[HanCinema's News] Netflix Under Fire for Translating East Sea Wrong in "Bride of Water God 2017"

The Voluntary Agency Network (VANK) of Korea recently reported some surprising news about "Bride of the Water God 2017" which is currently available on Netflix. Apparently, in one scene that makes reference to the East Sea, the French subtitles refers to the geographical area as the Sea of Japan. The offending scene takes place in the eleventh episode. Rather perplexingly, in context, the East Sea is specifically described as an ideal location for petroleum reserves that would specifically help Korea.

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The nationalist issue of the naming of the East Sea has long been a bitter one internationally, with Koreans insisting on the more neutral East Sea as the Sea of Japan implies that Japan has possession of the body of water separating the two countries. VANK expressed particular outrage over the slight, as South Korean cultural contents are used to spread knowledge of South Korean culture worldwide. But no Korean person would ever refer to the East Sea in such a manner.

This is not the first such instance of such a mistake on the part of Netflix translations. Last year's "Time to Hunt" also featured a brief reference to the East Sea which was incorrectly translated as Sea of Japan in Brazilian Portugese, Danish, German, Hungarian, Polish, and Spanish. At the time Netflix apologized for the mistake and promised to do better in the future.

Despite this promise, similar errors have also cropped up in dramas such as "Kingdom" and "The School Nurse Files" with enough frequency it is unclear whether Netflix translation teams are actually being informed of the relevant issues. Some suspect that the real problem is that Netflix is outsourcing the work in question and not bothering with internal quality control. Other such complaints have also been filed the other way around, with Korean subtitles for foreign programs also being in error.

Written by William Schwartz