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Mr Sausage wrote: Mon Jun 23, 2025 2:45 am

therewillbeblus wrote: Mon Jun 23, 2025 1:12 amAh looks like they grabbed the remaining David Chung movies except for his best, It’s a Drink! It’s a Bomb!

Is it part of the Golden Princess library?

Finch wrote: Mon Jun 30, 2025 4:36 pm a BD of My Life as a Zucchini

The new City on Fire subs suck. Hong Kong Cantonese is as vernacular as it gets and translators are still so adverse to slang, expressions, and humour. They're tonally inconsistent and technically off as well. So many lines are too fast or cut off too early just to match a cut.

dwk wrote: Sun Jul 06, 2025 8:28 pm Dylan Cheung posted the following on Blue Sky

The new City on Fire subs suck. Hong Kong Cantonese is as vernacular as it gets and translators are still so adverse to slang, expressions, and humour. They're tonally inconsistent and technically off as well. So many lines are too fast or cut off too early just to match a cut.

yoloswegmaster wrote: Mon Jul 07, 2025 3:18 pm Do we know who it was that did the subs? I know Markgway said that he was going to be doing the subs for A Better Tomorrow I and II, and I believe Frank Djeng said he was also going to be doing the subs for certain titles.

therewillbeblus wrote: Mon Jul 07, 2025 4:01 pm Maybe I won't try to offload my HK blus after all..

therewillbeblus wrote: Mon Jul 07, 2025 4:01 pm Maybe I won't try to offload my HK blus after all..

Originally Posted by Irongod2112 View Post
Hey guys! Just wanted to clear things up regarding the subtitles for these upcoming Shout Factory releases.

This whole thing that the subtitles suck is totally off base and it's very disappointing to hear after so much work has gone into them.

Please also be advised that the streaming versions are most likely earlier drafts and the discs will have gone through additional QC.

The subs for both CITY ON FIRE and HARD-BOILED were done by someone who has done tons of great subtitle translations for both 88 Films & Eureka and works with Markgway as well helping him out with his sub translations.

I also had some input to make sure that some of the older translations that we have grown to love stayed in, but subs still remained accurate.

Below are some of the translator's feedback
on his work on CITY ON FIRE and the negative comments made, hopefully everyone can rest a bit easier that the subtitles for these films are in good hands.

As Dylan said himself that 'Cantonese is as vernacular as it gets', there is no perfect equivalent in English most of the time. It's up to the translators to make a choice, and it's usually very subjective. There's no definite right or wrong answer, and any translations would have room for improvement.

Dylan gave one example of City on Fire and made his suggestions. Some of his lines are improvements, sure, and some other word choices can be seen as second-guessing the character's intentions and spelling it out for the audience. When it comes to the translation, it's a choice between translating it straight and as close to the original language used as possible, or reading between the lines and clarifying everything, including any unspoken information. It's a personal preference, and clearly, there are different opinions out there.

Maybe I'm leaning towards accuracy instead of a more poetic approach. The audience can also make up their minds whether Chow was being self-deprecating or not by watching his tone and facial expressions. Film is a visual medium after all.