I’m mainly talking about watching a TV show or movie that’s originally in English enabling subtitles that’s either in Spanish, German, Russian, Finnish, etc. and can mistakes in translation still occur? I recall watching Lie to Me with Japanese subtitles during a scene involving an interrogation but a key word within the dialog was not translated correctly based on context.
For example, the protagonist said “You’re an accessory for murder” towards the suspect but subtitles used the wrong word choice 小物 (which means “accessories” as in small goods, i.e. stationery or trinkets) when the intended meaning for “accessory” from that context leans more on being a conspirator (共犯者 or 共謀) of a crime (like as in aiding the criminal).
When you watch a movie in public with native audio and subtitles and you speak or understand the audio language, you’ll often hear scattered laughter before the main audience laughs because often the subtitles have a delay for the punchline of a joke, which means that those who already heard the joke laughed at the moment it happened, not a second or more later when the subtitles arrive.
Most of the time the subtitles match the audio, sometimes they change a cultural reference, or infrequently completely get the translation wrong for no apparent reason which can become a new accedental joke all on its own. Then there’s weird ones where numbers like someone’s age or the time are wrong.
Source: I speak multiple human languages to various degree … and way too many technology ones. I’m also going deaf, so I have closed captioning on most of the time.
i usually see subtitles be too early and ruining the joke