Huh. I just went back to Alchemy episodes 1 and 2 to revisit Wook’s and Mu-deok’s first few encounters, and the Netflix subtitles have changed. A lot. I’m sure of it because there are several lines I and others quoted in the comments and those are translated differently now. Example: “May you greet your deaths as beautifully as your names” is now “Wherever Naksu may go, you will all be defeated … beautifully, just like your name.”

They also added parenthetical subs to indicate non-verbal sounds like sighing or doors closing (which I find distracting and unnecessary). I’ve noticed Netflix making tweaks to subs in the past, but this seems more extensive. I didn’t check whether they’ve done this for subsequent episodes – I’m obsessive, but not that obsessive – but it might make eventual pre-Season-2 rewatching more interesting.



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    Is it the closed caption version you are reading now where they add the non verbals for the deaf watchers?

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      Aha! That’s correct. Switching back to non-CC English gets rid of the non-verbals and seems to be the translation I first saw. I’m totally baffled why there would be completely distinct translations of the dialogue, though.

      It looks like English+CC is only available through ep. 4. I’m not sure it’s worth watching the CC version to get an alternate take on the often-crappy subtitles but having to put up with the distracting parentheticals. In the bits I’ve watched, the CC translations seem more complete.

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        CC are for dubs. Dubs have different wording in order to match up better with mouths. English CC for non-English shows are inherently less accurate because of this.

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          Thank you that makes sense in this context usually cc are part of the accessibility suite for disability purposes.

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          Thanks, that makes sense generally – but there is no English dub for Alchemy, at least not yet or not in my region (US). I did a quick flip though a random dozen Korean shows on Netflix; only one of them (Business Proposal) has English dubbing. It also has English CC. A couple of others have English CC but most have neither. I mean, I don’t expect consistency from Netflix and it was definitely not a large enough sample to draw conclusions – so I’m still puzzled!

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