I don’t know how many foreign films you’ve seen — subtitled in English, so that you hear the foreign language and read the dialogue at the same time. I’ve seen a few, and for the most part I’ve been impressed by how well the English subtitles seem to flow. They must have translators who are pretty good at expressing in English what is being said in another language. But sometimes the subtitles seem stilted, using a phrase in a way that’s not quite right. And sometimes the way things get expressed in English can be downright funny — usually because what we read below doesn’t seem to match the action in the scene. It doesn’t seem like the way we would have spoken in such a situation.

Something gets lost in the translation. I’m sure that it wouldn’t seem funny or off if I could understand the…