i have a request for movie distributors and festivals
These are some thoughts I'm getting from one day of NH festival, but also rooted in going to cinema for a few years, and going to a bunch of MDAG festival screenings. I'm not asking politely
subtitles should be accurate
I'm sure this is not an intentional mistake but some gap in an overall process, but if we have a scene where "I had anxiety and then I found myself on the job market" then "found myself on the job market" probably implies "got fired" so it's not "started looking for a job" but more "had to start looking for a job".
at a bilingual festival, subtitles should be bilingual
Let's say the audience is Polish and English. A movie in Polish should have Polish and English subtitles, not just English. A movie in English should have Polish and English subtitles, not just Polish. A movie that is partially English partially Spanish partially idk let's say Italian should have Polish and English subtitles, not Polish and English-but-only-for-non-English-parts. If you are providing AD in Polish, for the reason of wanting to be accessible, you probably also want to provide subtitles to all of your audience, for the same reason.
it's easier for multilingual people if all subtitles try to keep similar sentence structure
I watched a German movie that had Polish and English subtitles. I don't really speak German, but a lot of words are similar to English or I know them for some random reason. English subtitles were largely following the same sentence structure as German speech. Polish was repeatedly flipping the sentence structure around, where I'm not sure it was necessary. If I'm effectively keeping track of three input streams (that's just how my brain works, not sorry), it would be less effortful for me if they were in sync.
subtitles should have a minimum duration
This one is about a movie that came out like 6 years ago I think so I guess nothing will be done about it but even if you're translating "fuck!" it should stay on the screen for long enough to be read.
subtitles should be visible on both light and dark backgrounds
I don't understand how this is still a problem, more at MDAG than here, but this should be a solved problem, right? I don't remember what's the surefire solution, but just a slightly thicker outline? IDK.