I’m mainly talking about watching a TV show or movie that’s originally in English enabling subtitles that’s either in Spanish, German, Russian, Finnish, etc. and can mistakes in translation still occur? I recall watching Lie to Me with Japanese subtitles during a scene involving an interrogation but a key word within the dialog was not translated correctly based on context.
For example, the protagonist said “You’re an accessory for murder” towards the suspect but subtitles used the wrong word choice 小物 (which means “accessories” as in small goods, i.e. stationery or trinkets) when the intended meaning for “accessory” from that context leans more on being a conspirator (共犯者 or 共謀) of a crime (like as in aiding the criminal).


For a while I had a side job correcting subtitles that had context mistakes. It was fun and some people would look me up to work for them if they needed something very specific, mostly independent movies and a couple of things for netflix. Now with AI that side gig is no more but the auto generated stuff is pretty terrible.
“It was a machine cable of recording and store moving images”
actual subtitle from The Beginning After The End on crunchy roll