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Why can subtitles disagree with a film's dubbed dialogue?

A character says one thing aloud while the translated subtitle phrases it differently. The two versions may be solving different problems: a dub must work as a spoken performance within the scene, while subtitles must fit a reader’s time and space. Netflix’s separate guidelines show why preserving meaning need not produce identical wording.

5–7 min

Questions you could explore

  • How does a lip movement constrain a translation differently from a line of text?
  • Why should captions based on a dub be distinguished from subtitles translated separately?

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Why can subtitles disagree with a film's dubbed dialogue? | Speech Topic | speaking.app