Netflix’s Multilingual Subtitling Through English Pivot Translation: Guidelines, Current Practices and Future Directions

OTT (over-the-top) services have seen a significant increase in subscribers over the past few years. Their global expansion and an increasingly multilingual viewership fuel the need for translation into various languages. Netflix, for example, produces and offers subtitles in many different languages via pivot translation; the source text is first translated into an English template and then further produced into many languages. Although a widespread practice, there is scant research on pivot translation in translation studies. Yet, it deserves more attention given that it is likely to continue for the foreseeable future because of its many benefits such as streamlining processes and satisfying the increased need for multilingual translations. Against this background, this study explores Netflix’s subtitling guidelines to examine how Netflix sees pivot translation and to discuss how it may evolve in the future. First, Netflix’s subtitling guidelines for English pivot translation are compared to those of other individual languages for any differences. The guidelines are then applied to two programs—Terrace House and Kingdom. These two are chosen as representative cases where particularly speech levels of the former and cultural references of the latter can pose difficulties in translating when first going through the English meditating language. As a leader in OTT service, Netflix’s multilingual translation can have a significant impact on other streaming companies. This study could help to better understand the role of pivot translation and ways multilingual translation will unfold in the future.