Lost (and gained) in translation: why subtitles in movies matter

This is part of a new film column from Rachel Ho looking at Canadian cinema from a new point of view.

Debuting this column last month with an examination of the discourse around a film as complex and politically charged as Russians at War instigated a multitude of questions and opinions from readers, colleagues, and of course, from the interview subjects themselves. Those critical of the documentary labelled it an act of Russian propaganda, while its defenders levied accusations of knee-jerk censorship, declaring that the film deserved to be seen by audiences everywhere.  But across all of the various issues I discussed with Anastasia Trofimova and Natalie Semotiuk, one point of contention raised a particular flag of interest with me.

In criticizing the film, Semotiuk asserted that derogatory slurs towards Ukrainians were used by Russian soldiers in the film and their translation into English via subtitling failed to encompass their pejorative nature. In response, Trofimova (the film's director) stated her team had in fact provided a direct and literal translation of the words Semotiuk took issue with.

To be clear, I don't seek in the slightest to re-litigate this specific issue; however, it did send me down a rabbit hole of thought regarding the power of translation, particularly in movies.

As Canadian film increasingly extends itself beyond the French and English languages — case in point: the last three films submitted to the Academy for Best International Feature consideration were spoken mainly in Mandarin, Kurdish and Arabic, and Persian — Canadian film-goers will become increasingly reliant on the work of translators. For non-fictional work (such as Russians at War), the need for accurate subtitles becomes a matter of objective truth and fact. For fictional work (such as Canada's most recent submission to the Academy, Universal Language), it becomes a matter of relaying the thematic nuances held within a filmmaker's dialogue.

To consider this topic further, I contacted Soo Min Park, an interpreter and translator based in Vancouver who provided the English and Korean subtitles for Johnny Ma's film The Mother and the Bear. I had already met her at last year's Toronto International Film Festival, where she served as interpreter during an interview I conducted with that film's two Korean leads, Kim Ho-jung and Lee Won-jae.

"A film is a piece of art and its ultimate goal is to connect with the audience," says Park. A significant challenge of the job, she says, happens when a direct translation doesn't quite work with another language's culture. "A piece of dialogue in English not only needs to make sense when translated into Korean, but also [within the] Korean cultural context, so that the targeted audience can connect with the film."

Language is fickle. Words can appear perfectly innocent without the proper context. An example Park uses is the Korean word 양키, or directly translated in English: "Yankee."

For certain generations, 양키 is used to refer to Americans in a negative light, or express anti-American sentiments. According to Park, it's not as readily used today in a serious manner, although young Koreans have generously utilized the term when online gaming, pwning Americans halfway around the world.

Translating 양키 in English, though, can prove challenging as "Yankee" doesn't necessarily read offensive, even within America itself (save for calling a Southerner a Yankee, of course, but that's for another day). Park says, if she were to translate 양키 into English with the intent of showing it as an offensive term, she would add a word like "f--king" before "Yankee" to preserve that intention, even if "f--king" wasn't said in Korean.

"Subtitles are there to bridge two cultures in two languages," says Park. When working with Ma on The Mother and the Bear, Park would present the filmmaker with several options, "even if [the word] means slightly different things," she says. The two would work together to pick the one that best fit into the context of the scene and the natural flow of the dialogue.

A timely example of the importance of translation is Matthew Rankin's Universal Language, a film told in French and Persian. Universal Language (or Une langue universelle in French and Avaz boughalamoune in romanized Persian, which translates in English as "Lovesong for a Turkey") has become an early front-runner for one of my favourite films of 2025, in large part because of the beautiful script by Rankin, Ila Firouzabadi and Pirouz Nemati. The film demonstrates linguistic — and absurdist — poetry in motion with lines like, "My son choked to death in a marshmallow-eating contest."

Rather densely, I've never truly considered the power and responsibility translators bear. Especially in comedies, where jokes can rely heavily on wordplay or specific cultural references, finding words and phrases that both contain literal accuracy and properly reflect intention requires a deft understanding of language and culture in multiples. The results can be the discovery of new cultural quirks, or perhaps an entirely different turn of phrase emerges that contains humour or poignancy not found in the source language but carries the same spirit. I can't speak to what was said in Persian or how the French translation would read, but objectively in English, choking to death in a marshmallow-eating contest is the epitome of tragicomedy.

Films are a visual medium at the end of the day, but so much of our joy and appreciation of the form comes from the words spoken between characters as well as the descriptions and observations made in voice-overs. As Canadian film continues to culturally, and therefore linguistically, evolve, and accessibility to films from around the world increases, people like Park will play a greater role in the filmmaking process — effectively becoming a part of the storytelling process.

Even within the English language, words gain and lose meaning depending on who says them, where they say them and how they say them. It's a fine balance to be found by audiences and translators — to demand accuracy and embrace subjectivity, as the writer E.B. White so eloquently demonstrates:

To foreigners, a Yankee is an American.
To Americans, a Yankee is a Northerner.
To Northerners, a Yankee is an Easterner.
To Easterners, a Yankee is a New Englander.
To New Englanders, a Yankee is a Vermonter.
And in Vermont, a Yankee is somebody who eats pie for breakfast.

And to cinephiles and Broadway frequenters, Damn Yankees is a Faustian musical-turned-film. But let's call the whole thing off, eh?