She eventually went freelance and traveled to Italy to write English subtitles for the films by Vittorio De Sica and Roberto Rossellini.
She has also made English subtitles for other languages, such as Ingmar Bergman's Swedish films and the Spanish version of Mr. Roger's Neighborhood.
[2] Friedman was hired in 1977 by PBS to write subtitles for their Live from the Metropolitan Opera series and was re-hired for multiple subsequent Met televised productions.
She responded with an example of the 1986 production of Carmen in New York City that re-imagined the storyline from being about gypsy smugglers in 1800 to the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s.
Because of this, Friedman frequently avoided direct translations of the words spoken, but also included context for what was happening to explain these drastic differences from the original written versions of the operas.