Squid Game Lost in Translation?

Everyone’s talking about it -- Squid Game, Netflix’s hit Korean drama tv show that’s been ranked No. 1 in 90 countries. For the non-Korean speaking viewers, closed captioning is available in 31 languages, but the English subtitles has recently sparked some controversy on whether the dialogue is accurately translated. 

Squid Game is a survival drama show that puts a deadly twist on children’s games such as red light, green light and tug of war. The show’s narrative sheds a harsh spotlight on classism and the extreme lengths people will go for money. With that being said, some Korean speaking folks fear that the show’s message has been lost in translation.

Many bilingual Korean speakers have taken their frustrations to social media and provided their own takes on the closed captioning. 

As described in a recent NBC 5 Chicago article, Youngmi Mayer, a comedian and co-host of the podcast Feeling Asian, is fluent in Korean and has vocalized her opinions on Twitter and TikTok.

Mayer tweeted, “If you don’t understand Korean, you didn’t really watch the same show,” she wrote. Mayer dives deeper in a TikTok and shares a clip of Han Mi-nyeo, a lower-class character in the show who Mayer feels is misrepresented in the English dialogue.

“The captions here say, ‘I’m not a genius, but I still got it to work out,’ but Mi-nyeo actually said, ‘I am very smart, I just never got a chance to study,’” Mayer said. “That is a huge trope in Korean media – the poor person that’s smart and clever, and just isn’t wealthy. It seems so small, but it’s the entire character’s purpose of being in the show.” 

Not all Korean-language speakers agree with Mayer’s translation, but many people do find that the show’s intended ideology has been lost through closed captioning.