Watching Squid Game on Netflix? Change this subtitle setting immediately – CNET [CNET]

Safe to say, a lot of people are watching Squid Game. The South Korean survival drama is Netflix’s most successful non-English language show. According to Netflix boss Ted Sarandos, the horror featuring deadly children’s games is on its way to overtaking Bridgerton as Netflix’s biggest show ever.

Here’s the sting. Some viewers have noticed significant differences in the Korean-to-English translations. Depending on your Netflix settings, your English subtitles might lose something in the translation, to the point of being downright “bad” and changing the show’s meaning, according to one viewer.

So what settings should you use? Let’s dive into it all below.

Change this subtitle setting

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Mayer presented a scene breakdown on TikTok to illustrate some of the lost meanings.

In one scene, the character Han Mi-nyeo, a woman who claims to be a poor single mother, tries to convince people to play the game with her. The closed caption translation says, “I’m not a genius, but I still got it work out. Huh?”

Mayer says the correct translation is: “I am very smart. I just never got a chance to study.”

Mayer added, “That is a huge trope in Korean media. The poor person that’s smart and clever and just isn’t wealthy. That’s a huge part of her character. And almost everything she says is being botched, translation-wise… The writers, all they want you to know about her is that… [It] seems so small, but it’s the entire character’s purpose of being in the show.”

‘Wildly different’

Twitter user @ADeVonJohnson provided Netflix’s English subtitles.

“You have to change your Netflix settings to ENGLISH not ENGLISH CC. Here is a screen grab of that scene with ENGLISH. (Screen is black cause they don’t allow grabs but the subtitle comes through).”

Twitter user @MrTimCat found that the closed caption translation matched the English dub.

“I found you got different subtitles depending if you chose English or English Closed Caption (with the latter matching the dubbed dialogue and the former being wildly different).”

Mayer has reportedly since clarified that the English language subtitles are “substantially better” than the closed caption ones.

Although, Mayer added, “The misses in the metaphors – and what the writers were trying to actually say – are still pretty present.”

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