Netflix and (Korean) Subtitles
Netflix launched in Korea in January 2016. In these months, it has racked up some controversy — such as the early lack of content, the age verification(you need a Korean phone number, issued in your own name), censorship of adult content (in spite of the former), and payment method (it has to be a card issued in Korea, again).
Now, most of the above is not quite Netflix’s fault. I recognize that. The age verification, blurred dildos, and the dreaded Korea-issued card — these are the byproducts of an outdated legal system.
What about the lack of content? I suspect that this is tied to the tiered delivery of Korean subtitles. Not every show was prepared at launch. I understand that. It’s a massive feat that they delivered even that many titles at launch. As more subtitles were delivered, the number of titles available rose. But this created a problem: in rushing this process, the quality of subtitles became crap.
I’m not pointing to the rush as the only cause of this QC problem. It’s part of a multifaceted conundrum that we find ourselves in. There’s the low expectation that us users have toward subs. We are so used to having unofficial subs that we’re just grateful for its existence; we might sometimes question the quality but generally have the it-will-do attitude toward them.
There’s also the low quality accepted by the market. Senior professionals get it wrong, junior professionals get it wrong, specialists get it wrong (i.e. science, medical, etc). Subtitles mangle or even cut out imagery expressed in the original text. Only a minority understands nuance in conversation; even fewer have the ability to translate that nuance. All these faults, from discarded nuance to factual incorrectness, are considered perfectly okay mistakes to make.
But you know what? It isn’t.
It’s not okay for a professional to make mistakes “because it has always been this way.” It’s not okay for us to accept a low quality threshold “because it has always been this way.” The professionals are being paid to create this content. More importantly, we’re paying to see this content. Why should we, paying customers, accept something low quality “because it has always been this way?”
I refuse to accept this low quality BS served to me. If you haven’t noticed by now, I personally don’t need subtitles for English titles. This rant is not about my personal user experience. It’s about trust — how do I know that the non-English titles have the right subtitles? If the quality of the most common original language (English) is so bad, how am I going to know I’m not being lied to when I watch other programs?
Netflix claims that timed text (which includes translated subtitles, text for the deaf and hard of hearing, closed captions etc) is a primary asset. However, in the half year that I have been with Korean Netflix, it has been really hard for me to believe that. It’s hard to find a title that hasn’t got a line that isn’t factually incorrect. Nuance? What the hell is nuance? Have these people even heard what English is? How did these translators even get hired? Is there even a QC team at Netflix? (I checked LinkedIn, they do.)
This post, therefore, is the preface to a series of posts I’ll be doing. I’ll be posting about what kind of crap passes inspection at Korean Netflix. Some shows are better than others (mostly Netflix Originals), some are so bad that one has mistakes three sentences into the program. THREE.
I can’t even.
