Salo Or The 120 Days Of Sodom Sub Indo Better -

When you watch a dubbed version, you are playing "telephone." The script goes from Italian (original) -> English (dub script) -> Indonesian (if you are listening to English audio but reading Indo later). This double-translation loses the specificity of the original.

Example: In Italian, the word "merda" (shit) is used with specific liturgical weight. In an English dub, it becomes generic profanity. When that generic English is translated into "kotoran" via the Sub Indo track on a dub, the meaning flattens.

Conversely, in the Sub Indo version, the translator works directly from the Italian script or a high-fidelity English subtitle file. This allows the translator to find Indonesian equivalents for Pasolini’s specific lexicon—words like "keterhinaan" (degradation) or "kekejian yang metodis" (methodical cruelty)—which carry the correct philosophical weight.

Indonesia’s censorship board (LSF) has never passed Salò for public distribution. Any subtitle you find is for personal, educational, or archival use. Some Sub Indo files are deliberately incomplete, with the most extreme scenes (e.g., the “Circle of Blood” cannibalism sequence) missing translation lines. A “better” subtitle is one that cowardly translators do not omit those lines. The best fan versions translate every scream and every obscenity.

Winner: High-quality fan-made subtitles from dedicated translator groups.

Here’s why:

One specific fan release, traced to the now-defunct blog indofilm.sub, has become legendary for including a separate .txt file explaining Fascist rituals and Pasolini’s biography. For an Indonesian viewer trying to understand why the film matters—not just as shock cinema but as anti-fascist art—that context is invaluable.