Netflix's Squid Game has become a global phenomenon, following its September 17 premiere, but one viewer has claimed that the show's English-language subtitles are "botched."
Fluent Korean speaker Youngmi Mayer took to social media last week to highlight some of the subtle distinctions between Netflix's closed-caption subtitles and the direct English-language translations, pointing out how the meaning behind the dialogue is often being lost for viewers who are relying on the on-screen subtitling to follow the story.
"Not to sound snobby but I'm fluent in Korean and I watched Squid Game with English subtitles and if you don't understand Korean you didn't really watch the same show," she wrote on Twitter as part of a thread that included a video showing some examples. "Translation was so bad. The dialogue was written so well and zero of it was preserved."
In the accompanying video, Mayer picked out a handful of scenes to illustrate her point. One segment of the video featured Kim Joo-Ryoung's character Han Mi-nyeo who is quoted in Netflix's close captions as saying, "I'm not a genius, but I can work it out," yet Mayer says the direct translation is actually: "I am very smart – I just never got a chance to study."
However, GamesRadar notes that the "English [CC]" subtitling option on Netflix derives from the dubbed version of the series, so if you switch that setting from "English [CC]" to "English," you will get a much more accurate reading, as the translation of that sentence then becomes: "I never bothered to study, but I'm unbelievably smart."
Squid Game is on track to become Netflix's biggest show ever — if early viewership figures hold out. So if you happen to be coming into the series with fresh eyes, you might want to consider watching the episodes with the proper "English" subtitles turned on to ensure that you don't lose the nuances of Hwang Dong-hyuk's script.
Squid Game is a nine-episode South Korean survival drama where hundreds of cash-strapped players accept a strange invitation to gather on a remote island and compete in a series of deadly children's games for the chance to win a big cash prize and escape poverty — with deadly high stakes. The full first season is available to watch now on Netflix.
IGN awarded Squid Game a 9 out of 10, calling it "one of the most exciting series to hit Netflix in some time." We praised the way it unravels the story to deliver "a white-knuckle thriller, drama, and episodic psychological breakdown with a sickly pastel veneer," which is "equal parts gut-wrenching and squirm-inducing" for both the players and the audience.
Adele Ankers is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.