Vinegar Syndrome et al.

[swo17]

Doesn't the average film take just a few work days or maybe $1,000 to translate and subtitle?

[Glowingwabbit]

It should also be noted that the 3 main cast members are American, British, and Danish so I'm not sure Italian is the optimal language to watch the film in but maybe that's just me.

[Thornycroft]

Proof-reading and general QC around text has always been one of Vinegar Syndrome's most glaring issues. It's not uncommon for sleeves to have minor spelling errors and awkward turns of phrase but subtitles are the biggest problem. I remember one of their earliest releases, The Doll Squad, having SDH subs that were stunningly incomprehensible. The sort of thing you'd expect from feeding the film audio through poorly calibrated voice recognition software. Things improved when they started releasing non-English titles that required proper translations but the quality is still iffy, with small errors sneaking in here and there.

I imagine they don't have anyone whose job it is to do proper QC on their subs and it can really drag down the quality of an otherwise excellent release. None of their non-English language releases I've watched recently have had any major problems, certainly nothing affecting comprehension, but it can be very distracting to see a problems that could have been fixed with a basic proof-reading pass.

[MichaelB]

I can’t name the film yet, but I’m currently going through some rightsholder-supplied subtitles line by line and I’m ending up rewriting most of them because the transcription is the most incompetent that I’ve ever come across.

What’s worst is that I don’t think this is a machine transcription - just someone obviously American (spellings are a giveaway) with absolutely no ear for colloquial British English - we’re talking a combination of flailing guesswork along the lines of rendering “Belgravia” as “Belgrade area” (more than once!), punctuating “a secondary modern school” as “a secondary, modern, school”), and on no fewer than 31 occasions they just give up and opt for “(inaudible)”, which in this instance translates as “perfectly audible, but with British terms like ‘Horlick’s’ that I’m not familiar with.”

What fascinates me about them is that the original subtitler must have been aware of how bad they were, and yet either they don’t seem to have flagged this up or the rightsholder decided that it wasn’t worth paying for a better job - but literally any native British English speaker could have improved them. And presumably these Godawful subtitles were actually released at some point, in which case all I can say is that I pity anyone who had to rely on them. But seldom will the phrase “new and improved subtitles” have carried more weight when the disc that I’m working on gets released!

[nitin]

Michael, if you dont mind sharing, how long does that sort of task usually take you to complete?

[MichaelB]

It depends on a number of factors: the length of the film, how talky it is (this one's got about 1,800 subtitles, which is towards the talkier end of the scale), and how much needs adjusting - i.e. text only, or text and timing. If the latter, it really slows things down to a crawl, but if it's a situation like, say, Cash on Demand, where Sony's official subtitles are 95% there already and only need minor house-style tweaks, it's much more straightforward.

Truth be told, if it hadn't been for the entertaining surreality of some of the guesswork on the project that I'm working on right now, I might well have junked the existing subtitles and created brand new ones from scratch, as that might have taken me less time - and in fact I did do this with No Orchids for Miss Blandish where the official transcription was to all intents and purposes functionally useless. For features, you almost always get an official transcription as a minimum, and major studio ones tend to be pretty good - and some are amazing; The China Syndrome's was thorough to the point of including a full transcription of every single background news report, even though it was obviously impossible to include more than a smattering in the actual subtitles. And the ones for The Undercover Man included a full transcript of the grandmother's dialogue in Sicilian, which I'd never have been able to pull off myself. (I do try to include original-language transcriptions whenever feasible - I regard "(SPEAKING IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE)" as a shameful cop-out - but in general "feasible" equates to "western European language written in the Roman alphabet". Although I'm very proud of the fact that I managed to include the actual Irish prayer that Maureen O'Hara recites in The Long Gray Line - that wasn't Googleable, but an Irish-speaking friend of a Facebook friend worked out what she was saying.)

I also tend not to create an entire set of subtitles in one go; sessions of a few minutes at a time will be interspersed with other stuff, which is as much to preserve my sanity as for any other reason.

[colinr0380]

It should also be noted that the 3 main cast members are American, British, and Danish so I'm not sure Italian is the optimal language to watch the film in but maybe that's just me.

That's really the issue, as a lot of these films from across Europe (but particularly Italy) have a melange of international casts and from some reports (although I don't know if they are apocryphal and varied between productions) everyone spoke their lines in their own language on set and then it was all overdubbed in toto into other languages for different territories. So there is never going to be an entirely 'perfect' version of films from this particular era because you could get one actor perfectly lip synced in their version and the rest obviously looking dubbed! But that allows for its own benefits in importing big name stars from Hollywood (or Freddie Francis in Fellini's And The Ship Sailed On!) into the cast without having to worry too much about incongruities, since they will be present in any case.

The most mainstream example is probably the Sergio Leone Dollars trilogy where we just have to get used to the way a lot of the Italian supporting cast are obviously dubbed because it would be far worse if Clint Eastwood as the main actor was dubbed into Italian instead!. Plus the Western setting calls out for watching those films primarily voiced in English as well. And presumably a lot of the Italian genre films iterating on successful Hollywood templates - the peplum films, horrors, sci-fis, giallo (i.e. murder-mysteries with extra sex and violence) and particularly spaghetti westerns (with extra violence and politics) would be being hopefully targeted for worldwide distribution (i.e. the US) rather than only aimed at a local Italian audience. Similar to the Hong Kong or Bollywood industries of the time, although films from those territories were likely catering for local audiences first and foremost.

So maybe that's why Anchor Bay back in the day, and Vinegar Syndrome at the moment, have included the Italian soundtracks as a bit of a bonus but have not been too concerned about going the extra mile to subtitle them. Although if it would be nice if they had, even badly! (I mean bad subtitles can at least aid comprehension a tiny amount even if they sometimes can undermine any serious tone the films may have been going for, such as those gloriously weird subtitles on kung fu films!)

[EddieLarkin]

I've found that you can't simply apply any one rule like that that applies across the board. I've always found exceptions. The New York Ripper for example, it couldn't be more obvious from the title where it's set and what audience it's aimed at, but the terrible English dub ruins the film in my opinion. The Italian dub is so blatantly superior. And yet I doubt any labels or disc producers would agree with me, indeed Blue Underground never bothered to include the Italian dub at all until their 2019 revisit. That's my issue here, that VS are deciding for me which option is superior. And they may very well turn out to be right in this case, but that's not the point.

Another Fulci example is Zombi 2. The English dub isn't as terrible as NYR, but the Italian version is still clearly superior. Al Cliver and Auretta Gay are blatantly not speaking English and their English dubbers are laughably poor. And the Italian dubbers for Tisa Farrow and Ian McCulloch arguably do a better job than the principles themselves, in fact I believe McCulloch says so in an extra or commentary. It's really only Richard Johnson that you "lose" when viewing the film in Italian.

[colinr0380]

Although conversely I'd never want to see The Beyond without Catriona MacColl and David Warbeck speaking English! And being obviously dubbed adds an extra sense of other-worldly weirdness to Cinzia Monreale's lines as the blind psychic!

But yes, it would always be great to have the option available to decide on which we might prefer!

[Orlac]

I've found that you can't simply apply any one rule like that that applies across the board. I've always found exceptions. The New York Ripper for example, it couldn't be more obvious from the title where it's set and what audience it's aimed at, but the terrible English dub ruins the film in my opinion. The Italian dub is so blatantly superior. And yet I doubt any labels or disc producers would agree with me, indeed Blue Underground never bothered to include the Italian dub at all until their 2019 revisit. That's my issue here, that VS are deciding for me which option is superior. And they may very well turn out to be right in this case, but that's not the point.

Another Fulci example is Zombi 2. The English dub isn't as terrible as NYR, but the Italian version is still clearly superior. Al Cliver and Auretta Gay are blatantly not speaking English and their English dubbers are laughably poor. And the Italian dubbers for Tisa Farrow and Ian McCulloch arguably do a better job than the principles themselves, in fact I believe McCulloch says so in an extra or commentary. It's really only Richard Johnson that you "lose" when viewing the film in Italian.

Ah, that's just superstitious horse-shit!

[MichaelB]

When working on Arrow's Day of Anger, I briefly considered an option that would feature Lee Van Cleef and Giuliano Gemma speaking with their own voices, subtitling where necessary, but rapidly abandoned it as the kind of idea that sounds superficially enticing but which I suspect few would actually sit through - and in any case establishing what language to bestow on the supporting cast would have been a research challenge in itself. (And the subtitling budget on that project was already eye-watering; this was before I started doing it myself.)

[Feego]

I still have my old Blue Underground 2-disc DVD of Suspiria, which offers the Italian soundtrack but no English subs. It is definitely nice to have the choice when available. While I prefer the English tracks for most of Argento's films, as he usually casts American and English actors in the leads, one case where I sometimes go for the Italian is Tenebre, only because I can't stand Theresa Russell's dub for Daria Nicolodi's character. In the case of Bava, it's more of a case-by-case situation. I always opt for the Italian on Arrow's Black Sunday because the English dub is distractingly bad (although the dub on the AIP cut is actually quite good). Since Barbara Steele and John Richardson didn't record their own vocals, there's no great incentive to choose the English dub.

[dwk]

Great news about the Trauma Blu-ray

[black&huge]

Sold!

[M Sanderson]

Yeah, just saw it was based on a 4k scan, has English audio and fixes other issues with the terrible previous release. Very good to hear. Only thing extra one could wish for would be a UHD release.

[dwk]

Given what they have released on UHD, I have no idea why this isn't getting a UHD.

[M Sanderson]

Was very happy with their Scanner Cop UHDs and can’t wait for both Ticks & Flesh for Frankenstein.

Must’ve been a good reason for not releasing an Argento in 4k.

[denti alligator]

Have the Black Friday secret releases been confirmed?

[Glowingwabbit]

Have the Black Friday secret releases been confirmed?

Not yet. Don't they get revealed during the sale?

[yoloswegmaster]

With the mystery UHD title being hinted as being from Hong Kong, I could see it as being 'The Seventh Curse' as it's listed as one of Justin LaLiberty's favourite films on Letterboxd.

[denti alligator]

OK, I thought maybe one of the titles announced since then could be one.

[Glowingwabbit]

With the mystery UHD title being hinted as being from Hong Kong, I could see it as being 'The Seventh Curse' as it's listed as one of Justin LaLiberty's favourite films on Letterboxd.

Ebola Syndrome is another one on several of his lists that I could see it being as well.

OK, I thought maybe one of the titles announced since then could be one.

Trauma, Creature, and Flesh for Frankenstein have been announced. The others are for October.

[M Sanderson]

If they’re releasing the Randel/Yuzna Ticks, I wonder if we’ll get to see Yuzna’s Bugs? Also marketed as a Silent Night, Deadly Night sequel (part 4) in some territories, it’s been compared to Yuzna’s Society in some quarters for its paranoid conspiracy story and disgusting FX. Also features Clint Howard.

Probably Bugs isn’t as well liked as Ticks, yet it does belong to a horror franchise and sometimes that can help with home video releases.

[dwk]

That is owned by Lionsgate, who might be doing a set of the Silent Night, Deadly Night sequels they own for their Vestron line.

[M Sanderson]

Oh I’d be interested in that. Would that include Monte Hellman’s part 3?