Wow, didn't notice Janszoon's post way back then .. Both films listed as spanish on wikipedia. El Orfanato also had a spanish director, Juan Antonio Bayona, but was produced by Del Toro (et al.).

I highly recommend this^ Loved that movie.

I despise dubs, they ruin the movie to no end. though i realise that having to read subtitles sometimes means you miss bits here and there it is far better to have them and be exposed to foreign cinema than to not have them and be deprived. besides, if the movie is that good it will probably merit a second watch.

Life is Beautiful and Farewell my Concubine are two subtitled movies i love. check them out if you haven't already.

I like subtitles, because it allows me to always watch the movie in its original form, and it helps you to learn another language pretty soon.

I cannot fathom some people's aversion to subtitles, without them 75% of the movies I care about would be worthless. I tried watching a dubbed version of Life Is Beautiful a few days ago and the vocal acting was so atrocious that I ended up shutting it off within ten minutes. I know it's supposed to be a great film, but when you start pushing a comedic Italian-American accent in a film, yeah, I'm not listening to that.

I watched The Host earlier today and the subtitles didn't ruin the film at all for me, in fact subs never have in a film. I read them very quick and don't seem to miss anything although one of the subs was 'Now relaxed your arm' which is obviously incorrect otherwise they were fine. Burnt in subs are the worse especially if you are watching a film above 1.85:1 ratio as they can sometimes be very hard to decipher within the black bars whereas optional subs are transposed onto the print and are therefore much more clearer. This was really only a problem for the first few years of DVD though.

You have no idea. I watch a lot of Asian films and it's incredible how many of them have official (not fan made) DVDs with appallingly poor subtitles. In fact, I'd say well translated Asian films are in the minority. It fascinates me that Asian studios (which have quite a lot of money to spend) cannot find one lousy translator in the whole of China/Korea/Japan/whatever with a fucking degree in English. I've yet to see such a thing happen with European films.

There was a U.K DVD label called Tartan that specialised in foreign cinema especially Asian films and most of their first batch of releases were then re-released due to bad subs and a lot of prints being very bad ports.

I should imagine it's difficult to catch all the nuances of of their language and translate it into readable subs as characters are speaking less formal and therefore have their own mannerisms and colloquialisms that are harder to translate, whereas European cinema does share a little in common in the way it's spoken if that makes any sense. Probably doesn't actually!

Translating's a bitch, sure, and it goes without saying that a lot of things are untranslatable, but I'd settle for decent grammar. That kind of thing can really ruin a film. It took me a while to find a properly translated (well, decent anyway, by Tartan actually) of Joint Security Area, and that was a massive blockbuster (and a very good film).

I know you hated it but it took 3 efforts to get Battle Royale in decent shape. Never seen JSA but heard a lot about it but was actually put off by knowing that the subs were notoriously bad. Hanekes Funny Games had 2 releases though due to bad authoring, Tartan took a long time to get their act together.