Twokinds Forums

Really, that movie bored the hell out of me. That's my opinion, don't take it personally. Though I saw it without subtitles since I can understand Spanish, I can see how the subtitles would be distracting. I agree with you in that sense, specially because I hate the "watching japanese dub animes cause it's da original language" d-bagery. You're forced to read subtitles, though I don't like it cause it distracts from the action not cause it would spoil the scene. Still, I'd rather see a movie in a language I can understand, not in "Teh original and best language".

Honestly, I turn on English subtitles whenever I watch a movie, but I only read it when someone says something I didn't quite catch.

Subtitles aren't always to the detriment of a movie or animation. The original theatrical subtitles for Nightwatch are particularly memorable, as they are done to interact with the scene itself without distracting or covering up anything important, and they provide particular emphasis to the actors' lines so that they can be "read" with the correct tones and emotions. Certainly, if you can understand the language, subtitles don't bring a whole lot of value to you, but that doesn't make them always bad. Personally, I'd rather watch most of Jet Li's earlier films subtitled, simply because the voice actor they used to use for him, before he could speak English, had a voice I never thought fit him properly and it drives me up the wall. Other times, subtitles can be used to great effect to provide cultural context to scenes that might otherwise not make sense to the viewer, if they lack that context. This is especially true for some animes, since they're meant for a particular culture, and, like comic books here, are steeped in the tropes, cliches, and knowledge common to that culture but are unknown outside it.

hmm...well if it were as simple as that, I'd suggest having optional subtitles or something, but since we have to decide for the whole movie, how Keidran and Basitin speak, wouldn't you agree that having it be completely in English (if we can) be the best choice? Or are we still not on the same page : /

Sidenote: in reference to Holy's idea from before, I always loved those movies where the main character can see something no one else can, and then there's that one scene where someone is spying on the main character, and they can't understand what's going on cuz they can't see or hear the thing that only the main character can see. I always found that hilarious, jus' sayin'.

Avwolf: just quickly in response to what you said:
Nightwatch, though I don't know what it is, was never a comic, so i don't think it can apply, although I suppose you can make the point that subtitles can help at times, but I disagree with that in this case. But think of it like this. Imagine if the Watchmen had subtitles

I was merely remarking on what I felt was an overgenerality. You are absolutely right when you say that it's going to be something to consider very carefully, considering the amount of dialog in Keidran and Basitin that occurs throughout the comic. If you want a reasonable comparison (though it's again, not a comic book movie, but I don't see that having much actual bearing on concept, personally), I'd say that Inglorious [censored] (yes, I know that the word is deliberately misspelled in the title, but it's also something that the swear filter would normally catch, so I'm spelling it correctly on purpose) would be the one to look at. Whenever the characters speak in a non-English language, they actually speak in that language, it's not just a matter of hand-waving the language barrier away so that everyone just speaks English all the time. I know people who do not like that approach, and I know people who are in love with that approach. But I would say that's the movie to compare the technique to, since it does it about as much as it would be done here. If you like the subtitled effect there for the various languages, then it's something to consider seriously for this. If it's a technique that you think draws away from the film, then you know it'll have a similar effect here.

Well, to give my opinions.
1) Subtitles get annoying, because you usually spend so much time reading that you don't get to watch.
2) Changing languages without actually changing languages would just be confusing and hard to follow.
3) Using a real language would be too complicated to learn.

So the best option, from my point of view, would be to use subtitles with a made up language.

Honestly, I think we need a vote on this once we've figured out all of the available, realistic options.
So everyone keep putting out options so that we can figure out the best way to do this.

If you want i create the keidran's language and I think we could do the same thing of avatar and the naavi with the subtitles

You make a very interesting point about Inglorious ........., the thing is that that was a very well done movie made by people who were getting paid, and as a result, I felt the dialogue worked as well as possible with the necessity of subtitles. But I think the reason for that is because the scenes and writing worked around the fact that there would be subtitles. I'm fairly certain Tom had no thought of whether scenes/dialogue worked around subtitles when he wrote 2kinds, so if we were to add subtitles, I say they would conflict with the movie to a large extent.

Also people who are against the waving aside language barriers might not be offended in this case because there is no actual language to dismiss

Apart from the argument against subtitles, there is also the question of, if we do subtitles, should we use a real language, or a made-up one. I don't think we should do real languages because then people might overanalyze it to a hidden meaning, and there may be disastrous mistranslations, as well as accent-nazis we would have to deal with. As well, making up our own language would require firstly two totally separate languages with no connection (like English:Japanese::Keidran:Basitan), which is something I don't think we should embark on, because that is something extremely difficult and time consuming, and it wouldn't be worth it in the end.

So that would be another reason against turning Keidran/Basitin into languages other than english


Sidenote I do love movies where French characters don't speak the French language, just a hilarious accent
Sidenote #2 What if we just asked Tom and just took whatever his decision was?

Tom made it clear he himself does not want anything to do with the animation. I think creative decisions are included. He only gave us permission to make it.

So far the best compromise I can think of is just speak a bit of Keidran from Trace's perspective but switch to English when Keidran are talking from their perspective. There is also the case of Basitin language with subtitles, specifically the scene where Trace makes a statement in Basitin. I think for that we need to use another language because he was speaking in English just before he said that. But for the most part in English, the same way cartoons do it with characters who wouldn't know English (animals, babies and whatnot). The only problem with it is that you know a baby or an animal isn't really speaking in english, cause of their nature. It's not as obvious with Keidran, which may cause confusion. If we go with this option, we will need some good creative scene editing and slight tweaking to make this work.

That's exactly what I think will work