John Minchinton obituary

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/feb/24/john-minchinton-obituary

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My father, John Minchinton, who has died aged 90, was the foremost English film subtitler for more than 60 years. John started in the industry as an editor and historian and worked at Film Polski in London.

Around 1964 he set up as an independent subtitler, converting a cupboard in his bedroom to hold an Editola which allowed him to view 35mm film prints and undertake the process. Between then and his retirement at the age of 88, John subtitled more than 1,600 different films (from shorts to feature length) and, as some were revised several times, there were more than 2,500 lists on his files. At his peak he was subtitling more than one feature film a week.

John was born in Deptford, south London, and got his first job in a paint factory towards the end of the second world war (where his boss classified him as an “industrial chemist” so he would not be called up). He met his future wife, Doris Mead, at Russian classes and they married in 1947, with a honeymoon in Czechoslovakia. His interest in eastern European films convinced him to try his luck as a freelance before, in 1953, he joined Film Polski.

He was lucky that his working years coincided with a “golden age” of subtitling. In the early 1960s, foreign language films were gaining popularity in the UK and when BBC2 started in 1964, the channel showed a foreign language film every week. All these films, in dozens of languages, needed subtitling, and the BBC chose to create their own text rather than rely on subtitled versions produced by the studios. Even though he was not a BBC employee, John subtitled most of the films, working from verbatim translations, and thus produced versions for almost all of the significant foreign language films of that time.

Over his career he worked for all of the major companies handling foreign films; when Channel 4 started in 1982, he was one of the two people responsible for subtitling its foreign films.

John embraced new technology and was an early user of mini-computers and reel-to-reel video machines, having started with pen and paper and 35mm film. The process of subtitling involved the determination of the position in the film of the start and finish of each piece of dialogue and the writing of a suitable title that can be read within that period of time. He was keen that, when the titles were read, it felt as if they were the dialogue, rather than a translation.

John was eager to encourage others to become film subtitlers. Many have spoken of how he spared time to guide them through the process and educate them on best practice. He also wrote an extensive guide to the art, which he made freely available to anyone who felt it would benefit them.

It seems unlikely that his one million subtitles will be surpassed by any other individual.

Doris died in 2014. John is survived by two children, Ruth and me, four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.