Translators battle bad subtitles that lead to poor perception of Hong Kong films

Sometimes subtitles for a movie can turn out so spectacularly wrong - English speaking fans of 1980s and '90s Hong Kong cinema surely can name a dozen - it results in not just embarrassment for those involved with the film (not to mention memes), but makes the film hard to understand for the audience.

"The quality of subtitles absolutely affects how a movie is received, especially if you're taking it to an international film festival," says Kenneth Ip Kin-hang, chair of the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts' School of Film and Television.

Ip, better known as Shu Kei, is a veteran in the industry. He has written, directed and produced a number of films, and worked as a freelance subtitle writer, film distributor and critic.

Ip still vividly recalls filmmaker John Shum Kin-fun's account of watching Derek Yee Tung-sing's People's Hero - which Shum produced - at the Toronto International Film Festival in 1988 with an audience comprised of mostly non-Chinese speakers.

Midway through Yee's crime drama - which has been described as the Hong Kong equivalent of Sidney Lumet's 1975 classic Dog Day Afternoon - Shum was shocked to see the subtitle "I need Aids!" on screen for a line of dialogue that was more in line with a cry for help.

"Everyone in the audience laughed," Ip recalls Shum as saying. "But the scene was supposed to be a tense moment."