Anyone else have this on DVD and able to comment on what I'm seeing and think is a bug?

I have the Region 1 Buena Vista/Disney release and every time a sign appears in the movie, an English caption with the exact same name apppears over the video. The issue here is that I have turned off Subtitles and Captions. And.... The signs in the movie are already in English! There's absolutely no point in seeing giant yellow subpicture-rendered text proclaiming "HATTER'S" under an animated wooden sign that already reads "Hatter's"

I'd be curious to find out if this happens on the Region 2 release or if anyone out there with Region 1 does not see the problem. I found it annoying as hell while watching the movie. The text is definitely sub-picture and not part of the video/animation track (it doesn't appear when you're scanning through at 8x)

Bruno

As found here

There are actually THREE English-subtitle options for Howl (and the other 2 GHIBLI films released along with it:

1. English Closed Captioning...which includes sound-effects and is more-or-less a translation of the Enlgish audio soundtrack (ie, a word-for-word translation of the the English soundtrack option, not the original Japanese).

2. True English Subtitles. This is more literally a translation of the Japanese language and in many cases differs more noticably from the "English Audio" soundtrack option. Fans and purists should use this option when listening to the original Japanese language to get the most authentic experience.

3. English captions for written signage. This is an unusual option...subtitles only appear sporatically when something in the scene with Japanese wording might have been readable to Japanese audiences (like signs or letters)...and is translated with English subtitles. They only appear a handful of times. Curiously, these subtitles default to "on" and you'll have to cycle through the subtitle menu to shut them off if they become annoying.

I'll have to try the subtitle button on the Toshiba player next time then. There's no interface for it through the DVD's own menus. It would make perfect sense if the signs were in Japanese. But all written text in the movie seems to be in English already.

Bruno

I'll verify that I saw it, too. Definitely stupid and vaguely distracting, but it only happens a couple of times and it's hardly the end of the world.

I wanted to make sure there wasn't a bug that's since been corrected. Using the Subtitle button on the player itself solves the problem, allowing you to cycle to the true "Subtitles Off" option after passing through the 3 English options.

On a sidenote, it's interesting to see the differences between the written translation used in the normal subtitles and the spoken translation used in the dub. For the most part I think the additions to the dub help make the dialog stronger and perhaps even more natural.

Bruno

There was an interesting little making-of on the DVD that was talking about trying to make the voice actors' lines fit the animated characters' mouths. It was reasonably interesting to watch them interactively rewrite stuff in the recording studio to make the lines work with the actors' voices.

I've been using this disc while testing a project I'm working on today. And unfortunately, I've not noticed a few instances where the dub translation changes the color of what was originally said (by using a less striking word for instance). It's not huge, but I think in these instances, I would have prefered the translation be more true to the original.