How Does My Desi Net .Com Handle Subtitle And Dubbing Quality?

The phrase “any subs are better than none” is typically used to defend very poor subs. But the problem with very poor subs is that they can actively mislead. I recall a line of dialogue that had been mistranslated several episodes before, and as a result the poor subs had given the viewer a completely incorrect motivation for the character’s actions several episodes later. Missing negatives (e.g. ‘don’t’ instead of ‘do’) can reverse the meaning of crucial statements. Thus, while imperfect subs are inferior to no subs at all, subs that are consistently incorrect are even worse. They spread error to everyone who relies on them. It would be far better for fans of the show if there were no official subs at all, and the subs were left to dedicated fans who would produce an accurate version. But as it is, Desi Net is lending its authority to a flawed product, and that is worse than nothing for the hard core fan.

This is a false economy. Paying for poor quality dubbing costs far more in lost customers and negative word of mouth than paying for good quality dubbing in the first place. A good dub can be a selling point for TV shows and generate a lot of buzz around certain titles. There are many examples of great anime dubs, but very few examples of poor dubs. In fact, the vast majority of poor dubs are so bad that they become a reason for people to cancel their subscription and tell their friends about how terrible the dubbing on that particular channel is. They are already spending money to show these titles so it would probably cost them far less in the long run to spend a little more and get the dubbing right in the first place. Their current approach is to try to save a bit of money on the production of the dubbing, but in reality it is costing them far more in customer satisfaction in the long term.

The real test of a night of streaming for me is the quality of the subtitles for the main feature. My experience of desi net .com is that it has several different approaches to the subs for different features. For the larger, licensed features (such as Sacred Games and Delhi Crime, when it is made available on the site), I’ve found that the subs and dubbed versions are all expertly translated by in-house linguists or even contracted subtitling vendors. The subs are checked for reading speed, and even go through a further pass to ensure that idiom and even cultural references are translated properly.

However for niche content uploaded by users, that hasn’t yet found its place on the platform, the subtitles are contributed by users themselves or even auto-translated to human-post-edited content as soon as possible. The quality can vary, meaning you might get very literal subtitles that do not contain local flavor or even a dubbed audio with very poor mixing, in which actors do not even sync well.

Checking the list of available subtitle languages, toggling between the original audio and available dubbed audio and reporting any errors using the report/feedback button helps to prioritize necessary fixes. I expect more from a service like this and they generally deliver – serious effort put into flagship content with a quicker but more error-prone approach to their long tail of shows, with improvements made over time via user feedback. So far, quality subtitles with natural-sounding voices has been enough to keep me coming back for more.