled around, so perhaps it’s no surprise he was able to frame his thoughts so coherently. This idea of a “one inch tall barrier” was raised by Parasite director Bong Joon Ho in his acceptance speech at the Golden Globes.
#Train to busan subtitles movie
Last week it was announced that 2016 South Korean zombie movie Train to Busan is getting a Warner Brothers-led American remake, and in the process Hollywood revealed that it still isn’t able to “overcome the one inch tall barrier of subtitles.” Parasite’s win for Best Picture could have been a turning point for the film industry’s attitudes to non-English language pictures, but if the Train To Busan news is anything to go by, it seems more like a blip as we continue straight ahead on our high speed rail.