WARNING: This video discusses the content of R-rated movies.
Young children should stop watching . . . now.
A lot of people have asked me whether watching English-language movies
with Vietnamese subtitles is an effective way to study English or not.
I don't really know.
When I studied Vietnamese, I didn't watch any Vietnamese movies.
But one thing I do know is that if you watch movies with Vietnamese subtitles,
there will be a lot of cases where the subtitles cause you to misunderstand the content of a scene.
Take this scene from "Sicario," for example.
This guy is talking about an old friend who he just met at a bar.
"That's an old friend of mine there."
"High school."
What?
"High school?"
I believe he said "divorced" there.
I watched a lot of movies to investigate the accuracy of Vietnamese subtitles,
and I found that the genre that had the most problems with subtitles was comedy.
In action movies, fantasies, or romances, the characters usually speak pretty directly,
but in comedies they often use wordplay, slang, and in particular, dirty words.
I'd like to invite you to watch a few comedies with me, and help me fix the subtitles.
We'll start with "Deadpool."
Right from the beginning, I knew this movie was going to have a lot of problems with subtitles.
In the satirical opening credits, they translate "gratuitous cameo" as "a free cameo."
No. "Gratuity" can mean "something given for free,"
but "gratuitous" means "excessive and pointless."
So it means "a pointless cameo."
And when we get to the dirty scenes, the subtitles have even more problems.
For example, when Deadpool is looking for his enemy, Francis, he asks himself:
But Deadpool doesn't actually say "a hunk of meat."
He says:
Or when Deadpool's preparing to go fight Francis, he has to say goodbye to his landlord, Al.
In a previous scene, he told us that she used to be addicted to cocaine, so when leaving her, he says:
And then Deadpool's friend asks her:
"You want to get addicted to drugs?"
No. He asks her:
"Get fucked up" means to use alcohol or drugs until you're really . . . fucked up,
so his line could be more accurately translated as:
Or when Deadpool is fighting Francis, both of them have lost all their weapons, so Francis says:
And Deadpool answers:
"Looks like this is your last Saturday night."
"Looks like this is your last Saturday night?"
What?
It's not dark out, and no one ever said it was Saturday.
Deapool says:
In a lot of cases, "last" means "final,"
but in this scene it means "the most recent."
Translated into Vietnamese, Deadpool says:
But why?
This one's really dirty.
Earlier, Francis said:
This is a fist.
I can use it to hit other people, right?
However, "fisting" is a sex act related to this thing and . . .
an orifice that few people ever see.
So what Deadpool means when he says, . . .
is that last Saturday night Francis enjoyed that sex act.
Perhaps there's no tidy way to translate that scene while still preserving its real meaning.
And a lot of other scenes are the same.
Even though it got translated correctly,
the content is related to a part of Western culture that you guys probably don't know about.
Take this scene. Deadpool cuts off his own hand, sprays the blood in Colossus's face, and says:
"Are you there God? It's Me, Margaret." is the title of a famous American novel.
It tells the story of a girl going through puberty, and it introduces to the readers—
that is, girls of that age—a lot of things related to the process of puberty,
in particular, menstruation.
Get the joke yet?
"Inside Out" also has a scene like that.
Riley's family has just moved to San Francisco,
and the first night there, Riley hears a scary noise.
The subtitles here are correct, but you guys probably don't get the joke.
San Francisco is famous for a lot of things,
and one of those things is that there are a lot of gay people there.
In the West, there's a gay subculture that includes gay men who are big, strong, and hairy,
and they call these guys "bears."
So when Anger says, . . .
it means he saw one of those guys.
"Guardians of the Galaxy" also has a scene that jokes about Western culture
in a way that's hard to understand if you don't have anyone to explain it.
Watch this scene.
You guys probably have no idea who Jackson Pollock is.
He was a painter famous for the way he threw paint to create energetic paintings such as this one.
And Starlord here says that under a black light, his ship would look like one of Pollock's paintings.
Do you guys know substance appears under a black light?
Dried semen, guys.
Or in "22 Jump Street," when Schmidt and Jenko have just come into the new police station, Schmidt says:
And what's the stage name used by the actor who plays Dixon?
All right, that joke isn't all that funny,
but I want to talk about "22 Jump Street" a bit more, and focus on the use of wordplay and slang.
At the beginning, when they're getting ready to go undercover, Schmidt says:
"My new identity is going to be an assassin."
"An assassin?"
No.
Schmidt doesn't say, . . .
but rather . . .
In this case, "killer" is acting as an adjective.
In American slang, it means "really badass."
Or in this scene, these two idiots are saying they could enter the annals of football history.
But that word "annals,"
they're accidentally mispronouncing as "anals."
"Anal" is an adjective that means "of or pertaining to the anus."
So when this guy says, . . .
it means . . . (well, you get it already).
"Zombieland" also has a scene of wordplay that you guys probably never noticed.
Columbus here is looking for a place to go to the bathroom,
while at the same time talking about his rules for survival,
then he gets attacked by some zombies, runs away,
and then in the end, when he shoots a zombie dead, he says:
"On the bright side, I had found a place to implement rule number two."
The subtitles here are wrong.
It's correct that he just implemented rule number two, that is, "shoot twice,"
but he said:
Have you guys watched my video about euphemisms yet?
"Go number 2" means . . . (well, you already know),
so what he means when he says, . . .
is that he shit his pants.
Another funny scene is when Columbus is about to kiss Wichita,
then Tallahassee interrupts,
and then the next day, Wichita packs up and leaves.
Columbus says:
"You just stand there like some big crazy robot
developed in a god-damned secret government lab."
No.
Columbus does say, "you're like a giant robot,"
but he says:
"Block" means "to act as an obstacle,"
and "cock" just means "rooster," right?
Yes, but it also means "dick."
So the verb "cock-block" means to act as an obstacle to someone's dick,
that is, to interrupt a guy when he's about to get laid.
Ok, I'm going to stop there.
I hope you learned some new things,
and I also hope you don't think the purpose of this video
is just to insult or make fun of the people who write subtitles for English-language movies.
In general, they do a really good job, and translate more than 99% correctly.
I just hope that after watching my video, you'll read subtitles a bit more critically.
That is to say, I hope you don't immediately accept the accuracy of the subtitles,
but instead, that you stay curious,
and if you've got time, try to learn exactly what the characters were saying.
And if you do that, you'll probably learn quite a few new things about English.
Happy viewing!
I'd like to take a second to introduce Lincup.
It's a product to replace menstrual pads, imported from America.
If you want to learn more, you can check out the description, or watch the video linked here.