Asklemmy

I love when translators add cultural explanations in fan subs of animes.

This is not an example of that:

Some helpful caption/subtitles is for videos which don't have dialogue but add information to what's going on. One example is primitive technology but there are plenty of other skill presentations/tutorials where the how and why is spelled out in the subtitles while the actual audio is just peaceful melodies to enjoy watching someone work too.

One trend which annoys me is having meaningful non-English simply listed as '[speaking language]'

Even worse is when, despite being another language, a common word (whether homophonic or loan words) would by understood regardless, just isn't present in the captions.

An interesting example I saw was in Archer. During an agitated rant, Archer finally interjects demanding someone answer the phone. The next shot is a plain still shot of the telephone, which the captions helpfully emphasise [PHONE NOT RINGING]; a recurring joke is Archer's constant ear-ringing due to careless gun use.

Having seen other, more careless translations, I can easily see jokes (or in other contexts, important clues) like this being missed and it made me think about how film techniques can imply audio silently. If there's a plain shot of a phone, a hearing impaired person might reasonably assume it's a visual implication that the phone is ringing.

What I like with UK subtitles, is that different characters get different colours. With translation subtitles this never seems to happen.

I think there is some sort of automated system being used often because I have seen the same spoken word by a character some up as different words and sometimes its even almost a catchphrase yet it comes up with it differently.