Do the people who type subtitles TRY to make them inacurate?!

[MJN SEIFER]

There is nothing wrong with my hearing, but I sometimes like to put subs on both DVDs and actual TV shows, I notice they get things wrong a lot, like rearanging sentances - a phrase like "We could all die, if we don't stop them" becomes "If we don't stop them we could all die". A lot of Simpsons lines get completly different lines in the subs than they do in the show. My DVD for "Labyrinth" has subs made by someone who is clearly grammar obsessed - every time the character says "Don't" the subs say "Do not" everytime someone says "won't" the subs say "will not" etc. And I'll always remember that one scene in Keanen and Kel, where Kel says "Oh yeah, I don't", and the subs say "I do!"

Why do they do this? Is that hard?

[The Man]

I doubt they bother paying enough attention to the lines when transcribing them. Alternately, they could simply use the words as written in the original scripts, which often differ from the words the actors end up reciting.

[MJN SEIFER]

I doubt they bother paying enough attention to the lines when transcribing them. Alternately, they could simply use the words as written in the original scripts, which often differ from the words the actors end up reciting.

That could be it, my DVD for "Spirited Away" has an option to change the subs to what the original script said (hence why subs will appear when no one's speaking or don't appear when someone is).

[Wolf Kanno]

A lot of it localization. Most times, subtitles are just the script translated but when it comes to dialogue, it has to fit the mouth movements and when translating between languages that may cause problems.

So a sentence may be rearranged and shorten or lengthen to fit the on screen action. As for the contractions being removed... That has more to do with the nature of the language itself.