Several readers have left messages asking why the Special Edition DVD version of the Thai coming-of-age drama, Love of Siam, does not include English subtitles.
According to one foreigner writing about Thai film, Wise Kwai, film companies dislike paying royalties to firms which provide subtitles, so decided against providing the service - a trend he says can be traced back to 2002 or 2003. Here's more:
'Another reason, probably the main reason, is that leaving the subtitles off gives the studios control over foreign sales and distribution. They have effectively shut down the grey market of mail-order sales of Thai DVDs to English-speaking countries. This exclusivity is a selling point when the Thai studios are promoting their films to overseas sales agents and distributors.'
However, the news is not all bleak:
'Singapore and Malaysia are now the first places to look for English-friendly DVDs of Thai films. Censorship has been an issue with DVDs from these places in the past, but I don't know if it is still an issue. Hong Kong also picks up a lot of Thai films and puts them out on DVD with English subs. Good resources in this area include MovieExclusive out of Singapore and Yesasia. Take your pick of mail-order site for any of the Western-released Thai DVDs.'
Wise Kwai, who cannot speak Thai, complains that Thai films which are released without English subtitles lose something. He was upset to discover that the Director's Cut version of the film, showing at RCA House cinema, also contained no English subtitles - and he had already bought his ticket:
'This news is disappointing, heartbreaking even, because I don't speak Thai, and though I am familiar with the film, I fear that much will be lost in the non-translation.'
Lost to whom? To the Thai-resident foreigner viewing the film who has not bothered learning Thai.
English subtitles can never capture every nuance of meaning: no translation is that good. Even with subtitles, will foreign audiences follow the film in the same way as Thais? Will they laugh at the same moments?
Most of my posts on Thai viewer reaction to the film were translated from comments which Thais left at the Pantip webboard. In some cases I found it hard to capture the same meaning in English of what they said, which was rich in vernacular, so I provided the original Thai as well.
A Thai-resident foreigner who wants a true appreciation of Thai film has to make the effort to learn the language. Thai films do not 'lose' something without English subtitles. They gain much more when you can watch them as they are - which people with access to both languages will know well.
I agree with you with respect to the translation never being exact. But I was a bit surprised that the DVD was released without English subs. They already went to the trouble of getting the subtitles done for the theatrical release so it seems like it would have been easy enough to put them on the DVD.
ReplyDeleteI notice that it is very hit and miss with respect to this issue. For example Me...Myself came out on DVD with Eng subtitles. But Bangkok Love Story did not. Now, Bangkok Love Story has been sold to TLA for N. American and I believe UK release some time this summer. I assume it will debut at the Philadelphia GLBT Film Festival in July and then come out on DVD shortly thereafter.
I can't imagine any distributor buying Love of Siam. It is just too long. However now that it won those big awards maybe it will get another look. My guess is that Picture This! will pick it up for US/UK release with the subtitles eventually. They seem to buy pretty much every gay Asian film out there. Another possibility is TLA. But we won't get the director's cut. I hear that Sahamongkol was at the Berlinale Film Fest market trying to sell the film. A film festival programmer friend got a DVD screener that is subtitled of course.
Yesasia is a good source as you note. So, maybe it will be possible to get it from HK earlier than a US release.
I tried to buy the director's cut of the DVD in the special packaging that comes with the little wooden toy from some Thai online store even though I knew it wasn't subtitled. I figured I knew the story well enough that it didn't matter. But they told me they couldn't sell it to me since I am outside Thailand.
I found the translation of the mainstream release quite adequate for the understanding of the film; I also know a few people who do the translation work for English subtitles and I know how poorly they are paid. To leave off English subtitles so that they don't have to pay a few more royalties is both venal and typical of shortsighted Thai businessmen in their "approach" to international markets and to their supposedly highly skilled and valuable subtitle writers.
ReplyDeleteA set of English subtitles in SRT format does exist for a "Bangkok Love Story" version in AVI format!
ReplyDeleteLuckily I watched the Love of siam at the Hong Kong Int'l Film Festival last week, it comes with English subtitles. But it is the original commercial version, not the director's cut. I am wonder that the director's cut would be released DVD or not with English subtitle?
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely, someone living in Thailand should make every effort to be proficient in Thai. Too often Anglophones rely on the fact that that English is widely spoken to skate by on a bare minimum of the language of their adopted country.
ReplyDeleteBut there are two problems with not having subtitles on Thai movies. The first is that on DVDs, apart from expat Thais, the main audience is non-Thai speakers wishing to familiarize themselves with Thai cinema. It seems perverse, not to say counterproductive, to say that the only people who can watch Thai movies are Thai speakers. Much of the recent success of Korean, Japanese and Chinese cinema is based on clear, succinct subtitling. They're basically cutting out 99% of all overseas sales because they don't want to pay a slice of this to subtitlers. Weird.
The second problem is that even proficiency in a language doesn't mean you can follow a film successfully, as typically movies rely on idiom, regional accents/dialects etc for authenticity. I had a French girlfriend, who spoke perfect formal English but struggled with the idiomatic language of many US and UK movies. Can a Thai, fluent in English and watching a Guy Richie movie, readily understand 'geezer's a donut'? (It means 'the man's a fool' by the way).
Far from 'appreciating nuance' the non-native speaker is more likely to miss meaning.
In any event, if money is the issue, why doesn't the Thai movie industry employ its own translators? They would get only their wages and have no slice of overseas profits. And the rest of the world would then be a new marketplace.
This no subtitles thing seems to be indefensible, whichever way you look at it.