A Korean Speaker, Youngmi Mayer has sparked a discussion on social
media after claiming that the English subtitles of Squid Game, which is the
most popular show on Netflix presently, are terrible. According to her, the
translations are very poor and have failed to preserve the amazing dialogue written
by the show’s makers.

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In a Twitter thread she says, “not to sound snobby but i’m fluent in korean and i watched
squid game with english subtitles and if you don’t understand korean you didn’t
really watch the same show. translation was so bad. the dialogue was written so
well and zero of it was preserved”

She went on to record a two-minute video
which brought out several instances of negligence in the show’s translation.
You can watch the video here –

In one of the scenes the character Mi-nyeo is trying to convince
another player to continue the games with her when she says, “I am very smart, I just never got a chance to study,” but
what the Netflix subtitles show is “I’m not a genius, but I still got it
worked out.”

Several Korean speakers agreed with her observations. 

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This is just one of the many instances of poor translation.

Youngmi adds, “also i want to point out that the reason this
happens is because translation work is not respected and also the sheer volume
of content. translators are underpaid and overworked and it’s not their fault.
it’s the fault of producers who don’t appreciate the art”

Another Twitter user found discrepancies in the English and
English Closed Caption subtitles as well. They wrote, “I found you got
different subtitles depending if you chose English or English Closed Caption
(with the latter matching the dubbed dialogue and the former being wildly
different).”

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The show came out on September 17 and managed to become the
most-watched shows in approximately 90 countries. Netflix believe that the show
might be able to surpass their most-viewed series Bridgerton.

Surprisingly, the show’s creator Hwang Dong-hyuk revealed that the
show which was written in 2009 was rejected by several studios before finally
being picked up by the streaming giant. Hwang had to pass a difficult financial
phase when he was forced to sell his laptop due to financial struggle.

Netflix is yet to issue a statement addressing the issue.