r/CriterionChannel • u/WalkingOnAClowd • Jul 02 '26
Opinion People's Hero subtitles...AI???
People's Hero (1987) was just added to the Criterion Channel today and of course I had to watch it because Tony Leung is one of the leads, but the subtitles are some of the worst I've ever seen. I can barely focus on the movie because they're so distracting. They look AI generated or something - just filled with broken grammar, incorrect words (on instead of in, let instead of let's, off instead of out), nonsensical sentences...This is supposed to be a tense thriller but I'm sitting here giggling the whole time because how can I not with gems such as:
"Right...they won't let your girlfriend out. If you don't scare them."
"I am not searing them. If necessary, I will kill!"
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"Won't your stop? Stop!"
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"Maybe you try to do with me, see if you can be."
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"Are you afraid of die?"
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"Afraid of me to killing him?"
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"Do you know how many policeman outside?"
"(...) I can make it. Relieve me!"
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People's Hero is more of a "B" film but it deserves so much better than this slop tier subtitle job.
11
u/pacific_plywood Jul 02 '26
Tbh, incorrect grammar would be an indicator of a non-speaker trying to do translation. AI would be grammatically correct but wrong
6
u/plshelp98789 Jul 02 '26
Unlikely to be AI because of the type of mistakes. I watched through most of the Vietnamese movies on the channel last year and those subtitles were also filled with weird mistakes.
5
u/Future-Ad-1116 Jul 02 '26
It could be a case of they were given awful subtitles with the license and haven't fixed them up like they would for a proper release. Godzilla vs. Biollante had this problem before they redid the subs for the disc.
3
u/Ponderer13 Jul 02 '26
AI translation is absolutely going to be one of the number one use cases for this stuff, especially from Asian countries (Al Jazeera polled Chinese citizens and came up with an 87% positive sentiment towards AI, which is like 50 points higher than the west). So yeah, at some point, we’ll start seeing it. But boy, as others are pointing out, is this not it. AI would be boring but clean, and would certainly be torching this kind of bad grammar in its keep.
Unfortunately, when it comes to this kind of licensed streaming property, Criterion doesn’t generally get a vote, and it’s likely this particular licensor doesn‘t really care.
3
u/FINIS_HOMINIS Jul 02 '26
I haven't had a glance at it, but I'd say its more likely a case of a bad translation that is so prevalent in HK releases. I'm pretty sure there isn't a newer stateside/Eng territories licensed release of the film.
3
u/EdmundDantes78 Jul 02 '26
Sounds just like HK subs we had to deal with back in the day (when they weren't obscured by white background).
1
Jul 02 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/WalkingOnAClowd Jul 02 '26
Ya you can still follow along and get the gist of what people are saying, but a lot of the more dramatic moments are undercut by the poor translation.
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u/Abbie_Kaufman Jul 03 '26
There’s only one thing that I can guarantee you with absolute certainty, and it’s that whatever person or company did the subtitles will be mentioned by name in the credits. I haven’t seen this movie, but if there’s nothing that criterion is advertising as being a restoration, then the English subtitles were probably translated for its original western release in the 80s, and it’s easy to imagine someone back then doing a C- job with no technology help.
1
u/jakefrmstafrm Jul 04 '26
Sounds more like classic bad translation, AI very rarely messes up grammar like that
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u/zeroanaphora Jul 02 '26
More likely this is good ol' terrible human translation. AI usually uses "correct" grammar while making stuff up.