German/English subtitles

I am not sure if I get what your actual question is, but the little that I know about dubbing and subtitling is that the translations are not necessarily carried out by the same person or team.
Also, they don’t necessarily use the same source text or audio recording (as in scenario vs. final audio version).

This would account for the two translations of "You may kiss the bride now" you noticed; both are similarly adequate translations. (Incidentally, the correct spelling is Braut).

And the teams don’t necessarily get to see the actual film, which can lead to misunderstandings

Also, there are different constraints which apply to dubbing and to subtitling.
The dubbed text needs to closely match the lip movement of the people who speak, if their faces are shown, whereas there are obvious space constraints for subtitles.
At the same time, subtitles need to be shown for a minimum period of time to allow the viewers to comfortably read them, but at the same time, they should not run over a cut.

Plus there are budget constraints and the philosophy or the brief of the company producing the dubbed version or the subtitles which may affect the quality.

There are many examples, including, in what I\ve been watching, instances of the German and the English being different in meaning. E.g. (English) Wayne says I like anything with an E in it (and with this same subtitle). (German) Wayne likes anything with an E in it (and with this same subtitle).

The constraints mentioned by Riesling would, I think, apply to English, too, so the fact remains that in the videos I m watching, where English subtitles follow the dialogue very closely, people who watch and listen to the German version aren t hearing-reading, very often, what was originally said.

My qtn, by the way, was contained in the last line of my op.

Note> on the computer I m using, the keyboard and symbol or letter which appears often don t correspond, so I m not able to write and punctuate this as I would wish.

"Subtitles are subtitles, aren't they. They are in English, on these DVDs, anyway."

Maybe you just found a well-produced DVD. I leave closed-captioning turned on when I watch TV. Errors are common, especially for time-sensitive shows like news programs or the Sunday talk shows. As for DVDs, there are plenty out there with bad subtitling, sometimes complete omissions. And then there are sometimes legitimate reasons to depart from the word-for-word scripting, as Riesling explains.

I just can't think of any good examples just now, so I'll grab orangutan's example: "I've seen many instances like that, instead of the spoken "Ich werde mich mit meinem Anwalt beraten", the substitles showes "Ich berate mich mit meinem Anwalt". I've often heard Germans use present tense where future tense is understood. It's just idiom perhaps? I understand the two to be equivalent, as long as there is adequate context to understand the character is not doing it right now.

So I guess I would say that there are usually different ways to say the same thing. It comes down to the skill of the translator or subtitler (is that a word?) to balance faithfulness with clarity or ease of use.

The constraints mentioned by Riesling would, I think, apply to English, too, so the fact remains that in the videos I m watching, where English subtitles follow the dialogue very closely, people who watch and listen to the German version aren t hearing-reading, very often, what was originally said.

I think as the films you mention are all oriinally in English, it could well be that both the subtitling and the dubbing were done (by different people) using the original version, rather than the German subtitler using the already dubbed version. So in your example above, both may have translated the sentence "You may kiss the bride now" in two different, but equally acceptable ways.

people who watch and listen to the German version aren t hearing-reading, very often, what was originally said.

People who watch the dubbed version are not hearing what was originally said, anyway...