I enjoy K series and prefer to hear the original voices and read the subtitles in Englsh. However, the subtitles, supposedly in English, sometimes confuse, mislead or simply fail to convey meaning.
Misspelt words
When I saw the word “sassy” I didn’t get the meaning until I concluded that it came from “saucy”. Americans have serious problems with long vowels. The ‘o:’ pronounced as in ‘bus’, then written as ‘a’ ends up being pronounced as ‘e’.
Another case is ‘asshole’. What is that? I know what an arsehole is. Here, the long ‘a:’ ends up not even as ‘a’ but as ‘e’.
Different meanings
When I hear “I’ll bring you home”, I think someone is inviting another to their house. Apparently, this is wrong, they mean “I’ll take you home”, going to the other person’s house. In the same way, they say “I’ll take you a glass of water” meaning they will fetch one, not that they will go somewhere else with it. I would say “I’ll bring you a glass of water”.
Odd phrases
What really kocked me out was “Cut to the chase!”. Looking this up, it means to cut out the boring bits like in a film and stick to the action or the point. Are we in Hollywood?
Another phrase is “Give me some slack!”. I imagine this refers to a rope which you want to be less tight, or metaphorically to loosen the pressure. Are we cowboys?
New vocabulary
I heard Hugh Grant saying “surreal” and have also heard “awesome” which it seems is something good and “gross” which is something aweful.
Maybe I’m just old-fashioned, but I don’t see why we should adopt American slang. American series demonstrate a grave inability to conclude a sentence without several swear words. Is that “cool!”? I don’t think so. I believe that denotes a poor command of vocabulary.
Conclusion
I prefer to watch K drama series where the language is not so offensive, even if I have to put up with words which set my teeth on edge. However, I wish the translators would choose either American or English. We Brits have a large vocabulary of our own and do not need simplified, distorted or vulgar words.