The Caption Cafe

''Fancy an Umlaut with that caption? ''

Hog once shared his night-time subtitling woes in the Foil Arms & Hog Instagram Stories. He was adding subtitles to the full SkiddlyWup show at that time, where the sketch "Greüne" (spelling debatable) apparently caused his software to crash. Arms stepped in first, closely followed by Foil where they got it sorted in the end... sort of. Oh well, at least he's got a goblet!



How to add captions
For the older videos the lads have open a FA&H Community Created Subtitles on Drive so you can send them the translation in a .srt format... which means, you need to download an app to make the subtitles. There are so many free apps you can download, you can choose one and follow the instructions (some apps have instructions in several language or have tutorials in different languages). We can give you some general guidelines - if you cannot find them here, we suggest you to find them in your own language as something can change from one language to another (like the number of CPL, Character per line, for instance): General (in English) - Français - Español - Italiano. If you want to help us finding these guidelines, please let us know in the comments-

What about the weekly new videos? After YouTube decided, in 2020, to remove the Community Captions feature - where everyone could add subtitles in their own language to other people's videos - things has changed a little. YouTube provided a six months - probably prolonged - free subscription to the website subtitling service Amara for the YouTubers. Anyone can have a free account and contribute to FAH latest video, so here's a very useful guide (a 5 minutes video, in English) on how to add subtitles through this website. Anyway, this could also change in the future, as Foil and the gang have let FAHns know on their YouTube channel: EDIT: in January 2021 the "Trusted Captioner" feature has been added.

How to deal with Irish slang
FAH's videos are full of "Irishsisms" (and we love them all), but how can you be sure to translate them properly? A useful tool is this Irish Slang Info (from Irish slang to English). Or, if you want, in our Lingo Hall we have a brief list of Irish Slang used in FAH videos.

Now you can start translating subtitles in your own language and let the World enjoy FAH humour.

If you provide captions for the Foil Arms & Hog channel OR if you don't watch sketches without them, please feel free to add any experiences for your language in the subsections below!

FAHns add Captions
How do you go about translating jokes, let alone the multitude of wordplay puns, in Foil Arms & Hog sketches, into a different language? '''Share your Subtitling Tales here! '''

German
Translating captions is always a fun experience full of surprises. I (=Christine) have been looking forward to Thursdays not only because of Foil Arms and Hog’s new sketches but also because of their captions waiting to be translated. New week, new challenge!

In the process of looking up which words and phrases fit best - without overloading the bottom of the video screen with an unnecessary amount of letters and thus overwhelming the viewer – you learn a lot of new things. Some things are a bit tricky to translate from a linguistic perspective while others might be a bit difficult to translate whenever German viewers are not familiar with the cultural context and background of a certain subject displayed in the video.

When I’m translating a video with puns or wordplay, I generally make sure to put in all of the possible meanings into the caption. One of these translated meanings will be put in brackets or both of them will be divided by a slash, depending on the context.

In the following, I compiled a list of frequently appearing challenges and unique differences that have caught my eye:
 * “The scandal? The craic? The scéal?”. These words kind of have the same meaning, but they also need three separate words in the translated caps in order to get the same message across as the original text.  (I chose the following: “Der Skandal? Was ist los? Die Neuigkeiten?”)


 * “Sound”. This one has two meanings, both of which are relevant to the sketch. One of them is referring to noise and one of them means “great”. I translated it as “In Ordnung. [Geräusch].” This way, both meanings are visible to the viewer, so they can follow all the jokes in the sketch.


 * Unknown words and abbreviations like “GAA” call for a short explanation or literal translation.


 * Names of e.g. TV shows that don’t have a German equivalent like “Songs of Praise” won’t be translated, if they don’t add to the context. I just type in the original names and leave them as they are.


 * “Oi!” or „Oi, Oi, Oi!” won’t be changed, since there’s no German equivalent of this exclamation.


 * „Pastor“ or “minister” as a form of address isn’t always common in Germany. Therefore, it might seem a bit unnatural. Sometimes it’s important though to add it to the translations, because they’re an indicator for the profession of a character.


 * „You“ can be translated in several ways, depending on whether you need address someone in a familiar or in a formal way, and depending on if it’s singular or plural (familiar: du/dich/dir/ihr/euch and formal: Sie/Ihnen).


 * “In the press”. I translated this as “im Regal [bei der Presse]”. The first translation refers to the actual response of the Irish character in the way it was supposed to be brought across, while the second translation in square brackets refers to the way it was understood by the foreign character.


 * “To be after” is an Irish expression of the past tense of “to be”. Example: “I’m after spending 135 Euro on you”. 


 * Words and phrases like “good man yourself”, “sure look it!”, “you know”, “fair play”, “well”, “oh” and many more, often don’t have a German equivalent since small talk and friendly phrases are not that common in Germany. In some cases, direct translations do exist, but those often don’t sound natural, especially if they’re being overused.


 * Also, adding words without specific meanings to the end of sentences like “now”, “there” or “like” add a certain friendly charm to English phrases, which might be a bit difficult to bring across in the German language. In some cases, it's best if they're being omitted.


 * “Ye” will get the same translation as “you” – Sadly, the Irish charm gets a bit lost in translation here.


 * Sometimes, Foil Arms and Hog will use several accents in a sketch. In their video “Regional Accent Discrimination”, accents play a big role, particularly when it comes to stereotypes. In order to be able to distinguish those characters and their respective accent, I added the name of their accent in front of what they are saying.  E.g. “[West Country Akzent: (…)].

Thank you to all the wonderful people in this community who have been helping me with any questions at all times :)
 * There is no exact translation and no German equivalent of the word “lad”. Depending on the situation, the most fitting translations are probably “Kumpel” or “Kerl”. Since lad culture isn’t comparable to anything else, I just write the English word “lad” and go with that. The literal translation stands in brackets the first time it appears on-screen, so everybody can get an understanding of what “lad” means and continue with this knowledge.

Italian
Translating “How to speak Dublin” (or “How a Dubliner became a Roman")

“How To Speak Dublin” is the video that I have enjoyed translating, but still, the one that gives me so many doubts. It is such a good sketch that “not doing the right thing” worried me a lot. Since the sketch evolves around learning a “lingo” specific to a city and the teacher's way of pronouncing words is part of the lesson, I had some thinking on how to transfer that into my own language. There were so many questions on how I could convey everything and this lead me to the decision of using a different process: localisation (I had to ask to my friend Eleonora, a translator, for advice, and she told me what this process is called).

I had to find the perfect area for a Dubliner...in Italy. Then, an idea: Roma! In Rome, they use mostly Italian words with a very specific accent that could be recognised also in its written form, and it could be recognized by many Italians as there have been tons of films set in The Eternal City;  Rome is a capital like Dublin; Romans are quite famous for how creative their insults can be (just like those used in this sketch). I've left those parts that could be left more or less as they were (name changing, pronouns – there are still doubts about that part, though). I've searched for Roman insults with the word “head”, as the direct translation of the Irish ones were not working (discovering, in the process, the world of Roman Insults Dictionaries Online and having a good time reading them) – I'm still not sure on the “level of rudeness” of the Irish insults... therefore, I'm not sure I've used the same level for the Roman/Italian insult. For the “right pronunciation” part of the lesson, I've used a sentence that has the same meaning - but it's not a literal translation - and only changed some parts (manco pè/nemmeno per).

Just to be sure that anyone could understand that Roman type of language, I have asked my book club on Facebook (about 30 people from all around the country) to read the subtitles – and they could all understand them. So, this was the mess I put myself into for this specific translation. I haven't used the localisation for other sketches where the characters have a very strong accent, but this was a very special case.

Other sketches that I adore but are very difficult to translate...well, all the Word Play Sketches, as many jokes have to be “explained” for a non-English speaking audience. Probably translating Umm 1 and 2 will be the worst, for all the acronyms used... a true nightmare I'm not ready for, yet.

Thanks to Laura for having corrected my castronerie in English

TIP: to translate "be after doing something" read this article about the Irish "immediate perfect".

Dutch
Although most Dutch people speak English really well, subtitles can still be helpful for those who don't speak it or to aid in understanding what they say.

For me [Ilona; added 45+ subtitles] the subtitle adding started because I really wanted to show my mom some video's (laughing at my phone, getting asked why... and then trying to explain why or translate on the fly was just not working...). Some parts went really easy and fast, but there were several parts that turned out rather difficult. Translating a joke is sometimes like explaining a joke (in other words: not fully nor funny). However, when thinking about it, a lot of things can be translated to other sayings/jokes/puns/slang. Other "issues" that appear can be as "simple" as not knowing a brand of cookies. Researching these things helped me also slightly in understanding some little things providing extra appreciation of the sketch. This meant getting to know a bit more of the Irish culture. In a few cases the automatic translation is almost too funny to correct, so checking out the automatic translation before adding your own adds to the fun of making them [example: the Cavalier Kings Charles became (translated back again) Arrogant King Charles].

So far I have not added subs for any of the ("pure") wordplay sketches. They are tough, as you can't just translate the words, obviously. I noticed you actually can come quite far (sometimes words are 'equal' or a saying exists that means the same or is different but still fits the sketch), but as long as I can't get the full sketch to work....it's not going up. It's all or nothing for me :)

My comment to FAH [@YouTube] about not adding subs for those seems to agree with that... or is it a challenge...??



Another challenge was the speed of the sketches. If you translate everything, there is no time to read it all (mom spent the time just reading subtitles and didn't see a thing of what was actually occurring on-screen). Therefore I've also made some attempts at making the subtitles easier to read. For example: put more text on the screen at once & leaving that on a bit longer (makes reading more fluent), leave small parts out (nothing relevant to the sketch; things like "translation" of background noises or very obvious things) or change the outlining on the screen a little.

Danish
Translating sketches can sometimes be difficult, but it’s also great fun. These are some of the struggles and funny moments I have come across when translating FAH-videos:

Wordplay sketches can be tough to translate, mostly because you end up having to translate both meanings of the pun. Sometimes the Danish translation actually has the same double meaning as in English. E.g. “I’m a medium” from Word Play Clothes is both a size and something a person can be - just like in English.

Even though some might find it odd that wordplay sketches are being translated, I think, that if my translations of both meanings of the pun can help another Dane understand and laugh at the sketch, then it’s all worth it.

Simple words such as please, you and well (when it’s used at the start of a sentence) can actually be very difficult to translate. Please is difficult to translate because we don’t really have a word for it in Danish. Most often we use “would you be so kind” or “thank you”, so I have to figure out which of those two would be the right match in the sentence.

You is difficult to translate because you can mean a specific person, a specific group of people, or it can be used to describe people in general. Those three meanings all have different words in Danish, so often I have to figure out which one is meant.

Lastly, well is difficult to translate because it’s just something you say, it doesn’t really mean anything in this context. In Danish, we don’t have a direct translation of this, but we do have some words that can be used instead, they are: “nå”, “tja” and “men”. They are all translated into well in English, but I don’t feel any of these are a perfect match for well, since the three Danish words have different meanings, yet are not diverse enough to be translated into different words in English.

Slovenian
Did you know that our language is called Slovene actually? (=IceCranberry) Well, both is correct though. Starting to translate the lads actually came out of a dare....to myself. I just wanted to see if I can do it! Now I can't imagine not translating these guys (it also gives me an excuse to watch it again and again) in my own language.

Few things I find difficult to translate though. There is no Slovene word for merchandise, chaser and so on. (Life hacks especially!) I leave those words be (usually in quotes) and because Slovenes usually CAN understand English, I thought why bother to find a word that doesn't exist in my language actually. Merchandise I do translate to 'izdelki' when it makes sense to me but that sounds like they are selling groceries to me...which they don't. 'Roba' could be another word too but that is usually associated with drug dealers (which again, not them, haha).

The sketch I am the most proud of my translations gotta be LOST FOOTAGE PROVES Irish Farmer wrote famous pop hits because even though I usually don't do their music or pun videos, it made a fun challenge to make and I even managed to make some words rhyme in Slovene! (It also took ages, lol) I also love to make up words when they do.

The only people I think about when roughly translating this is older people like my father (who this was originally intended for!). I did show this to my friend (well, told her not to look at it but she did out of curiousity...it was her introduction to the lads too) and I think without her encouragment I would never actually continue on doing this. Now two months later I am already a part of FAH Official Subtitling Legends which I am very flattered to be a part of. Thank you Foil!



FAHns read Captions
Many FAHns have a habit of switching on captions at times. The FAHn-written foreign language translations are very popular among the international FAHnbase, but it's also a lot of fun to read along with the original English ones written by Hog himself.

''Have you ever used YouTube captions when watching Foil Arms & Hog videos? Add your experiences below!''

English is my first language, but the wonderful Irish accent was fairly new to me. I definitely relied on the subtitles in the beginning (well, for several months to be honest). I can now listen and understand both new and old FAH without the subtitles... for the most part. I now use the subtitles to: - written by Zan
 * watch FAH videos when I can't have the audio on (surprisingly, this seems to happen a lot)
 * Share the videos with friends who are deaf
 * Share the videos with other native English speakers but not native-Irish listeners :)
 * Check a phrase or two that I am not quite sure I heard correctly (I'm still learning new Irish phrases!)

#FAHcaps Fuck-Ups: Auto-Captions for the Craic!
Every YouTube viewer has come across auto-captions before and giggled. Usually it's accidental, but it's always hilarious especially if the accents are slightly "other" than standard American English. A light middle-class Dublin accent, for example!

Twitter FAHn Squirrels, for short did some research and came upon a couple of absolute gems. She started posting screencaps in this Twitter thread (with matching hashtag of course!) but you can also browse a 'best of' in the gallery below. Note the different names given to our favourite Irish comedy trio!! We had Twitter's own Thread Reader App unroll this thread for us too, read it here.