We have a TV channel here that seems to specialise in playing DVDs on air; you can see the DVD screens with options before and after a film. The other day they had Pirates of the Caribbean 2 on, which I watched as I had heard so much about it. They show the English language version along with English subtitles, which I presume is to give as much help as possible to their viewers as there isn't a Khmer language subtitle option. However, the subtitles for this film were so full of errors and weird English that I can only hope it was a pirate DVD.
If this is the standard of such DVD translations, then they are unlikely to become a major source of language learning and are more likely to be a source of problems, confusion and difficulties. They might be a rich source of accidental idioms, though. If it was a legitimate copy, then it would be much more worrying. Here are a few examples:
| Text | Subtitle |
|---|---|
| Bonnie lass | Bony ass |
| Commandeer that ship | Come and dear that ship |
| Scallywag | Scally way |
| Give up his ship to you | Give as shit to you |
Still, it was a very good film.
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