Watched a movie in a target language? I dare you to translate it

Hi and how are you? How was your weekend? Mine was spent hiking with my wife and dog by a lake on the Lithuanian-Russian border, playing Sonic the Hedgehog on an Xbox that our Airbnb had, enjoying the sunshine and… trying to come up with a name that sounded vaguely Asian and also meant His Dick in Lithuanian. Getting it right was absolutely necessary for at least five jokes in the Spanish comedy I was translating to land.

For some 4-5 years, struggles like that were my daily bread and butter, as translating movies and TV series was my full-time gig. In my long-winding stint, I translated 500+ episodes of Turkish soap operas, and dozens of movies, whose quality varied from pure arthouse to Hot Tub Time Machine 2. My days of spending 40-50 hours a week trying to churn as many lines as possible (some places literally paid by line, others by minute of screentime, more on this later) are thankfully over. Now, it’s more of an occasional sadomasochistic treat I add to my diet every four months or so.

There are many problems with this sort of work. It’s extremely finicky and it’s not that rewarding, as few people take notice of good translation, but at the same time, if you do a poor job, people will notice and make you feel like an absolute hack. It’s also quite tiring and time-demanding, so I can’t really blame people for cutting corners.

However, I think that despite all the drawbacks, translating movies made me better at all the languages I worked in, including my own. So I’d like to build an argument for translating movies as a language learning strategy for intermediate/advanced and actually even for beginner learners. I’ll try to explain why.

Why movies and not Wikipedia entries or werewolf romance novels? What makes films, series and any kind of video material different from text is how closely every uttered word is tied to what you see on screen. You’ll get to see how a person might talk when they’re super pissed or elated, how people change their mode of speaking with children and parents, and how the language is spoken in both formal and informal settings. Unless you’re translating Hot Tub Time Machine 2, of course.

The more things you have to look up, the better. What makes translating movies difficult is how many references might get lost on both the viewers and the translator. Talking among themselves, characters will refer to random stuff, like a long-dead local celebrity’s drug problem. Or a song they both listened to in the 70s. Sometimes, you’ll get side-tracked and research a reference for 20 minutes. And it’s not time wasted if you’re doing it in the target language, frequenting distant corners of the internet and web 1.0 styled forums. You’ll enrich your cultural knowledge as much as your vocabulary.

Set phrases on repeat. Most of us don’t live in a country where our TA is spoken on a regular basis. Sure, we can make friends speaking our TA, find language tandem partners online, or speak to an AI assistant. The problem is that such settings are quite limited in their scope. You don’t “participate” in everyday situations you’d get exposed to if you were truly immersed in that linguistic environment. For example, you’d never ask your iTalki partner “what time is it?” and you might not instinctively know how to naturally respond to “bless you” in a way that wouldn’t sound like you’re translating verbatim.

In movies and series, people engage in all manner of idle chit-chat that’s not relevant to the plot. There’s a lot of “how are you?” and “could I get a cab”. And as a translator, you’d have to capture every word dropped in a conversation and find a suitable equivalent in your own language. Repeat that for hundreds of lines (the comedy with the His Dick pun had 1800+ lines of dialogue), and you’d be set when it comes to set phrases.

It doesn’t feel like studying, yet it feels like you’re doing something, and it’s kind of empowering. This might not work for everyone, but I don’t like activities that “feel” like you’re studying (drills, flashcards). When translating a movie, you’re chipping away bit by bit, and your labor actually produces a tangible result. It’s an accomplishment and because all the new things you learned had to be independently looked up, guessed or researched (I think that’s called the discovery method), you can expect the new knowledge to stick.

Now, I was lucky to have always gotten paid for translating films and series, but without the pressure of a deadline, I imagine it can be turned into a fun extracurricular activity. Anime enthusiasts have been doing fansubs for decades, and you could probably find a similar community in your target language.

And if you feel like you’re doing a great job, you could actually earn a bit of money, too. However, be aware that this isn’t the most sustainable career path. The hours are long — it takes me 40 minutes to translate 10 minutes of rather dense dialogue, and that’s before double- and triple-checking it. The pay is rather poor, too. In 2021, Rest of World reported:

Netflix pays $13 per minute for translation of Korean audio into English subtitles, but only a fraction of that figure ends up directly in the pockets of translators.

I imagine the fraction being 20-30%. The pay I received over the years varied from $90 to $400 for a feature-length movie. The higher end doesn't sound too bad but we’re talking about hours upon hours of rather demanding work. Plus, you almost never have any bargaining rights — the rates are set by the buyer.

But even if you’re doing it for free and as a way to improve your language skills, you can still find ways of sharing it with people online. You could even help introduce the works of a favourite director to a new audience. And all that while getting better at translating dick jokes.