You have in your catalogue the rights of a film or series you would like to release on the French market. However, it does not come with any English subtitles nor any transcript. Then, you worry about the quality of your video subtitling into French. Through the concrete example of the American series Riptide, I explain to you how I successfully subtitled an episode from English “by ear”.

Remark: You can take 45 minutes of your time to watch the episode (available below). This way, you will understand better this blog article.

What are Riptide and the subtitling project context about?

To sum up what is Riptide about, it tells the story of three ex-Vietnam’s veterans: Cody Allen and Nick Ryder, two private detectives, and Murry ‘Boz’ Bozinsky, a brilliant scientist. The trio resolves different investigations. In the episode called The Pirate and the Princess, which is the topic of this article, they go on a trip to the Caribbean to help their friends Angelo and Giovanna Guirlini finding a treasure hidden in the ocean. And they do it at their own risk.

Regarding the context of this subtitling project, one of my clients, the French DVD/Blu-Ray publisher Elephant Films, was going to release a DVD set of the series three seasons. But they were facing an obstacle: the sixteenth episode of the third season French dubbing, The Pirate and the Princess, had been lost forever. Moreover, it appeared that it didn’t have any English subtitles neither. As a result, I was asked to subtitle this episode from English to French. A challenge that needed a clear methodology!

⚠️ A word about videos without any transcript ⚠️

Notice it’s very current that videos in English don’t come with a transcript in the same language, initially at least. Unless you entrust a transcriber with producing one for you. Moreover, note it’s very rare that a film or an episode doesn’t come with an original transcript. This particular case is then an exception to the rule.

Thus, subtitling without any transcript (or “by ear”, as you are going to see it below) is not a backup solution. It is definitely a professional skill that only a professional translator can handle.

Subtitling “by ear”:  how does it actually work?

The question is in the title: how does this actually work? First of all, as with any project, I ask myself the following: am I able to handle such a project? Like I explain in my service page, when a client sends me a custom quote request, I always watch the video (the first ten minutes at least, if it is too long) to see if I am right translator for this. Indeed, it gives me a good idea of how the subtitling task is difficult. Also, when I have to subtitle a TV series episode into French, I search for it online so I can get an automatic transcript. And lucky for me, here, it was the case!

⚠️ Careful with automatic transcripts ⚠️

An automatic transcript can be partially correct. That means it should be carefully used. So, additional research will be necessary (as with every project I work on). Fortunately, this transcript was pretty good, even if I had great difficulty to adapt some parts.

Therefore, you should keep that in mind if you want to provide me with an automatic transcript for your subtitling project.

Naturally, I didn’t use this automatic transcript as the only resource for this project. Indeed, when I have to subtitle an episode or an entire TV series, I use what it is called a bible (not the religious one, of course!).

The series bible: a must-have in subtitling

Usually used by scriptwriters to include relevant information about the series, such as the characters’ identity, professional translators specialized in subtitling also utilize this document to write down the following details:

• Characters’ name;
• Their status (are they main or minor?);
• Their relationships (how they interact with each other*?);
• The main areas where the action takes place;
• The frequently used terms in the series;
• …

The bible series is necessary for a long-term subtitling project. In fact, thanks to this document, I can make the whole TV series subtitling consistent from the beginning to the end. Consequently, for my previous English-to-French subtitling projects, such as The A-Team, The Six Billion Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman, the bible was a very essential tool. And for a one-shot project such as Riptide, this tool was also very helpful.

Although I didn’t watch all the episodes before this one (The Pirate and the Princess), I noted all the information listed above on my personal bible. And the fact that Angelo and Giovanna Guirlini already appeared in season two helped me quickly defining their relationship with the three protagonists (Cody, Nick and Boz). Finally, it helped me regarding the difficult scenes to translate and to adapt into French.

⚠️ *Quick Focus on the French pronouns ⚠️

When in English, the “you” pronoun is commonly used, no matter what the relationship between the characters is, in French we use two different pronouns:

• tu to emphasize a close relationship (e.g., between two friends or lovers);
• vous to highlight a formal one (between an employer and their employee, for instance).

It’s an additional difficulty to take into account to produce a high-quality subtitling into French.

The question of the dialogues in Italian

Besides the French adaptation from English of the subtitles, I encountered another difficulty: the dialogues in the Italian language. Angelo and Giovanna Guirlini are indeed from Italy, so it’s quite normal to see them often talking in their native language. Two questions entered my mind: should I adapt all the Italian dialogues into French? Or only some of them? I had to adopt two points of view to answer them:

• The three heroes’: do they really understand Italian?
• The French audience’s: do they need to understand it?

When I was spotting the subtitles with the help of the images and sound, I came to the following conclusion: as Cody and Boz don’t speak neither understand this language, I didn’t adapt the Italian dialogues. Here, the objective was that the French audience felt the same regarding Italian while watching the episode.

However, when Italian and English were “mixed together” in the dialogues, I kept the Italian words as they were in the French subtitles. For instance, at 7’18 (see the first video above), there was a scene where Angelo and Giovanna were talking about their submarine named Il Cavalluccio Marino (the seahorse, in English). Consequently, it was quite logical to keep them, so the French subtitles could be fluent and understood by their target viewers.

⚠️ Subtitling two or more languages into French ⚠️

A while ago, I subtitled an episode from the Spanish short series Tell Me Who I Am: Mistress of Warfor the French-German TV channel Arte. The plot takes place during World War II and its characters happen to travel a lot through Europe. Also, they sometimes speak various languages. Therefore, their adaptation into French was essential, as it helped the audience to better understand the story and the characters’ actions throughout the episode and generally during the series.

Once again, as I explained to you earlier, as a professional translator, I always put myself in the characters’ shoes and the viewers’ place to solve this kind of language issue.  

The importance of dialogues and images in subtitling

To conclude this case study, as the title states, subtitling “by ear” should consider the dialogues and the images. As a matter of fact, the latter provides hints about the episode plot. They also help the translator to figure the best way to adapt a video from English to French. Consequently, the client and the audience perceive the subtitling as qualitative.

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Do you need to subtitle an English-speaking series episode (or another type of video) to French, even with the absence of a transcript or subtitles? Thanks to my professional expertise in subtitling, I help you reaching your French audience. To do so, send me a custom quote request.