Skibelo

When you say Viki's subs are "dispassionate and mechanical" you might be noticing that Gaga's translators are more inclined to use idiomatic English expressions (e.g. "You are what you eat" in TOO when Wang is fed some pork feet) than wordy literal translations. But this doesn't always work out so well for Gaga: an idiom that at first sounds cute may not be exactly appropriate to the situation – as happened in that example from TOO. You might be right though that Viki's wordier sentences are assembled by a committee trying to satisfy everyone.

In the credits you can see that Viki's translators work in teams, but their teamwork isn't always very effective. For example, you often see, particularly in Korean BLs, proper names given a different spelling in every episode and lack of agreement in the team about how to translate honorifics. And it often happens that a flashback using exactly the same video as before now has a significantly different translation. These are teamwork problems at a very basic level. But I suppose all the translators work remotely at home and meet only on occasional conference calls. Presumably they also work under time pressure and get paid ltitle or nothing. Under these conditions we should be grateful the subs as are good as they are.

I also wonder if the translators ever get the original screenplay from the production company. Or do they just type their subs directly into the video somehow, while watching, without ever reading the screenplay? In subtle screenplays like The On1y One it sometimes seems that they translate each line of dialogue in isolation without knowing the entire story in detail. It makes for very confusing subs if the translators don't fully grasp all the nuances of the story! What a professional translation team would do is, scene by scene, build up a side by side comparison of the original and translated texts and hand that over to a reviewing team. But I rather suspect that would be too boring for all Viki's willing young volunteers.

I'm not sure whether Viki or Gaga translators ever use translation programs. I assume not much (if you've ever used auto-translate in Youtube you'll have seen how inadequate computer translation is for screenplays). But they obviously do quite often go fishing in an English dictionary, and this is a real trap. If the dictionary offers you a choice, how do you pick the right alternative? In TOO on Viki, there is a critical point where Tian tells Wang to "never treat him perfunctorily". The translator must have found "perfunctory" in the dictionary, because he/she doesn't know how to use it. It's entirely the wrong word in this context. The same mistake occurs in Plus & Minus – probably the same translator. Another thing you notice is that whenever a medical condition is mentioned (boys in BLs are always getting sick) the translator goes to the dictionary and fishes out some long medical term that no native English speaker has ever heard of. I saw "orthostatic hypotension" in a subtitle a while ago, and had to look it up. It's what normal people call dizziness when standing up, or low blood pressure. BL translators have all done some English classes at school and spent time on social media, but their problem is they lack experience of day to day living (not to mention love and death!) among native speakers.

I actually find that Viki's Japanese team do quite a good job. I didn't find the subs for T&A too confusing (after watching twice). In this show there was actually a credit for an "English editing team". Sounds like a good idea! Maybe a team of native speakers who correct the translators' mistakes of grammar and usage? Well, not obviously. I just did a quick spot check in ep.8 and in first few minutes found three things they missed:

5:48 :: "I wish I noticed sooner". The usual misunderstanding of English tenses. Should be "I wish I had noticed sooner".
6:50 :: "Carry me on your back". No native English high-schooler would ever say this, especially in a playful mood. He would always say "Give me a piggy-back".
7:52 :: "And he is the host who sparks the flames". Incomprehensible – presumably a poor translation of a Japanese idiom, which cries out for a translator's note. Host sounds like the wrong word and while you can spark a fire in English, you can't spark flames, you can only fan them after the fire has been sparked.

Maybe this sounds like a lot of nit-picking, but good translation is important. BL production teams do a lot of superb and inspired work, and it's a shame, and a mystery, that they don't do more to ensure that their talent can be fully appreciated by an international audience. Also, if you think about it, high-level "nit-picking" – that is, careful analysis – is what the reviews here on MDL are all about. It's just a bit odd that reviewers who write perceptive analyses of many aspects of shows don't seem aware that when they're dependent on English subs they may only be hearing half of what the writers wrote. Not many reviewers mention subtitles at all, and you're the only one I've seen who digs down into the differences between, say, Viki and Gaga to get at the truth. Great work, please keep it up.

Sorry if that was more than you bargained for on the subject of subtitles. We all have our hot buttons.😉

Very thorough and perceptive review. Thank you. You repeatedly put your finger on all the reasons I love this drama but couldn't explain to myself exactly why. I burst into applause when you wrote that Takara "keeps stepping on land mines with Amagi". That wonderful metaphor encapsulates the whole drama in seven words. "An exercise in joy, patience, and terror" is pretty good too. Only your reference to "initial meat cutes" in your first paragraph has me baffled. If it's not a typo I'd be glad to be told what it means.

Your final list of recommendations shows excellent judgement. By which I mean I've seen them all at least twice and liked them as much as you did. Except for Seven Days, which I suppose I'd better reevaluate, since you mention it with such reverence.

Your comment about the English subtitles on Viki and Gaga interested me. I've just watched The On1y One four times, flicking constantly between Viki and Gaga to untangle its subtleties. For that show Gaga's subs are more idiomatic but careless, while Viki's are wordier, try hard to explain jokes and cultural things (which Gaga never does), but are often couched in mangled English. The TOO screenplay is complex, tight, and subtle, and actually beyond the capabilities of both translation teams. For a show like TOO (and to some extent T&A as well) it's just a disaster that BL subs are tackled by amateurs who lack the two basic qualifications of professional translation: speaking the target language natively, and being skilled at writing it. My dentist has advised me to stop watching BL, since my teeth are getting so ground down.

I also found the OST intrusive. Time and again, just as two of the actors were getting deep into an intense scene, along would come some banal and unnecessary instrumental accompaniment. It's an insult to good actors, really. Their talent should be treated with more respect.

The business about the theft of the Alpha software product is also ridiculous. As far as I can make out from the admittedly confused subtitles on WeTV, the screen writer thinks that when a thief steals software by downloading it the original owner loses it – like being robbed of a pearl necklace. So the original programmers of Alpha then have to recreate the code from memory by working overtime for six months. The writer clearly has no idea that when you download a file you download a copy of it, and that even if the thief had deleted the code files from the plundered system after downloading them, the programming team's test systems, code repositories, and daily backups for the last year would contain hundreds of copies of the entire source code from which the latest version could be reconstructed in a few days. Not the first time a BL screen writer shows profound ignorance of the real world.

The actor playing Zhou Shu Yi's father (Yoza Eriku) is also Japanese. Are all the scenes between Shu Yi and his father in Japanese, then? Like the OP I find it hard to tell.

I totally agree with you. I thought it was piquant, intelligent and very original how the divorce lawyer setting provided "lessons" about human relationships. Fu Ligong had some very wise things to say, in his cool deep-voiced way.

The following is a list of Taiwanese BLs that I've liked and/or that have had good reviews. You'll have to sift through them to pick out the ones that appeal to you most. They're all reviewed here on MDL.

HIStory3: Trapped
HIStory4: Close To You
We Best Love: No. 1 For You
Stay By My Side
Be Loved in House: I Do
You Are Mine
My Tooth Your Love
Unknown
DNA Says Love You
Kiseki: Dear to Me

Your Name Engraved Herein
The On1y One

Of the last two, YNEH is a fairly famous film (it's from 2020 and even got to Netflix) and TOO is a newish series by the same director. TOO has a subtle and clever screenplay but be warned, it is only S1 and S2 has not yet appeared.

Charlies Tu is listed in the credits now. Perhaps someone updated them after you wrote your review.

Only the first 9 minutes are on YouTube (one-third of it).

I just watched a version of it on Bilibili, where the audio was only slightly out of sync in the last two-thirds. (Bilibili has at least 4 versions, most of them unwatchable.)

Yes, I think this show was badly misconceived. Both of the main leads have been good in other shows. I really liked Michael Chang in My Tooth Your Love: he makes a very cute enfant terrible.

I fully agree with your first two points. One of the things that sank this show was that neither of the main couple was believable as a star musician, even though both acted well. In particular, the plot required Sea to develop a compelling stage presence, but his cute smiles were not enough when he couldn't do anything interesting on his keyboard. As a supposed composing genius, he should have flying all over the keyboard, adding spectacular flourishes. My School President showed how it should be done, with a cast that actually could play their instruments.

Not sure if the links given below are still valid. I just found it at https://www.bilibili.tv/en/video/4791160071651328

I completely agree. Not the usual Thai BL full of tropes and sound effects and fantasy, but a decent grown-up story with realistic characters and situations. Like the good Korean and Japanese ones, it seems to have been written by someone with a brain able to appeal to an audience other than teenage schoolgirls.

The English subtitles do convey most of the story, through a haze of mangled grammar, missing and misspelt words, and so on. Filipino series usually have much better English than this, but then, they also usually have much better direction, cinematographyt and sound. Luckily the superb acting shines through the incompetence.

I'm just as confused as you are. But the explanation for why Tiew didn't recognise Mork in the park at the beginning of the story is given by jpny01 in a spoiler comment added to his review.

More than year after release, the final episode still has no English subtitles. So there's really no point in watching any of it, is there?

"Restart" is perhaps the best of them all. I watched it four times. It's a 99m film. Watch on Bili or Gaga, which have 1080p resolution. Youtube has only a grainy version with low resolution. Getting back to Korean, I've just watched The Eighth Sense, which I thought at least as good as Unintentional Love Story (but golly, young Koreans drink a lot).

For a really good analysis of Donghee's psychology look for the review by labcat (29 Nov 2023).

The crux of the second couple's problem is Donghee's awful childhood, beaten by his father and finally rescued by Hotae's mother ("Auntie", but not a blood auntie, I think). She accepted that he was gay, but Donghee nonetheless worries that by becoming her son's lover he would be pushing her boundaries, or at least showing too little respect for her. Donghee, having had such a rough time being gay, is probably also, out of love for Hotae, wanting to spare him the hardships of life as a gay man. I'm guessing none of this is too clearly spelled out in order to leave room for a sequel. That scene in episode 9 where Auntie has brought Donghee something to eat and we have the flashback to the moment where Auntie took him in was particularly cryptic, so I think there is a lot to be told in a second series.