Sometimes when watching a subtitled film you have to wonder what the translators where thinking. I was watching Seven Samurai yesterday and the leader was talking about getting the bandits into town one at a time to "decrease" them. It would be interesting to have understood the Japanese to know what was actually said, I would assume it would be kill them one by one, round tripping "kill" on babel fish comes back with murder decrease roundtrips to decrease so it would seem the words are different.
Looking at Criterion's site it looks like they have produced a new version that has new subtitling. I would hope that it corrects some of the things I assume are poor translations due to the time the translation was done in.
Seven Samurai holds together pretty well for being an old film, the commentary by Michael Jeck highlights why, not directly, but he points out some shots that were the first time that type of shot was used in film. Though the impact of the movie is lessened because some of these shots have become standard today, so they don't have the impact they would have had originally.
If you are a film buff I recommend you watch it at least twice, once to see it, and once to listen to the commentary.