By Hannah Solstad Klepp. 5:50 PM, September 5, 2025.

[Screencap of what looks like a Seth MacFarlane cartoon, showing subtitles translating back into English as, "In legal terms we call this 'wiener'"]

This character is saying "dick move" which means that something was a bad thing to do. Picture from Disney+.

Since December of 2024, TV watchers have been able to send feedback about the subtitling of different TV shows to teksting.no. Since then, the website has received 277 complaints about bad or missing subtitles. The complaint mechanism is maintained by the Norwegian Association of Audiovisual Translators (Norsk audiovisuell oversetterforening, NAViO).

NAViO's leader, Morten Gottschalk, believes that the worst mistakes show signs of uncritical use of machine translation.

The examples are numerous and somewhat comical. In one example, the English word "plates" was translated as tallerkener, as in a flat dish, when in context the translation should really be bilskilt, as in a license plate. In another example, the name of film director M. Night Shyamalan was rendered as M. Nattshyamalan, using the Norwegian word for "night". Some more examples are "pitcher" in the sense of vannmugge, as in a pitcher of water, being rendered as kastemann, as in a baseball pitcher; and "chick" in the sense of jente, i.e. girl, being rendered as kylling, meaning chicken.

—"I have a hard time believing a human would've made these sorts of mistakes," Gottschalk says.

Gottschalk further explains that NAViO strives to push employers and streaming services to do more to ensure that their subtitles are of good quality.

—"Some of them tell their subtitlers to submit work which only needs to be 'good enough'. We're trying to get a whole industry to take subtitling more seriously."

Here are some more examples of complaints NAViO has received:

• Mistenkelig replaced with mistenksom. Both translate as "suspicious", but mistenkelig in the sense of "arousing suspicion" and mistenksom in the sense of "having suspicions". Picture from TV2.
• "In the ground" (i bakken) misspelled as "up the butt" (i baken), which NAViO says isn't the most serious mistake they've seen. Picture from Viaplay.
• [one I'm not quite sure what's wrong with but VG calls it "an example of meaningless Norwegian". It makes perfect sense to me but I'm assuming the problem is using bygningsvedlikehold, as in the act of maintaining a building, to refer to the crew doing that maintenance. Maybe the right word would be vedlikeholdspersonalet, I dunno.] Picture from HBO Max.
• "I never had the courage to load [this pistol]", using å laste (to load, of a ship) instead of å lade (to load, of a gun). Picture from TV2 Play.

—"Many of the people who send complaints do find humor in the mistakes. Many also ask if there actually was a human in charge when these mistakes happen. Some believe that these mistakes are even grounds to sue," Gottschalk writes in a message to VG.

He underlines that the mistakes can be more than just funny blunders.

[Screencaps of American Dad! on Disney+, showing the subtitles in both English and Norwegian. In English, the subtitles read, "We've failed as parents, even by Appalachian standards." The Norwegian subtitles translated back to English read, "Imagine that. We've failed as parents, even by Indian standards." — specifically Indian in the Turtle Island sense. VG's caption simply says, "Directly translated." — which I find a bit confusing.]

[Screencaps of a live action show on Disney+, showing the subtitles in both English and Norwegian. In English, the subtitles read, "Cool. Where abouts?" The Norwegian subtitles translated back to English read, "Cool. Where in Spain?" VG's caption:] "The story takes place in Australia, and the character is wondering where in the city something's taking place. How "Spain" ended up in the Norwegian subtitles is wholly unknown," NAViO writes.

Racist elements

—"We also see some examples where incorrect translations add inappropriate or somewhat racist elements which aren't found in the original text. The sloppiness disrespects paying viewers in any case," Gottschalk says.

Read also: Disney+ removed Norwegian subtitles: —"Unacceptable"

Gottschalk further describes that the most engaged complainers are those sending complaints about missing subtitles for the hearing impaired, particularly for major sporting events.

[Screencaps of what looks like Family Guy or another Seth MacFarlane cartoon, with subtitles in English and Norwegian. The English subtitles read, "See you, bitch!". The Norwegian subtitles translated back into English read, "Awesome. See you, Chinawoman."]

—"We think it's a problem that viewers get shown bad subtitles on a service that they paid for. Bad or missing subtitles are a problem that especially impact the hearing impaired, and those who lack native-level comprehension of both the original language and Norwegian."

Gottschalk says that complaints were particularly numerous during the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships earlier this year.

—"We got a lot of messages about missing subtitles for the hearing impaired."

Received few complaints

The ski championships were broadcast on NRK and TV2. TV2's press chief Jan-Petter Dahl attests that TV2 subtitled all events manually in real time.

—"Manual real-time subtitling is demanding; real-time subtitling is rarely free of mistakes regardless of if it's a human or a machine doing it. There's both a technical and human delay when doing real-time subtitling. The subtitler must listen, translate, write the text, and the text has to be sent to broadcast," Dahl writes in an e-mail to VG.

Dahl further emphasizes that TV2 did not receive many complaints during the three days they broadcast the ski championships.

—"TV2's experience has been that subtitling mistakes happen at irregular intervals. We're always working to improve on this front because TV2 wants to subtitle as much of our content as possible, as well as possible, for our viewers," he writes.

VG has also contacted the other streaming services which have been used as examples in this article.

• Disney writes, "Thank you for bringing our attention to these incorrect translations. We are working to fix them as quickly as possible."
• Viaplay represented by Madeleine Liereng writes, "We always greatly value feedback on how we can improve and absolutely take any feedback to heart. We are continuously working to quality check all parts of our platform and channels, and will do our best to become even better when it comes to translations and subtitling before it reaches our audience."
• HBO Max represented by Marianne Aambø writes, "We use external providers for subtitles on all four of our TV channels, as well as HBO Max and Discovery+. On Norwegian programs one can personally choose whether one wants to see subtitles. We look into complaints brought to our attention, fix the issues and republish."