During the 2020 Academy Awards, Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite, a South Korean black comedy thriller that stars a Korean family challenging societal expectations, made history as the first non-English speaking film to win Best Picture, Best Foreign Film, Best Original Screenplay, and the award for Best Director, dominating the 92nd Oscar Awards.

Parasite raked in more than $35million, marked as the first foreign language film to be given the prestigious Academy awards. How is it possible for a Korean film to become a phenomenon? Thanks to the subtitles helped the film reach a wider and global audience.

There has been a steady and rising interest in Korean films, shows, music, culture, and language in India. There is a word for the South Korean cultural phenomenon – Hallyu.

The pandemic led OTT boom as more Indians caught up with K-trend shows such as Crash Landing on You, Vincenzo, the musical boy band BTS, and films. The viewership for K-dramas on Netflix in India increased more than 370 percent in 2020 alone. A glance at the top 10 content on Netflix shows such as Squid Game, Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha, Business Proposals, Extraordinary Attorney Woo, Hospital Playlist, Nevertheless, and It’s Okay to Not Be Okay, consistently on the list week after week. There are more than 500 Korean drama series and shows available on Netflix in India.

Three important elements, enabled by digital technology and connectivity, have led to the globalization of Korean culture: the growth of domestic creative industries, the highly networked audiences, and the adaptive cultural content. Now K-movies are exported to more than 170 countries globally.

The global rise and phenomenon of K- pop and culture is just an example of how the content can reach the world audience through streaming platforms such as Netflix, Disney +, Amazon Prime and others as the original language is Korean but the power of subtitles in English does the magic to attract more audience towards their culture and fashion.

In India, till late 2000s, when Bollyood dominated the film industry, content from South India languages including Telugu, Tamil, Kannada has taken centre stage dominating Indian cinema and taking the content globally through dubbing and subtitles to reach a global audience.

Films like Baahubali, Pushpa, and KGF have crossed the borders, continents and regions with south language films attracting overseas markets and distributors with the power of subtitles across the world on streaming platforms and devices.

WHY SUBTITLES?

Today, audiences watch media across devices and platforms with subtitles when in public transport to save battery consumption, taking notes from informative and educative videos and foreign language videos when in public places without distraction and loud noise areas.

SUBTITLES EXPANSION

Audiences around the globe have embraced video and movie streaming services and pandemic scenarios have promoted people from different language and cultural backgrounds to enjoy a wide range of content on demand across devices and platforms.

Subtitles and video localization demand services will only increase as audiences continue to consume and share content across mobile, tablet, smart television, social media, and connected devices including OTT, podcasts, and audio live events only increase in the future.

Combined with OTT platforms, subtitles today explode the reach and help break into many conventional markets. Malayalam movies became popular with quality subtitles. Today, if the movie or web series is good, audiences will consume them independent of the audio language. Subtitles have made movies a truly universal medium.

Besides, helping billions of non-native viewers of cinema, subtitles serve another important role. India never had ADA equivalent law (Americans with Disabilities Act). So, people who are deaf or have difficulty hearing, never had a chance (about 0.3% of the population in India is deaf, not significant enough but if you include the senior citizens who can’t hear properly, it is a good proportion of the population who benefit from subtitles.

Subtitles also help people in learning languages. That’s how millions of movie-lovers across the world are learning languages like Spanish, Korean, French etc. by watching films with subtitles.

Without a doubt, subtitling a film also ensures that movie critics and film festivals take a good film more seriously. This was a privilege that previous generations of the Golden Age of Cinema missed. That also means that a lot of content of yesteryears including the classics needed to be re-presented to today’s world-wide and India-wide movie lovers with subtitles. Infact, subtitles are the key differentiator why an entire new crop of audiences have shifted loyalties from TV channels to OTT platforms.

In summary, subtitles are the magic pill to ensure a film crosses geographies and connects to genuine movie lovers across the globe. Having a good subtitling for a film will ensure not only box-office success but also critical acclaim. “Karthikeya-2” was originally meant to be a regional movie but once the makers started presenting the previews of the films in other parts of the country, the market for the film only increased thanks to the subtitles. Today, “Karthikeya-2” has become a giant-killer and a universal blockbuster. Subtitles is indeed the secret sauce that defines a film’s enduring universal success. Once you invest in good content for a movie, make sure you also invest well into the subtitling part of it.