Magnolia Continues To Deny Wrong-Doing On LET THE RIGHT ONE IN Subtitles – Memo To Distributor

Magnolia continues to blame the interwebs for the hoopla over their botched subtitling translation for “Let The Right One In” as revealed by a memo sent between Magnolia and Canadian distributor Mongrel Media, as reported by Icons of Fright:

Yes the bloggers are having a field day on this one. Normally they like to pick on the English Dub tracks, but in this case it’s the subtitles. Obviously online tend to get rowdy and bandwagon mentality without knowing all the details. The current subtitle track is not altering the context of the film at all, in fact it’s a more literal translation than any prior version of subtitles. It’s not a defective or faulty subtitle file. Just more literal and larger in size for the small screen. Both English and Spanish subtitle files were produced for this dvd release. Frankly it’s not all that uncommon to have the subs vary from prior releases, typically go unnoticed as subs are purely a translation of film dialogue.

This wouldn’t have been a blip had it not been for one particular horror blog doing a side by side and claiming that they are wrong. They are not. We are not doing a recall or anything of that nature, again, these are not defective. Title came out two weeks ago and general public don’t notice and don’t care – bloggers are well known for jumping on something, making an issue of it and moving on. We have decided that based on the feedback that we will be making a running change, so that going forward (once inventories deplete), we will be making that subtitle version available. Options in set up will be; English Subtitles / English (theatrical) Subtitles / Spanish Subtitles”

Plain and simple: yes, there are lots of problems. It was like they dumbed down the subtitles in the NA release. You can see the side-by-side comparison here.

Even if they start fixing the future versions I’d be nervous about buying any copy. If you get an old copy with the wrong subtitles most stores will not let you exchange or return it since there is no actual recall due to the lack of fault-ownership by Magnolia and Magnet Releasing. I’ve been down this road with Best Buy on new releases to fix old problems never officially recalled. Way to blow it Mag-Mag.