I've got a good excuse for being quiet recently - I've been working on an English fansub of Icarus! A friend of mine had found a pirated copy for me earlier this year, but without subtitles. (From the Usenet binary groups? Are those still a thing??) So - I ordered a legit copy, a DVD from France. It came with French subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing. After technical shenanigans to get those into a form I could work with, it took about a month to translate them into English and fix the timing issues.
It turns out that most of the adult characters in Icarus engage in verbal sparring with one another, using unnecessarily florid and overly-loquatious vocabulary, and they speak really quickly too. And since I'd often have only 2.4 seconds before the next line of dialog, I ditched trying to provide a literal translation and opted to go for the basics. As a result, there's a lot of nuance lost, but the general sentiment of the speech has been preserved.
It also didn't help that whoever was in charge of creating the DVD transfer in France forgot that while films run at 24 frames per second, PAL-region DVDs run at 25 frames per second, so this 4% difference means that the French DVD finishes three minutes faster than it should.
I really liked watching this one, a lot, even though it's a tragedy and despite having a very dysfunctional royal family. If you can somehow get your hands on a copy, it's highly recommended!
Problem is, the film itself still seems to be generally unavailable. Apple TV+ and Amazon Prime Video have it - but only for customers with IP addresses in France. Anyway, if you want the subtitles, they can be downloaded here from opensubtitles.org - just make sure you've got ad-blockers, and don't get tricked into installing any of their crap. The one you probably want is the 720p / 24fps English file. Click on "Download" to get the zip file; do not click on "Download (beta)".
I've got a good excuse for being quiet recently - I've been working on an English fansub of Icarus! A friend of mine had found a pirated copy for me earlier this year, but without subtitles. (From the Usenet binary groups? Are those still a thing??) So - I ordered a legit copy, a DVD from France. It came with French subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing. After technical shenanigans to get those into a form I could work with, it took about a month to translate them into English and fix the timing issues.
It turns out that most of the adult characters in Icarus engage in verbal sparring with one another, using unnecessarily florid and overly-loquatious vocabulary, and they speak really quickly too. And since I'd often have only 2.4 seconds before the next line of dialog, I ditched trying to provide a literal translation and opted to go for the basics. As a result, there's a lot of nuance lost, but the general sentiment of the speech has been preserved.
It also didn't help that whoever was in charge of creating the DVD transfer in France forgot that while films run at 24 frames per second, PAL-region DVDs run at 25 frames per second, so this 4% difference means that the French DVD finishes three minutes faster than it should.
I really liked watching this one, a lot, even though it's a tragedy and despite having a very dysfunctional royal family. If you can somehow get your hands on a copy, it's highly recommended!
Problem is, the film itself still seems to be generally unavailable. Apple TV+ and Amazon Prime Video have it - but only for customers with IP addresses in France. Anyway, if you want the subtitles, they can be downloaded here from opensubtitles.org - just make sure you've got ad-blockers, and don't get tricked into installing any of their crap. The one you probably want is the 720p / 24fps English file. Click on "Download" to get the zip file; do not click on "Download (beta)".