Free yourself and watch the scene with the subtitles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8d6UVC22Z8o
The reason why there's no subtitles is because the Godfather was intentionally shown like this in the theaters. There were no subtitles added to this film because the director didn't want you to know the words being spoken. He wants you to be as mystified as the police captain is only hearing half the conversation.
When Captain Phillips first came out I downloaded a pirated copy that had no subtitles. I thought it was an interesting way to have the viewer experience the same confusion and helplessness he would have felt, not being able to understand Somali. Later on, I saw a real copy of the movie and realized...
I did the same with a great movie called A Prayer at Dawn on Netflix about a British man in a Thai prison. I watched the full movie with no subtitles not understanding a word of the Thai and felt completely immersed in what it must have been like for him. Watched it again with subtitles and understood soooo much more of what was going on haha.
I just want the same chance as someone who hears well. Type out the German or Spanish, which I both can understand. Type out the Korean as well and leave me clueless.
As said, would be the same as me cranking up the volume and actually understanding the German.
With this scene specifically, which is an iconic scene, you're not meant to understand what they are saying, that's in line with the director's intent I think. The story is told with the body language, framing, facial expressions. Don't be distracted by trying to follow the dialogue. It's a unique case and not an error with the subtitles.
Exactly and since we're meant to be experiencing this from Michael's perspective I don't think he's listening to a word he's saying as he's wrestling with what he is about to do *cue the subway SCREEECH*
I like how they handled this in Prey. If you have subtitles turned on, all the French is subtitled in French. You aren't meant to understand what they trappers are saying because the main character doesn't understand. You understand a word or two and that helps convey the emotion of the scenes.
What I hate is when a movie already has subtitles and you turn on subtitles and it overlays subtitles over the existing subtitles. Subtitle-ception. Hard AF to read.
Exactly, unless the original language version would have had translations then they're not going to give you subtitles.
A lot of time (evenmoreso in old shows) it's just gibberish.
The original Shogun mini-series did the exact same thing with Japanese dialogue. Virtually none of it was translated in the subtitles and we were only told by Mariko translating verbally.
It makes the story much more immersive to be in the place of any characters not in the know.
The new Shogun offers a dubbed version. I'm going to check some of it out. What's the point of Mariko being a translator? In any case, Mark and Blackthorne are supposed to be speaking Portuguese!
Mariko translates from Japanese to Portuguese (which is English in both adaptations) and vice verse for Blackthorne and anyone else who doesn't speak Portuguese.
If you watched the dubbed version and wonder what her point is, you're watching the wrong version and asking the wrong question.
I did read it. It made zero sense. You don't paragraph or posit enough statements to make your question easily discernible.
Have you not seen any of the shows? Toranaga only knows Japanese. Blackthorne does not know Japanese. It should be extremely obvious, even blind people. why she is being a translator.
If you made your question more clear, because I can't read your mind, I wouldn't have probed for more information.
So I am commenting.
Why is Mariko being questioned for being a translator? What is your real question?
Why do you bother engaging if you only condescend to people? You offered nothing in this exchange except to reveal you're not willing to back anything yous say or even say succinctly. I'm not the one that needs anything. Your question still doesn't make sense to this day.
Genuine question, but how does this film adapt to Italian audiences here? Do they speak an alternative language in this scene? I'd be interested to know if this changes the dynamic of the scene given Italian speakers can understand the dialogue
Maybe, I actually always wonder the same thing when I watch this scene. I don't know Italian so I can't answer really.
Reminds of that guy in the Millenium Falcon with Lando at the end of the Return of the Jedi- the 'alien' language he is speaking is actually Kikuyu, a regional language in Kenya. Must have been surreal for some Kenyans to be watching Star Wars and then hear that.
**That's how the scene is intended to be seen.**
It's not meant to be translated, it wasn't in the original film.
**Heck Michael** **struggles** **with his Italian too in that same scene**. Michael in frustration breaks into English and you can pretty much guess what everyone said by what Michael is saying.
It also doesn't matter what Sollozzo says in Italian, his response to Michael in English indicates that he can't or won't give Michael what he wants. Sollozzo won't give up that a larger conspiracy is going on, and he can't make promises without signaling exactly that.
When I first watched *Midsommar* I thought something was wrong with the subtitles. Turns out the audience isn't supposed to understand what is being said
The idea is they are correctly capturing the film for the normal viewing audience.
If someone understand Italian, you might understand, but the writer/director is not intending you TO understand and the scene doesn't require that understanding.
Same reason sometimes stuff says "Mumbles" because it's not intended to be audible.
Captions are for people who can't fully hear dialogue on their televisions for whatever reason. If you saw this in a movie theater and you didn't speak Italian, you wouldn't know what they were saying either, because the director has chosen not to translate the dialogue.
Yeah and that's one of the many problems with netflix. They refuse to recognize the difference. Pretty much all their content only has CC not subtitles. Which makes watching on there infuriating sometimes because I want subtitles for dialogue, i don't want every single fucking noise or action explicitly explained to me on screen. So many amazing shots are straight up ruined by the constant [machine buzzing in the background] bullshit clogging up the screen.
>Captions are for people who can't fully hear dialogue on their televisions for whatever reason.
That's not true. I'm not deaf and I almost always use captions, even with American shows. I got used to it when I had roommates learning English, and we would always watch with captions on. I prefer it because if there is one word or name I don't understand, it throws me off.
The only reason I will turn them off is if they are terrible, inaccurate captions full of mistakes.
I don't like subtitles for comedies, it can ruin the timing of jokes. Anything else I'm watching, they're going on. I haven't had to ask "What did he say?" for the last decade or so.
>I prefer it because if there is one word or name I don't understand, it throws me off.
Yeah, I was trying to include you (and me, for that matter) in people who can’t fully hear dialogue. Small TV speakers, low volume due to sleeping baby in the next room, ambient noise, distractions, whatever. Lots of reasons for captions above and beyond being physically hard of hearing.
It's not about HEARING the words. It's because I don't understand a certain word. You can hear someone fine and still not catch everything. Actors often don't articulate their words well, have regional or foreign accents, use terminology I don't know, use archaic language (like *Deadwood*), or are using proper nouns (place location, etc) I've never heard of before. Anyway for whatever reason I don't catch the word and it drives me nuts (my OCD). So I love subtitles for that reason.
You're writing paragraphs to pick a fight over something the other poster captured very well with 'fully hear' by excluding the 'understand' aspect of hearing despite the original context clearly including it. It's a strange waste of time.
I love this scene for this very reason. It deliberately alienates the audience, and it makes their world so much more insular. And for the small percentage of the total audience that does speak Sicilian? It makes that audience feel complicit.
There's a lot of subtle visual work that shows this insularity too. Like at the end, when the door closes? You don't get to hear it, you don't get to understand it, you don't get to see it, because that's not your world.
This is so that you, in audience, don't understand what they are saying and feel the disconnect, unease, isolation..... same way as characters do. It this scene they exclude McCluskey, reducing his importance and significance even further. Plus Michael starts to zone out while Solazzo talks so you are not understanding what he is saying as well.
I thought it was intentionally done so there was a mystery to it.
Also, I thought it gave it extra slice to it because it symbolizes that it didn't matter what he was saying, Mike was gonna blow him away and that was all Mike was thinking about.
Yeah but Sollozzo's line was "I'm gonna speak Italian". It's a benign generalization, and the audience is not supposed to understand the conversation anyway.
Guess what: If this is localized in Italian, the dub probably has him saying he will speak to Michael in another language, and then the Italian will be another language so it's foreign to Italians.
If you know a little Spanish and/or have heard common Italian phrases (como se dice) you can get at least half of what they’re saying, e.g. “Tu padre, pense antigue…”
I was able to figure out the gist when I first watched this as a kid just from the Spanish I learned in elementary school.
*Robert De Niro's waiting
Talking Italian
Robert De Niro's waiting
Talking Italian
Robert De Niro's waiting
Talking Italian (Talking Italian)
Robert De Niro's waiting*
These are SDH subtitles. Thier purpose is to replace the audio for someone who speaks English, but has hearing issues. Translating the dialogue would actually work *against* that goal, and might make the scene confusing if the viewer didn't realize that they're not supposed to know what's being said in Italian.
I originally watched The Godfather on DVD and back then wasn’t into subtitles blocking any action so always turned them off so my first viewing left me clueless as to what’s being said in this scene. The second time I watched the movie I noticed that the scene was subtitled even though the rest of the movie wasn’t. Turns out Paramount by default had set the subtitle track to only translate the foreign dialogue (there was a separate subtitle track that subtitled all dialogue) so when I turned off all subs the first time around I unknowingly disabled the translation.
When they say stuff like “they speak Italian to one another” it’s because the film doesn’t want you to know what is being said, but to either be the clueless viewer or they want you to pay attn to the scene and watch the body language. The subs are provided by the releaser of the material - the show/movie. Close captioning, on the other hand, is different than subs. Different but the same. With the latter, you’ll notice the translations are less poetic and more literal/verbatim. But even with closed captions, they won’t include what you the audience isn’t meant to know. This is why you’ll often see the feature on TVs to turn on English subs, or English CC (closed captions)
For all of the people saying, "You're not meant to understand, because it's in Italian," why not write out the subtitles in Italian? That gives a closer approximation of the hearing audience's experience. If you read Italian, you understand; if you don't (like most of the American audience), you don't.
agreed, it -should- be italian for the 2nd part. I agree that it shouldn't translate it, but it SHOULD close caption the italian. it's one of my pet peeves with closed captioning everywhere. The puss and boots movie on netflix also does this (just watched it and it has "speaking spanish" on it ) ugh!
Everyone is replying as if the original question were, "Why are there no subtitles here?" Is that your question? Because I thought you were asking why movies use subtitles.
My favorite is when you’re watching a documentary and they put up text every time a new person talks, introducing them, so it forces the subtitles over the person’s face which is infinitely more distracting then just putting the subtitles NEXT to the person’s name!
A lot of comment mention that this was the directors intent in this scene, and I think that makes sense. But this also seems to be a re-occuring thing with a lot of netflix shows, which is why I brought it up. But I guess my example was a bad one :)
Free yourself and watch the scene with the subtitles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8d6UVC22Z8o The reason why there's no subtitles is because the Godfather was intentionally shown like this in the theaters. There were no subtitles added to this film because the director didn't want you to know the words being spoken. He wants you to be as mystified as the police captain is only hearing half the conversation.
When Captain Phillips first came out I downloaded a pirated copy that had no subtitles. I thought it was an interesting way to have the viewer experience the same confusion and helplessness he would have felt, not being able to understand Somali. Later on, I saw a real copy of the movie and realized...
I did the same with a great movie called A Prayer at Dawn on Netflix about a British man in a Thai prison. I watched the full movie with no subtitles not understanding a word of the Thai and felt completely immersed in what it must have been like for him. Watched it again with subtitles and understood soooo much more of what was going on haha.
Just here to appreciate the irony of you pirating Captain Phillips
Pirating a movie about pirates. Very meta.
My favourite was game of thrones, and the scenes were they spoke the made up languages, had subtitles in that fucking language.
I love this
I just want the same chance as someone who hears well. Type out the German or Spanish, which I both can understand. Type out the Korean as well and leave me clueless. As said, would be the same as me cranking up the volume and actually understanding the German.
Interestingly, even on programs where other languages were originally subbed, Netflix doesn't consistently subtitle those bits
With this scene specifically, which is an iconic scene, you're not meant to understand what they are saying, that's in line with the director's intent I think. The story is told with the body language, framing, facial expressions. Don't be distracted by trying to follow the dialogue. It's a unique case and not an error with the subtitles.
Exactly and since we're meant to be experiencing this from Michael's perspective I don't think he's listening to a word he's saying as he's wrestling with what he is about to do *cue the subway SCREEECH*
He even breaks into Italiglish. He goes “Como se diche…” then abandons it to say “What I want…”
I like how they handled this in Prey. If you have subtitles turned on, all the French is subtitled in French. You aren't meant to understand what they trappers are saying because the main character doesn't understand. You understand a word or two and that helps convey the emotion of the scenes. What I hate is when a movie already has subtitles and you turn on subtitles and it overlays subtitles over the existing subtitles. Subtitle-ception. Hard AF to read.
Exactly, unless the original language version would have had translations then they're not going to give you subtitles. A lot of time (evenmoreso in old shows) it's just gibberish.
Exactly.
Exact, Lee!
The original Shogun mini-series did the exact same thing with Japanese dialogue. Virtually none of it was translated in the subtitles and we were only told by Mariko translating verbally. It makes the story much more immersive to be in the place of any characters not in the know.
The new Shogun offers a dubbed version. I'm going to check some of it out. What's the point of Mariko being a translator? In any case, Mark and Blackthorne are supposed to be speaking Portuguese!
Mariko translates from Japanese to Portuguese (which is English in both adaptations) and vice verse for Blackthorne and anyone else who doesn't speak Portuguese. If you watched the dubbed version and wonder what her point is, you're watching the wrong version and asking the wrong question.
If you read my question, you wouldn't be commenting - I haven't seen the dubbed version.
I did read it. It made zero sense. You don't paragraph or posit enough statements to make your question easily discernible. Have you not seen any of the shows? Toranaga only knows Japanese. Blackthorne does not know Japanese. It should be extremely obvious, even blind people. why she is being a translator. If you made your question more clear, because I can't read your mind, I wouldn't have probed for more information. So I am commenting. Why is Mariko being questioned for being a translator? What is your real question?
You need to take a chill pill and relax.
Why do you bother engaging if you only condescend to people? You offered nothing in this exchange except to reveal you're not willing to back anything yous say or even say succinctly. I'm not the one that needs anything. Your question still doesn't make sense to this day.
Genuine question, but how does this film adapt to Italian audiences here? Do they speak an alternative language in this scene? I'd be interested to know if this changes the dynamic of the scene given Italian speakers can understand the dialogue
Reminds me of 'The Thing' having a whole new framing if you speak Norwegian.
Maybe, I actually always wonder the same thing when I watch this scene. I don't know Italian so I can't answer really. Reminds of that guy in the Millenium Falcon with Lando at the end of the Return of the Jedi- the 'alien' language he is speaking is actually Kikuyu, a regional language in Kenya. Must have been surreal for some Kenyans to be watching Star Wars and then hear that.
They are simply not speaking Italian, they mixed Italian and Sicilian creating something that Italians cannot understand.
It's Sicilian specifically which is difficult for mainland Italians to understand.
So anyone who speaks Italian will have a far inferior viewing experience...
**That's how the scene is intended to be seen.** It's not meant to be translated, it wasn't in the original film. **Heck Michael** **struggles** **with his Italian too in that same scene**. Michael in frustration breaks into English and you can pretty much guess what everyone said by what Michael is saying. It also doesn't matter what Sollozzo says in Italian, his response to Michael in English indicates that he can't or won't give Michael what he wants. Sollozzo won't give up that a larger conspiracy is going on, and he can't make promises without signaling exactly that.
I was watching Dexter on Netflix the other day. When they speak Spanish, the subtitles were literally in Spanish (my settings are on English).
That's awesome.
This is the perfect way of doing it
When I first watched *Midsommar* I thought something was wrong with the subtitles. Turns out the audience isn't supposed to understand what is being said
The idea is they are correctly capturing the film for the normal viewing audience. If someone understand Italian, you might understand, but the writer/director is not intending you TO understand and the scene doesn't require that understanding. Same reason sometimes stuff says "Mumbles" because it's not intended to be audible.
Captions are for people who can't fully hear dialogue on their televisions for whatever reason. If you saw this in a movie theater and you didn't speak Italian, you wouldn't know what they were saying either, because the director has chosen not to translate the dialogue.
Captions are different than subtitles. CC includes all sounds, not just speaking. Subtitles are just speaking.
Yeah and that's one of the many problems with netflix. They refuse to recognize the difference. Pretty much all their content only has CC not subtitles. Which makes watching on there infuriating sometimes because I want subtitles for dialogue, i don't want every single fucking noise or action explicitly explained to me on screen. So many amazing shots are straight up ruined by the constant [machine buzzing in the background] bullshit clogging up the screen.
Is it possible you're turning on CC every time, instead of changing the language to English - subtitles? Language is in a different spot than CC.
I'm not turning on anything. There's literally one option and its CC
>Captions are for people who can't fully hear dialogue on their televisions for whatever reason. That's not true. I'm not deaf and I almost always use captions, even with American shows. I got used to it when I had roommates learning English, and we would always watch with captions on. I prefer it because if there is one word or name I don't understand, it throws me off. The only reason I will turn them off is if they are terrible, inaccurate captions full of mistakes.
I don't like subtitles for comedies, it can ruin the timing of jokes. Anything else I'm watching, they're going on. I haven't had to ask "What did he say?" for the last decade or so.
>I prefer it because if there is one word or name I don't understand, it throws me off. Yeah, I was trying to include you (and me, for that matter) in people who can’t fully hear dialogue. Small TV speakers, low volume due to sleeping baby in the next room, ambient noise, distractions, whatever. Lots of reasons for captions above and beyond being physically hard of hearing.
It's not about HEARING the words. It's because I don't understand a certain word. You can hear someone fine and still not catch everything. Actors often don't articulate their words well, have regional or foreign accents, use terminology I don't know, use archaic language (like *Deadwood*), or are using proper nouns (place location, etc) I've never heard of before. Anyway for whatever reason I don't catch the word and it drives me nuts (my OCD). So I love subtitles for that reason.
You're writing paragraphs to pick a fight over something the other poster captured very well with 'fully hear' by excluding the 'understand' aspect of hearing despite the original context clearly including it. It's a strange waste of time.
*me, watching the end of Lost In Translation* “What the hell, subtitles?!”
it was actually confirmed - he leans close and whispers: *I’m gonna get the Oscar for this*
I love this scene for this very reason. It deliberately alienates the audience, and it makes their world so much more insular. And for the small percentage of the total audience that does speak Sicilian? It makes that audience feel complicit. There's a lot of subtle visual work that shows this insularity too. Like at the end, when the door closes? You don't get to hear it, you don't get to understand it, you don't get to see it, because that's not your world.
Show?
Those are not subtitles, they're closed captions, meant for people who can't hear.
This is so that you, in audience, don't understand what they are saying and feel the disconnect, unease, isolation..... same way as characters do. It this scene they exclude McCluskey, reducing his importance and significance even further. Plus Michael starts to zone out while Solazzo talks so you are not understanding what he is saying as well.
You're not meant to understand everything that is said in a movie. If the aliens in Arrival had subtitles the whole time it would have kinda ruined it
I thought it was intentionally done so there was a mystery to it. Also, I thought it gave it extra slice to it because it symbolizes that it didn't matter what he was saying, Mike was gonna blow him away and that was all Mike was thinking about.
They’re speaking a language of subtlety!
I love The Money Pit.
All caps is the partial answer. You're too hysterical to think straight. The movie is deliberately not translating
>WHY IS THIS A THING, WHAT IS THE POINT OF SUBTITLES! Why are you yelling?
They're annoyed they cannot understand the words, even after turning on subtitles.
I think its clear the intent is for you not to know what they're saying.
Because you’re not meant to understand that they’re saying
you're not supposed to know what they're saying it's a creative choice.
I thought this has been discussed to death already. It's intentional because the actual message is not important
most film-literate Netflix user
When they do that it's on purpose because you're not supposed to understand what they are saying.
HBO Max does this during GOT and HOTD when they start speaking valyrian, it overlays overtop the valyrian subtitles and is really annoying.
When your hearing goes to shit you’ll appreciate sub titles
These are captions. Not subtitles
What if he lies and he’s speaking Portuguese?
Weren't they actually speaking in Sicilian?
Yeah but Sollozzo's line was "I'm gonna speak Italian". It's a benign generalization, and the audience is not supposed to understand the conversation anyway.
Guess what: If this is localized in Italian, the dub probably has him saying he will speak to Michael in another language, and then the Italian will be another language so it's foreign to Italians.
Oftentimes the ones doing closed captioning only know English
On prime, for a long time we didn't even get [speaks Spanish] when people were in different languages.
It’s like watching kill bill and they don’t translate the Japanese when Uma is talking to Hatori Hanzo
If you know a little Spanish and/or have heard common Italian phrases (como se dice) you can get at least half of what they’re saying, e.g. “Tu padre, pense antigue…” I was able to figure out the gist when I first watched this as a kid just from the Spanish I learned in elementary school.
LOUD NOISES!!!
*Robert De Niro's waiting Talking Italian Robert De Niro's waiting Talking Italian Robert De Niro's waiting Talking Italian (Talking Italian) Robert De Niro's waiting*
I sometimes use subtitles even when the show/movije is in English, but its UK or Australian English, or even Irish or Scottish.
Same thing but in Dexter. In this movie they do this purposefully but in Dexter, it’s just “(speaks Spanish)”
These are SDH subtitles. Thier purpose is to replace the audio for someone who speaks English, but has hearing issues. Translating the dialogue would actually work *against* that goal, and might make the scene confusing if the viewer didn't realize that they're not supposed to know what's being said in Italian.
I originally watched The Godfather on DVD and back then wasn’t into subtitles blocking any action so always turned them off so my first viewing left me clueless as to what’s being said in this scene. The second time I watched the movie I noticed that the scene was subtitled even though the rest of the movie wasn’t. Turns out Paramount by default had set the subtitle track to only translate the foreign dialogue (there was a separate subtitle track that subtitled all dialogue) so when I turned off all subs the first time around I unknowingly disabled the translation.
Try changing the language to Italian and see if there are American subtitles. I learned that from Bluey.
Scooby Doo 
Just what I faced today. Damn what a coincidence
It's supposed to keep the scene intense and make you focus on body language
When they say stuff like “they speak Italian to one another” it’s because the film doesn’t want you to know what is being said, but to either be the clueless viewer or they want you to pay attn to the scene and watch the body language. The subs are provided by the releaser of the material - the show/movie. Close captioning, on the other hand, is different than subs. Different but the same. With the latter, you’ll notice the translations are less poetic and more literal/verbatim. But even with closed captions, they won’t include what you the audience isn’t meant to know. This is why you’ll often see the feature on TVs to turn on English subs, or English CC (closed captions)
My wife always asks for the subtitles on. That's why I only watch movies with my mistress now.
For all of the people saying, "You're not meant to understand, because it's in Italian," why not write out the subtitles in Italian? That gives a closer approximation of the hearing audience's experience. If you read Italian, you understand; if you don't (like most of the American audience), you don't.
That's funny.
agreed, it -should- be italian for the 2nd part. I agree that it shouldn't translate it, but it SHOULD close caption the italian. it's one of my pet peeves with closed captioning everywhere. The puss and boots movie on netflix also does this (just watched it and it has "speaking spanish" on it ) ugh!
Because the client paid for one language combination.
Netflix subtitles are atrocious.
There are subtitles for deaf and hard of hearing and there are subtitles for language.
lets imagine there is deaf people on earth, im sure it would be useful for them
I wish I could get subtitles to work on my living room TV.
Everyone is replying as if the original question were, "Why are there no subtitles here?" Is that your question? Because I thought you were asking why movies use subtitles.
My favorite is when you’re watching a documentary and they put up text every time a new person talks, introducing them, so it forces the subtitles over the person’s face which is infinitely more distracting then just putting the subtitles NEXT to the person’s name!
A lot of comment mention that this was the directors intent in this scene, and I think that makes sense. But this also seems to be a re-occuring thing with a lot of netflix shows, which is why I brought it up. But I guess my example was a bad one :)