Of course, I was waiting for the call. At the end of 2018, Parasite was in post-production and I knew that the subtitles would need to be done in early 2019. It was one afternoon in December when I was in a café with a group of friends that my phone rang and I answered, "Yes I would love to do the English subtitles!"
As it turns out, I was in the U.S. visiting my parents when, after the editing of the rough cut and the first round of ADR was complete, the dialogue list was ready to be translated. I had received the screenplay first, so I read through it before receiving the Vimeo link. It was, in a sense, the ultimate spoiler. I knew every detail of the plot before watching the film. And yet seeing it for the first time was no less thrilling or surprising, because Bong Joon-ho's precise visualization of each scene, and the actors' performances, contained so many unexpected facets and nuances.
It is exciting to translate such a great film, but also intimidating, and it brings a heavy sense of responsibility. It seemed obvious from the first viewing that Parasite had the potential to travel far internationally. The thought also did cross my mind: this could be the first Korean film to win the Cannes Palme d'Or.
Before starting, I had already received a long list of comments from the director about words and phrases (like 학익진 or 산수경석) that might prove difficult to translate. He also pointed out some features of the relationships between characters that he wanted expressed in the type of language they used with each other. For example, when Song Kang-ho's character speaks with his boss, even as he uses polite language, he slightly ignores the difference in status between them.
With all these in mind, I began to translate. I set my laptop on my parents' kitchen table, opened up the Korean dialogue list, and over the next week and a half, slowly and painfully completed the rough draft. As I worked, I would listen to each line of dialogue and watch the scene several times before writing in the translation. When I reached the end, I went back to the beginning and watched through the film again, making adjustments to the first draft. Then I went through one more time before sending it to the production company.
A subtitle translation is like any other kind of writing: the first draft may be a bit weak, but the more you revise it, the better it gets. The production company made some comments by email, and I made changes based on their suggestions. Then at the end of February, when I returned to Korea, we scheduled two days to meet with the director, the producer, and several members of the international team at CJ E&M to go through the film line by line and consider final revisions. It was an intense experience, that reminded me just how deeply Bong Joon-ho understands the process and nuances of subtitling. Then at last, the subtitles were complete.
I was overjoyed, but not overly surprised, when Parasite won the Palme d'Or several months later. All that week I was constantly on Twitter, reading about the reaction at Cannes and searching out reviews from my favorite critics. I was also not surprised when it had a sensational opening in Korea, dominating the public conversation as well as the box office. Bong Joon-ho had already proved earlier in his career that he is a master at combining social themes, innovative filmmaking and box office appeal.
What did surprise me was the sudden interest in the Korean media about the subtitle translation. For years I have been quietly translating subtitles on a wide range of films, but I had never been singled out by the Korean media. Suddenly my phone started ringing all day long, and I had 30 interview requests in two weeks. It was flattering to receive so much attention, and I was happy that the process of subtitle translation was receiving recognition. But I was also aware as I was doing these interviews that I was slowly losing control over the conversation. The question "what makes for a good subtitle translation" is complicated and hard to summarize in a few sentences. Journalists were most interested to hear how I approached difficult-to-translate words and phrases like 짜파구리. But to be honest, this is only one small part of the translation process, and I think other issues are more crucial to the craft of subtitle translation.
Over the years I've spent a lot of time thinking about what makes good subtitles. The biggest difficulty for sure is in communicating the meaning and emotions of the original in such condensed form. Because the subtitles flash only briefly on the screen, they need to be short enough for the audience to read comfortably. So there is an almost constant process of compromise between the ideal translation one would prefer, and a translation which is sufficiently short. If you had to choose one skill that matters more than anything else in translating subtitles, it is the ability to express meaning and emotion in short, compact phrases. Sometimes this is something as simple as rewriting "I'm going to stop" as "I'll stop", or "I think he will be okay" as "He'll recover". At other times, more complicated solutions are needed.
But the thing I really obsess about while translating subtitles is the energy of the dialogue. In one sense, film subtitle translation is fundamentally different from translating a novel or poem. When you read a novel in translation, the original text is nowhere to be seen. The job of the literary translator is to create a new text that recreates (and replaces) the energy of the original.
But when you watch a subtitled film, the original text is a constant presence. You can hear it in the voices of the actors. Even if you don't understand the meaning of the words, you can certainly feel much of the emotion expressed through the rise and fall of the actors' voice, and their body language. One simply can't ignore that when composing the subtitles.
The metaphor that I keep in my head while translating is that the subtitles are like a vessel or container that holds the energy of the original dialogue. The intensity of the expression in the subtitles should match the intensity of the actor's delivery. If the subtitle "vessel" is too small to contain the emotion of the original dialogue, the audience will feel a sense of imbalance. Not only that, the "shape" of the vessel is important, too. If a word at the end of a sentence brings forth stronger emotion in the actor's voice, then in the translated subtitles as well, the stronger, more expressive words should appear at the end of the sentence. Of course it is not possible to do this perfectly, but I believe that when the subtitles are shaped to reflect the energy of the original dialogue, the words hit the audience with greater force.
Given the fact that Bong Joon-ho is such a master at writing impactful, expressive dialogue, doing subtitles for his films is always both a challenge, and a tremendous pleasure. Watching the completed film with the subtitles is particularly thrilling, because although the words onscreen were written by me, they are given an extra burst of power by the filmmaking and the performances.
Darcy Paquet
Professor, Busan Asian Film School(AFiS) Artistic Director, Wildflower Film Awards Korea Programme Consultant, Udine Far East Film Festival
