The second season of Squid Game was released on December 26, 2024, and garnered 68 million views in its first week, the fastest series to do so in Netflix history.
However, as Season 2 emerged, so did the heavy criticism of the show’s English translations for both dubs (voiceovers in a different language than the original) and subs (subtitles), a complaint that has existed since the first season’s release in 2021. This disapproval truly took off in a 2021 Tiktok post by Youngmi Mayer, a comedian and co-host of the podcast Feeling Asian: as a fluent Korean speaker, she questioned the “botched” subtitles that changed the show’s meaning for English-speaking viewers (and losing cultural context in the process).
For instance, Mayer pointed out that in the very first episode of Season 1, the precise title translation is “The day that the mugunghwa flower blossomed”, which is a Korean childhood game named after South Korea’s national flower. However, its English translation is “Red Light, Green Light”, a phrase more familiar to Western audiences.
Mayer also discusses certain subtitled scenes, such as when a character tried to convince others to play the game with her, with the closed-caption subtitles reading, “I’m not a genius, but I still got it worked out.” However, Mayer more accurately translates the line as “I am very smart, I just never got a chance to study”; Mayer’s translation alludes to the wealth disparity in Korean society, a common trope in Korean media that foreign audiences may not recognize with the original subtitles.
The consensus among most people is that subs are preferable to dubs when watching a series in a foreign language. Hearing the original language while reading its translation into your native language allows audiences to receive the most raw, authentic version. Minor nuances—tone shifts, accents, and pacing—are difficult to replicate in any dubbed language and can detract from the viewing experience. However, the primary issue with subs is that Netflix sets precise restrictions: Two lines (i.e., 42 characters) are permitted per subtitle, and each sub can only stay on-screen for up to seven seconds. Therefore, translators must shorten subtitles and minimize its screen space to align with the character’s speech and ensure readability, even at the expense of accuracy. There’s no room to explain any cultural references, so even if the primary message is generally conveyed, workarounds can never truly be faithful to the original.
This issue is exacerbated even further through dubs. As stated previously, minor nuances such as tone shifts, accents, and pacing are very hard to duplicate. In Season 1, as a defector, Kang Sae-byeok has a North Korean accent but hides it around South Koreans, an important social subtlety that’s lost in dubbing. Furthermore, regardless of complaints from viewers, the vocabulary and phrasing used in dubs will inherently differ from the original. Voice actors must say lines that convey a similar meaning as the original dialogue in the same amount of time; aside from the Korean alphabet’s unique mouth movements, the language’s grammar structure raises the difficulty even further. While English follows the “subject-object-verb” structure (ex: “I drove the car”), Korean follows the “subject-verb-object” structure (ex: “I car drove”). Apply these differences to entire monologues, and it’s easy to imagine the difficulty in finding appropriate translations.
With this in mind, it can be argued that translations for television can’t ever achieve total “accuracy”. Nonetheless, that doesn’t mean that high-quality translations are impossible, or that one should be discouraged from consuming foreign media. Translators often work overburdened schedules in a fast-paced industry, yet are still able to provide viewers with reliable translations that make media accessible for everyone. So, although one may encounter simplified or adjusted translations in a piece of foreign media, remember that it’s a privilege to experience such a wide variety of content.
As Parasite director Bong Joon-Ho stated, “once you overcome the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films.”