MAJOR PROJECT: SUBTITLES

Subtitles or Not?

As my film currently contains a foreign person in an interview I have been debating the issue of whether I use subtitles to translate the language to English or use another technique. I have a few options in mind as an alternative to subtitles: 

• Firstly there is the translator actually translating the persons words to our main character who does not speak the language, however this requires a lot of back and forth between the 3 of them and whether I make this comical or serious could be effective in telling the story. 

There is definitely scope for the comic approach as seen in this well put together scene from the aptly titled Lost in Translation (2003, Dir. Sofia Coppola):


This scene is really well done and produces comedy from the lack of understanding as well as the lengthy sounding nature of Japanese sentences.  

• Or much like this scene have my character with no translation and therefore a certain amount of ambiguity about their character which the agent has to figure out together with the translator.
• My other idea for translation would be to use text or more specifically documents and pieces of paper with key bits of information from the suspect. 

Text when used in film can be very effective, but film is a visual medium so there can be an argument against subtitles because they can distract from the visuals. This is why "Italy...dub foreign-language films" (Darke, critic for Vertigo magazine) much like many countries preferring to avoid subtitles in favour of dubbing the voices into their own language. The video below explores very effectively the means of showing text in film in a visually appealing way for the audience to enjoy and to add to the visual film experience rather than retract:



In a sense I could use subtitles not in the formal sense, but to instead have them pop up on screen and to appear on documents for us the viewer to see translated only for the agent to be kept in the dark. 

Ultimately this could be visually beautiful but I have to find the best way for the story to work with the use of text and a foreign language.