This is utter BS from Magnolia. I’m Swedish and I can tell you that almost all the screen cap comparison I have seen in the blogs complaining about this, the original theatrical sub titles are a more literal translation from Swedish. In a few cases it is the other way, but in those cases I feel the theatrical translation is more accurate anyway.

I have only seen the caps published on the blogs, not the complete new transaltion, so it could of course (all though I doubt it) be more literal through the rest of the movie. Even if that was the case I would still call this BS though as they specifically address the blog complaints here.

Just for fun I made a google translation of the jungle gym translation for you (and we all know how funny they can turn out):

- Do you live here, or …?
- Yes, I live here on climbing.
- Sure. But where do you live?
- Next to you.
- How do you know where I live?

I would say the new translator did a worse job than a google automatic translation
(although google had an obvious problem with the more complex word (klätterställningen) ‘in the jungle gym’, which is translated as ‘on climbing’).

The theatrical translation:
- Do you live here?
- Yeah…
- I live right here, in the jungle gym.
- Seriously. where do you live?
- Next door to you.
- How do you know where I live?

New DVD translation:
- I live here
- Next to you

Another example is the one discussed above with the ‘jerk off’ scene.

The only two sceens I can think of that I’ve seen translated more literaly in the new subs are the ‘can’t be friends’ sceen right after the ‘jungle gym’ sceen, and ‘the note from Eli.’

Theatrical:
Are you so sure that I want to be your friend?

A literal translation:
Do you think I want to be friends with you then?
(though the scentence is built up a bit to make sence in English, a true literal word-for-word translation would be “Think you I want become friend with you then?”)

DVD:
Do you think I want to be friends with you?

Here the new subs are almost a true literal translation, save for the ‘then’ at the end. The complaint here against the new sub was that it made him sound arogant rather then playful. But I think the original swedish dialouge sounds playful, and in Swedish the ‘then’ at the end adds to that. So all in all the theatrical might sound better in English then the new translation.

In the ‘note from Eli’ sceen the note states:

Theatrical:
“I must be gone and live, or stay and die. Yours, Eli”

DVD:
“To flee is life, To linger, death. Your Eli”

Here “To flee is life, to linger death.” is a literal translation of the Swedish in the message. And some say they prefer the DVD version here.

But what it is, is actually a re-translation back to english from a Swedish translation of a quote from Romeo & Juliet.

The original translator understood that and did the right thing taking the original quote instead of retranslating it.

Romeo and Juliet. (Act 3, Scene 5. http://shakespeare.mit.edu/romeo_juliet/romeo_juliet.3.5.html last line in Romeos first part.)

I do not think the DVD translation is bad in this last example, it is just to show that in some cases where the DVD actually are more literal the ‘theatrical’ can still be more accurate. And in most cases I’ve seen the theatrical are both more litteral, AND accurate.

over the past few days there has been quite the uproar over the american release of the stunningly beautiful vampire film let the right one in. the website iconsoffright.com first broke the story, comparing the pre-release screener sub…