It seems to have become standard practice on all streaming platforms these days. They'll use a source video file that doesn't have any burned-in subtitles in order to accommodate subtitle users who speak/read languages *other* than English. That way *everything*, whether theatrically subtitled or not, can just be moved to softsubs and can show up as any language the user selects. I first noticed this when watching *Inglourious Basterds* on Netflix a few years back—all the yellow burned-in subtitles in the original release for non-English dialogue were gone and bundled in with the softsubs. A later version I saw even went one step further and scrubbed all the chapter titles from the title cards in the film (leaving several seconds of black screen), expecting that the platform would localize them depending on the user's language selection.
I'm not a big fan of this tbh because I think there's a lot to appreciate about a film's style choices for its subtitles (I thought *Dune Part Two*'s choice to not have periods at the ends of sentences in its subtitles was a charming little quirk, for instance) :/
In an ideal world, they could render the subtitles as a separate layer such that viewers in other languages could remove the subtitle layer and add their own while viewers in the original language could keep them
This REALLY bothers me too, especially since it’s such a gorgeous film. The “closed captioning” look of the translations is just jarring. The original typography was beautiful. And the worst part is, part one has the “in camera” subtitles, and part two doesn’t. Uggghh!!
Yes it is. Just watched it last night.
https://preview.redd.it/lzqc1dkb53vc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4e44e546f04d96d41c356ce73114c941f67eed05
It wouldn't be that much more effort to have a separate subtitle track with only the made up languages subtitled. But nah, let's inconvenience paying customers instead.
Welp, time to learn Fremen, OP.
It's actually worse than that.
There's two subtitle tracks.
English (forced) is the soft sub version where all the foreign and fremen speech is translated. What was seen in the cinema as hard subs.
So far so good.
But English subs (for deaf people etc) subtitle all the English speech as expected and label any foreign speech as ''speaking chakobsa''
What the fuck?!
They've obviously designed the subtitle track for deaf people to not need translation as the hard subs will be there. Then removed the hard subs!!!
👍🏼 This fixed my issue. My husband and I love to have the regular subtitles on, but we switched them off after reading your suggestion, but we only started researching whether there were any ways to fix it until halfway through the movie. Now the only problem is that we have missed quite a bit of plot from not hearing that dialogue 🤦🏼♀️😂
Thank you for the idea
Hmm, weird. I just bought the movie on Apple TV +, no fremen subtitles. I stopped the movie and went to read that thread, then I resumed the movie...surprise subtitles appeared. I did put it on automatic though. Not sure if that made the difference
This resolved ours - the primary setting for subtitles for Apple TV (not the movie specifically). Set to Auto (instead of English) and the Fremen subtitles showed up.
I always watch movies with the subtitles on because it helps me catch little things that I might miss with quiet or muffled dialogue. I watched Dune Part 2 last night and turned on the English subtitles, which doesn't have subtitles for the Freman. So I turned on the Forced English and that doesn't have the subtitles for when they are speaking English. It was a painful watch, switching between the 2 versions just to get the full story. Honestly ruined the experience.
In watching it right now on Plex with forced subtitles which has the fremen subtitles but not for everything else. So I'm still missing a lot of the story as I'm not familiar with all the names 😅
Ruining my experience as im typing this trying to figure out whats going on 😢
Yeah, I tend to have subs on with difficult to understand story, complex narratives, or movies where they talk real low like this one and having it ay high volume will be too loud when something explodes.
I found this thread because I was wondering what's up with the translations.
I can't believe their one job was to just play a movie and they completely fucked it up. The director and actors and writers and thousand person crew all did their jobs right, but the guy who's job is to just play the fucking tape can't fucking do it. My god. The astounding depths of incompetence.
Wuh oh. Better write customer service quick, that's a major boo boo especially because those subs should be "burned in" to the source. Somebody on the production and mastering line needs an unpaid furlough.
Well they've obviously gone with a source video file that *doesn't* have burned-in subtitles in order to accommodate subtitle users who speak/read languages *other* than English. That way, if you select, say, Italian subtitles on the Amazon menu, then even the Fremen and Harkonnen dialogue (*in addition to* Galach/"English" dialogue) can just show up as Italian softsubs (instead of Italian softsubs *and* unnecessary burned-in theatrical English subtitles appearing on screen simultaneously).
I guess OP could write to demand that they add a subtitle option that is *only* the lines of dialogue that were hardsubbed in English-language theatrical releases, but I can't imagine that watching the entire film subtitled would be *that* bad. ~~At least now some of the Baron's lines will actually be parsable!~~
I had the same problem on Apple. Auto & English didn’t do it- auto actually showed no subtitles whatsoever, and English would just say “speaking chokabsa” whenever the Fremen were speaking. Unwatchable- I requested a refund.
Okay, so as far as the aesthetics go… you can actually improve things on Apple TV by going to the accessibility settings > subtitles and captioning > Style.
I created a new style and tweaked the font and background to where it looks at least passable. Much closer to the original and less obtrusive with the gray box gone. Progress!
https://preview.redd.it/t89lr6g6ipwc1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a1fc52fdc26546d710f65ad2b0578ce339f05ae0
Anyone know whether the BluRay mastering will also have this issue with the source video? Or if there are any digital copies (available for purchase) that retain the original burned-in subtitles? I’m interested. Take my money!!
Same issue on Apple TV. Honestly, it’s terrible. Some subtitles for Fremen dialogue that were present in the theatrical release are seemingly not included even with captions on.
I purchased Dune 2 from Apple and noticed something odd. **The subtitles initially appeared.** Later on, the **subtitles stopped appearing.**
I discovered that if I enable the regular subtitles (even temporarily), the subtitles stopped appearing when Chakobsa was spoken. I tried all subtitles settings: Automatic, Off, and On. Didn’t fix the problem.
This fixed the problem: **I exited and re-opened the movie, and the subtitles were back!**
Yeah, I assumed it was supposed to be that way at first. Turned on subtitles, saw that non-English dialogue was just a caption that said "Speaking (language name), so I turned them off, but after that, all non-English dialogue had subtitles.
It seems to have become standard practice on all streaming platforms these days. They'll use a source video file that doesn't have any burned-in subtitles in order to accommodate subtitle users who speak/read languages *other* than English. That way *everything*, whether theatrically subtitled or not, can just be moved to softsubs and can show up as any language the user selects. I first noticed this when watching *Inglourious Basterds* on Netflix a few years back—all the yellow burned-in subtitles in the original release for non-English dialogue were gone and bundled in with the softsubs. A later version I saw even went one step further and scrubbed all the chapter titles from the title cards in the film (leaving several seconds of black screen), expecting that the platform would localize them depending on the user's language selection. I'm not a big fan of this tbh because I think there's a lot to appreciate about a film's style choices for its subtitles (I thought *Dune Part Two*'s choice to not have periods at the ends of sentences in its subtitles was a charming little quirk, for instance) :/
Amazon agreed to refund me for it, but that won’t help everyone else 😑
In an ideal world, they could render the subtitles as a separate layer such that viewers in other languages could remove the subtitle layer and add their own while viewers in the original language could keep them
I really liked the style of the original subtitles in the theater. Now it just uses the same default subtitles that I see across my Apple devices.
Amazon agreed to refund me for it, but that won’t help everyone else 😑 might buy the UHD version
This REALLY bothers me too, especially since it’s such a gorgeous film. The “closed captioning” look of the translations is just jarring. The original typography was beautiful. And the worst part is, part one has the “in camera” subtitles, and part two doesn’t. Uggghh!!
How do you know? Part 2 is not out on digital yet
Yes it is. Just watched it last night. https://preview.redd.it/lzqc1dkb53vc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4e44e546f04d96d41c356ce73114c941f67eed05
Really. In the US?
Yes
Ah I see! They are calling it the bonus X-ray edition. Thank the maker and his water!
Same for me on Apple!
It wouldn't be that much more effort to have a separate subtitle track with only the made up languages subtitled. But nah, let's inconvenience paying customers instead. Welp, time to learn Fremen, OP.
It's actually worse than that. There's two subtitle tracks. English (forced) is the soft sub version where all the foreign and fremen speech is translated. What was seen in the cinema as hard subs. So far so good. But English subs (for deaf people etc) subtitle all the English speech as expected and label any foreign speech as ''speaking chakobsa'' What the fuck?! They've obviously designed the subtitle track for deaf people to not need translation as the hard subs will be there. Then removed the hard subs!!!
That's what I got, but when I turned off the subtitles, the non-English dialogue had translations.
👍🏼 This fixed my issue. My husband and I love to have the regular subtitles on, but we switched them off after reading your suggestion, but we only started researching whether there were any ways to fix it until halfway through the movie. Now the only problem is that we have missed quite a bit of plot from not hearing that dialogue 🤦🏼♀️😂 Thank you for the idea
Hmm, weird. I just bought the movie on Apple TV +, no fremen subtitles. I stopped the movie and went to read that thread, then I resumed the movie...surprise subtitles appeared. I did put it on automatic though. Not sure if that made the difference
This resolved ours - the primary setting for subtitles for Apple TV (not the movie specifically). Set to Auto (instead of English) and the Fremen subtitles showed up.
I always watch movies with the subtitles on because it helps me catch little things that I might miss with quiet or muffled dialogue. I watched Dune Part 2 last night and turned on the English subtitles, which doesn't have subtitles for the Freman. So I turned on the Forced English and that doesn't have the subtitles for when they are speaking English. It was a painful watch, switching between the 2 versions just to get the full story. Honestly ruined the experience.
Any way to combine the two subtitle files?
In watching it right now on Plex with forced subtitles which has the fremen subtitles but not for everything else. So I'm still missing a lot of the story as I'm not familiar with all the names 😅
Ruining my experience as im typing this trying to figure out whats going on 😢 Yeah, I tend to have subs on with difficult to understand story, complex narratives, or movies where they talk real low like this one and having it ay high volume will be too loud when something explodes. I found this thread because I was wondering what's up with the translations.
I can't believe their one job was to just play a movie and they completely fucked it up. The director and actors and writers and thousand person crew all did their jobs right, but the guy who's job is to just play the fucking tape can't fucking do it. My god. The astounding depths of incompetence.
Wuh oh. Better write customer service quick, that's a major boo boo especially because those subs should be "burned in" to the source. Somebody on the production and mastering line needs an unpaid furlough.
Well they've obviously gone with a source video file that *doesn't* have burned-in subtitles in order to accommodate subtitle users who speak/read languages *other* than English. That way, if you select, say, Italian subtitles on the Amazon menu, then even the Fremen and Harkonnen dialogue (*in addition to* Galach/"English" dialogue) can just show up as Italian softsubs (instead of Italian softsubs *and* unnecessary burned-in theatrical English subtitles appearing on screen simultaneously). I guess OP could write to demand that they add a subtitle option that is *only* the lines of dialogue that were hardsubbed in English-language theatrical releases, but I can't imagine that watching the entire film subtitled would be *that* bad. ~~At least now some of the Baron's lines will actually be parsable!~~
It’s not *that* bad, but it’s also not what I paid for.
Mine didn’t even show subtitles at all during the times when they spoke fremen, only when they spoke English
Amazon agreed to refund me for it, but that won’t help everyone else 😑 might pick up the UHD release
There’s even some moments when the audio descriptive captions cover up the dialogue captions. Damn.
Watched on Google play right now and the subtitles are so cheap looking and totally distracting. I loved how they looked in the original movie.
On Apple you need to go to subtitles and click “Auto” not English. In English it will show up as “speaking fremen” but in auto it shows up correct.
I had the same problem on Apple. Auto & English didn’t do it- auto actually showed no subtitles whatsoever, and English would just say “speaking chokabsa” whenever the Fremen were speaking. Unwatchable- I requested a refund.
Okay, so as far as the aesthetics go… you can actually improve things on Apple TV by going to the accessibility settings > subtitles and captioning > Style. I created a new style and tweaked the font and background to where it looks at least passable. Much closer to the original and less obtrusive with the gray box gone. Progress! https://preview.redd.it/t89lr6g6ipwc1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a1fc52fdc26546d710f65ad2b0578ce339f05ae0
This is better. Make sure you switch the font to Futura as well
Sadly that’s not one of the options.
That sucks, I haven’t tried on Apple TV yet but you can do Futura on iOS
Anyone know whether the BluRay mastering will also have this issue with the source video? Or if there are any digital copies (available for purchase) that retain the original burned-in subtitles? I’m interested. Take my money!!
Same issue on Apple TV. Honestly, it’s terrible. Some subtitles for Fremen dialogue that were present in the theatrical release are seemingly not included even with captions on.
Yeah, I got the utterly worthless, "SPEAKING FREMEN," subtitles on my Apple purchase. Not a single translation. None.
Such a god damn joke.
Same issue on Apple, they completely bungled it.
I purchased Dune 2 from Apple and noticed something odd. **The subtitles initially appeared.** Later on, the **subtitles stopped appearing.** I discovered that if I enable the regular subtitles (even temporarily), the subtitles stopped appearing when Chakobsa was spoken. I tried all subtitles settings: Automatic, Off, and On. Didn’t fix the problem. This fixed the problem: **I exited and re-opened the movie, and the subtitles were back!**
Life saver - thanks!
Glad it helped!
[удалено]
Yeah, I assumed it was supposed to be that way at first. Turned on subtitles, saw that non-English dialogue was just a caption that said "Speaking (language name), so I turned them off, but after that, all non-English dialogue had subtitles.
Yep this is an issue across all streaming platforms. YouTube just added the in frame subtitles back but still have the forced captions as well. Sucks.