Squid Game Subtitles – What Netflix did wrong

If you haven’t been living under a rock and have a good idea of what Netflix is, you’ve probably heard of the Korean series, Squid Game. The show is one of the streaming platform’s most popular and record-breaking series of the year. The show is being talked about everywhere and has fans geared for season two already.
The show is so popular that a South Korean internet service provider has already sued Netflix over the popularity and surge in traffic it has gained! Another controversy following the show is regarding its English subtitles.

This one got me early on in my watch cuz it’s his mother going “you don’t need to buy me anything just take care of yourself” but they changed it to…this https://t.co/u4HBAC0sLp

— Andrew Minghee Kim (@akimillustrates) September 30, 2021

TikTok user Youngmi Mayer has claimed on her account that the dialogues of the show were written so well, but Netflix’s subtitles are so bad that they’ve lost the original meaning.

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. translation was so bad. the dialogue was written so well and zero of it was preserved

— youngmi mayer (@ymmayer) September 30, 2021

She goes on to say that in one instance, Mi-Nyeo’s character is convincing people to play a game with her, with the subtitles reading, “I’m not a genius, but I still got it worked out.” But the dialogue actually says. “I am very smart, I just never got a chance to study.”
This goes on, to the point that, according to Mayer, everything has been botched translation wise and that’s because translation work isn’t respected, and the sheer volume of content with tough deadlines makes it hard for translators to create the right content.

ok i made this really fast so it’s not very good but these are the small examples i could find in ten mins pic.twitter.com/5kIsrlWDjq

— youngmi mayer (@ymmayer) September 30, 2021

Her tweets have got us thinking, have we really watched Squid Game or is there something we’ve missed? I’d definitely want to re-watch it to catch anything I’ve missed. Or are we actually living in the Squid Game universe and it’s the creators of the game who don’t want us to catch the real action?
Just kidding. Watch the show to know for yourself why it’s so great. And remember to switch to the right subtitle track to get the best of it.