I just started watching "Belle De Jour", Luis Bunuel's great 1967 movie about a bored housewife (Catherine Deneuve) who takes to a whorehouse to amuse herself.
I started watching in French, reading the English subtitles then decided to switch over to the English soundtrack. I accidentally left the subtitles on.
It's interesting, seeing the differences between the written translation and the spoken one. Granted, some dubbing requires a little jiggering in the translation to match the actors' mouth movements, but here the differences are much less explainable.
One character asks "What time is it?" And his wife answers "Five o'clock." The subtitle reads "Six o'clock."
Shortly after that the man says he has a weakness for horse racing, and the subtitles says "hunting."
These are not examples of untranslatable words or concepts, or cultural differences. These call into question the very accuracy of both translations!
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