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Squid Game’s “botched” subtitles have changed the show’s meaning for English-speaking viewers, some Korean-speaking fans say.

The Korean-language drama is about an alternative world where people in debt compete in deadly games.

But fluent Korean speaker Youngmi Mayer claims the closed-caption subtitles in English are “so bad” that the original meaning is often lost…

“The dialogue was so well written and zero of it was preserved [in the subtitles],” Youngmi said in a Twitter post.

In a TikTok video that’s had almost nine million views, Youngmi gave several examples of mistranslation.

In one scene a character tries to convince people to play the game with her, and the closed-caption subtitles read: “I’m not a genius, but I still got it worked out.”

But what the character actually says, Youngmi explains, is: “I am very smart, I just never got a chance to study.”

That translation puts more emphasis on the wealth disparity in society - which is also a theme in the Oscar-winning 2019 Korean film, Parasite.

“Almost everything she says is being botched translation-wise… the writers, all they want you to know about her is that,” Youngmi said.

“[It] seems so small, but it’s the entire character’s purpose of being in the show.”