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Engrish LOTR: The Two Towers Captions
Cyclometh writes "Someone has put together a set of screengrabs from an Asian bootleg of LOTR:TTT, which are totally hysterical. The subtitles are apparently the genuine article, which definitely should bring the phrase caveat emptor to mind for anyone who buys bootleg DVDs. For a definition of Engrish, see here (apparently it's a no-smorking zone.)"
The Video section, particularly. I love the TechTV blooper, and the helocrash is entertaining. Poor helicopter, it never stood a chance. I hate to see a waste of a perfectly good machine.
Every cloud has a silver lining (except for the mushroom shaped ones, which have a lining of Iridium & Strontium 90)
There is no such thing as a standard "DVD caption text" size. The text is just a subpicture (yes, a picture) that gets overlaid on the movie. Max size 52 kB per picture. 16 colors.
:)
Ever wondered where you found that white rabbit in the Matrix on your keyboard?
Lots of the pirate english DVDs in China had engrish subtitles.
I think it had something to do with the pirates re-encoding the DVD to have chinese subtitles and adding engrish ones too.
The bootleg copy of LOTR-FOTR (or whatever the first movie was called) I saw in China called the elves elfins and other funny mistakes.
I can believe that those are real pictures.
In the comment log, the author of the website explains what he did to produce the images:
Japanese does't have an "r" sound either. The actual sound being said is unlike both the english r and the l, as they do not draw any distinction between the two sounds, much like the Chinese with p/b and t/d.
But the text doesn't seem to be a real subtitle. It's too large to be a standard DVD caption text
m ages/shot09.jpg
There is no standard DVD caption text.. every player does it differently.
To get the screenshots, he probably ran it on a software DVD player. MPlayer has fairly large fonts (and they're customizable)
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/i
"Bring your pretty face to my axe", spoken by Gimli the Dwarf to the oncoming Warg.
Just before the overly pretty elf boy looses an arrow into its skull and Gimli says that it should count as his kill.
Have I seen this movie too many times? Yes.
I am currently residing in South Korea and when they show American movies here they use Korean voice overs and english subtitles. So the voices and speech is Korean and the subtitles are Engrish. Most of the time the translation is horrible. As a matter of fact most English translations in Korea are very bad.
[n8.r0n] http://petesweb.spymac.net/
I've seen a fair share of bootleg DVDs and the subtitles are always aweful. Usually its just a lack of proofreading, but if there's an accent involved (especially something thick and heavily European) then all bets are off. "Bring your pretty face to my axe" is actually pretty close, if you consider that the sound during battles can be overwhelming. And by the 2-hour mark, the transcriber probably lost what little grasp he had of the plot to begin with.
Also, as another commenter pointed out, the guy didn't have a way to do screengrabs from a DVD so he took stills from the XviD screener floating around Kazaa. The text was added by hand but faithfully transcribed from his TV screen.
FYI, subtitles on DVDs are just a 16-color bitmap overlay. They can be as big or as small as you want, with graphics or text, on top or on the bottom or in the middle of the screen.
Any one will do. In California, where I live, the most common foreign language is Spanish, so I have been working very hard on learning this language.
It is very easy to make some nasty errors in Spanish. For example, a common dialog (in both English and Spanish) can go like this:
"How are you at programming"
"I am good."
Now, if someone says "I am good" in Spanish wrong, it sounds like "I am good at having sex". Another error, which can be nasty, is that the following dialog in Puerto Rican Spanish:
"Where is the teacher?"
"She just left. You may catch her if you hurry."
Sounds like this in Mexican Spanish:
"Where is the teacher?"
"She just left. You may fuck her if you hurry."
Just the other night, I was talking to a bilingual girl born in the US, and she made this particular error (in Spanish):
"So, are you going to cum home soon?"
these errors even get past proofreading. The label on the Memorex CD-R blanks says this in Spanish:
"Guarentee of goods and services for one anus"
The point being, that learning a foreign language is, to put it mildly, very very difficult, and you can and will make extremely humourous errors learning it. Native speakers will find you most amusing at times. You will find yourself talking and suddenly having to stop because you do not have a word for the concept you wish to express.
Learning a foreign language is, all in all, great fun, especially when you find people who will tolerate your errors in their language, and who can intuitively speak the languag ein a form you can understand. Great way to meet girls too, because females are more likely to enjoy talking to people struggling with a language.
- Sam
The secret to enjoying Slashdot is to realize that it should not be taken too seriously.
(I wrote most of this up for the LOTR:TTT fake pirate DVD thread, but had problems posting. I meated it out to be on topic)
Movie Piracy, a quick primer.
There exist two distribution networks for movies. One is the classical movie theater => dvd/vhs => pay-per-view => premium cable => network model, where movies first go to bigger markets and eventually (or not) trickle down to the smaller, foreign markets. The other is a underground model that taps at each of these sources and offers world wide distribution within a week.
As a movie is produced, it goes through a couple basic steps: planning, filming, post production. One of the things studios use to view movies before they are completed is called a 'work reel'. It's a beta-version, if you will, of the movie, that studios show execs and backers before finishing the final copy. Pirate work reels are pretty rare, altough I recall 'Jay and Silent Bob' came out as a work reel.
When the movie is completed, a few things happen: studios organize early screenings for critics - this is where 'cams' (pirate copies recorded on a DV camera off the screen) sometimes come from. A lot of movie theaters have to get the prints in at least a day or two before the premiere (just in case), a lot of them will have screenings for cinema staff at that time. Or the staff will just watch a movie while no one is looking.
Most movie critics don't really want to be bothered to go to a cinema 5-10 times a week (or however many movies come out) so the studio sends them screeners. Screeners are usually VHS tapes, and the movies almost always have 'THIS MOVIE IS PROPERTY OF STUDIO XXX'. This is the source of a *lot* of movies, especially now that a lot of studios are releasing DVDs as screeners, knowing that a lot of reviewers prefer DVDs, hoping that it might get them a better rating.
Even if all these holes have been plugged, and security was tight enough that no copies were leaked out till opening day, you still have opening day. As soon as the movie hits nationwide distribution you will have a pirate copy. Wether it's a kid in the audience with a camera or an employee who stays late and make a telesync (camera on tripod set at screen, sound pumped directly - via cable - from the sound system) a copy will get out.
DVD's that come out early are usually leaked by magazine staff, or other reviewers, that get them in early. They can also be stolen out of a warehouse by staff there, whatever, there's a 100 different ways to get that DVD before it's offical release date.
A lot of the 'professional' pirates pirate for money. These aren't kids ripping MP3s, this isn't my friend making divxes from his DVDs so he can keep them online to watch at any time. As soon as the DV (usually, a cam is the first thing to come out) is made, it's passed on to someone who converts it to VCD and ftps it to Asia where it is translated, subbed and produced. I wouldn't be surprised if the turnaround on a VCD is under 36 hours. And the screeners and cams that warez-scene groups release? They get 'em off the streets in Asia.
Everyone here gets paid, from the guy with the DV camera, through the CD production plants, the vendor on the street and the corrupt cop who gets a little extra for not bugging the vendor. It's business, it's easy money. The supply chain is there, it's an industry. You can close down all the street vendors, go after all the factories. They'll do what multinational corporations do - move across borders, find new routes. The cost of destroying these operations far exceedes additional profits they will generate. Nobody in Asia's going to be paying $20-30 for a DVD 2 years after the movie was released in the states and no ammount of copy protection is going to stop it.
A major problem with this model is that quality suffers, as location is to real estate, speed is to piracy. The bigger the production, the more pressure pirates are to get the movie out. I've seen all sorts of crazy stuff, these subtitles aren't actually that bad (you can turn them off). Pirates sell cams on DVDs, voice-over translations on dubbed movies (movie dubbed to german and voice over in russian), 'home made' voice overs (is that a kettle whistle in the background?), mislabled movies (classic), movies on VHS recorded over other movies, etc.
The studios are in some kind of magical dreamland, thinking that they can force everyone to tap to their tune. They can't, it's not going to happen. Asia's market - 2.5-3 BILLION people - is huge compared to the US - 300 mln. Russia and eastern europe - where people are starting to afford the equipment and media - area always at least a few weeks behind. The premiere of LOTR:TTT in Warsaw was yesterday, only *six* weeks after the 'world wide premiere'. In that time, at least 3/4 of the die hard LOTR fans I know got the DVD screener (or divx made from it) and already saw it.
There needs to be a new distribution model, just like in the music industry. Studios want control? Fine, they'll always be able to control the theaters (too much money) but I can't imagine a model in which they will destroy piracy. Hell, the only reason pirate DVDs are making the rounds so early these days is because of the studio's greed, sucking up to reviewers and Academy members is a business decission. I think most people watch movies because it's convinient, especially the DVD/VHS crowd. Protection of this kind of content will only come about with restrictions that will reduce convinience, and it'll make less people watch movies. It's a no win situation, the studios should quit their bullshit politics and make movies people will want to see, movies that'll make people want to get out of the house and go to the movies, instead of most of what's comming out now.
That wouuld be the Abit AX5, a Socket 7-based ATX mobo based on the Intel 430TX chipset. I used to have one of these - in fact it was my first server and has performed faithfully until only very recently (may it rest in peace...). The first time I read the manual I nearly fell out of my chair laughing so hard, and my then-roommate literally jumped 10 feet in the air at my sudden outburst.
The manual can be found here, for your viewing pleasure: http://fae.abit.com.tw/eng/download/dlmanual.php?n ame=APTX5&file=aptx5e.pdf.
Oh, and the exact quote is: "You just need to insert the modules, without the help of God. Isn't it great?"
Yomigaeru Aiyan Geek!!!
Not entirely true. There are two common form of Chinese ideographs. Traditional script is used in places like Taiwan and Hong Kong, but in the mid-50's, the People's Republic (PRC) adopted a simplified form of writing, both reducing the number of characters and the number of strokes in many of the symbols. The two sets of characters are vaguely similar in structure, but different enough to make it impossible to read the other if you've only learned one.
People might not have noticed, but there are the correct captions under every picture.
It's just that the text is black. And on a black background.
AFAIK every DVD disk has different font, not the player. The subtitles are in fact 3 bit (color1, color2 and transparent) images. That's why tools that rip DVD subtitles are in fact scanning the text from the images. I think this kind of method was selected so that every browser wouldn't need full unicode fonts to be able to display subtitles for e.g. latin and japanese content.
The only thing the DVD player can do is to add some kind of filtering to that text -- as it isn't antialised and can be blocky looking on high-res displays.
In addition to the official subtitling on the DVD some player software is able to use external subtitles from a text file. In that case, those players can display the font in any size, color and font-face available for the software.
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Spelling and grammar mistakes left as an exercise for the reader.
Pardon me, but I always thought the caption was stored as image files and then superomposed onto the picture. It seems like that here, where the process of OCR'ing and re-encoding the subtitles is described. This method is also described by the person who made the pictures available. But I still do not believe that someone can hear a phrase from this movie and translate it into "get your pussy-face to my ass" or whatever. It might be possible if it was translated from Mandarin (Or any other dialect) into English, but wouldn't it be easier to just listen to teh English track? I know there's English-speaking versions of this DVD out there.