As Denise Kripper, a translator who’s done TV subtitles before, told NBC News, there are strict rules-which vary by streaming platform or channel-about profanity, cultural references, and especially length. That’s a huge part of her character.”īut chalking up inaccurate subtitles to sloppy translation work would be an inaccuracy itself. “The poor person that’s smart and clever and just isn’t wealthy. “That is a huge trope in Korean media,” Mayer said. In one scene, Mayer explains, a character says something to the effect of “I am very smart I just never got a chance to study.” According to the subtitles, however, she’s saying, “I’m not a genius, but I still got it out.” Youngmi Mayer, comedian and co-host of the podcast Feeling Asian, took to TikTok to share some examples. The reason Squid Game in particular may have attracted so many new Korean language learners could be related to the discourse surrounding its English subtitles: Viewers fluent in Korean have lamented how much nuance gets lost in translation. One student in Russia, Milica Martinovic, told Reuters she’s expressly motivated to learn Korean so that she can understand Korean dramas and K-pop music without subtitles and translations. As of last year, those stats had ballooned to 76,000 students in 82 countries. In 2007, South Korea’s King Sejong Institute taught Korean to about 740 students across just three countries. Duolingo isn’t the only language-learning service that has seen an influx of interest in learning Korean over the past several years.

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