The Wall Street Journal published an excellent piece by Anthony Paletta about the importance of professional subtitling, notably the need to distinguish between “proper” subtitling and the many amateur, free alternatives out there.

I have to say that I never thought I would read something as gorgeous as the paragraph below in the press:

And much as our increasingly Web-based culture has blurred the line between amateur and professional journalism, often eroding newsgathering standards in the process, an expansion of crowd-sourced translation risks obscuring the essential—but already underappreciated—distinction between subtitling a movie and translating its words.

The truth is that not many translators are aware of this essential distinction, and Anthony Paletta deserves a round of applause for pointing it out. Continue reading →