Are there French subtitles for Withnail & I?

October 17, 2010 9:50 AM

Will my French friend ever be able to watch Withnail & I?

I have a friend who is French. The other day we were discussing movies, and I brought up one of my favourites, Withnail & I. We then got all excited about him getting to see this terrific movie which he would clearly love. Trouble is, there doesn't seem to be a French-subtitled version of it out there. We looked over all the DVD information we could find, and searched various online subtitle databases: Nothing. I even tried translating the movie myself, which went well for about five minutes. Before I give up, my question is, does anybody know of any edition of this movie with French subtitles on it?

posted by two or three cars parked under the stars to media & arts (5 answers total)

The Criterion edition has English subtitles, which could be ripped from the disc, saved as an .srt file, translated into Googlish, and corrected manually.

(Hey, it's something.)
posted by Sys Rq at 10:16 AM on October 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

As an extension to Sys Rq's idea, here are 3 english .srt subtitles to get the translation process started:

http://subscene.com/withnail-and-i/subtitles-12454.aspx
posted by alchemist at 10:44 AM on October 17, 2010

Can you watch it together over skype, and you watch with the english subtitles on, and translate them aloud as you watch?

(I know, weak.)
posted by serazin at 3:45 PM on October 17, 2010

Or, I guess watch together in person? I'm not sure if you two live in the same place or not.
posted by serazin at 3:50 PM on October 17, 2010

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone! Unfortunately, my French is far too terrible for a real-time translation. Working with an existing .srt is actually how I went about translating the first time. Maybe I'll pick that project up again; it can only be good for my French, and won't my friend be thrilled when he finally gets to experience Withnail, in his nursing home fifty years from now.
posted by two or three cars parked under the stars at 5:14 PM on October 17, 2010 [2 favorites]