Lost in Translation

Gothamist has always wondered about the people who translate foreign films. The L.A. Times has a fantastic article which sheds light on this little known part of filmmaking, which is becoming more and more important with globalization etc., ad infinitum. The article profiles Tim Sexton, who translated Y Tu Mama Tambien, as well as offers interesting tidbits like Louis Malle deliberately kept the sentences short in Au Revoir Les Enfants to make subtitling easier. One of the bigger successes lately, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon had an American screenwriter, but the writing had to translated to Chinese, then translated back again, to make sure things weren't lost (Interview with writer James Schamus).

Another side of subtitling - Gothamist on subtitling on the fly, in closed-captioning.