Translation conventions

[bktheirregular]

Here's an interesting exercise:

Grab one of the movie discs in your collection. Pick one you've seen and know. Now play it with a foreign-language subtitle active.

The subtitles will give you an approximate, substantive translation, not a literal one. (To a lesser degree, this also happens with English subtitles - they come as close as they can, but they truncate here and there.)

The example that brought it home for me: Apollo 13.

Two days before launch, the command-module pilot, Ken Mattingly, has been scrubbed from the flight, and his backup, Jack Swigert, is running simulations with the rest of the crew and the Mission Control people. One re-entry sim goes wrong.

Jim Lovell: So how do you feel, Freddo? (Πώς αισθάνεσαι, Φρέντο;)
Fred Haise: Char-broiled. (Σαν λουκάνικο ψητό.)

Back-translation of the Greek subtitles gives you "Like a grilled sausage."

(I initially said to grab a DVD, but then I realized I'd picked this up on a blueray copy of Apollo 13. Region 2 releases may be a pain, but they have one advantage over Region 1: you get snowed under in subtitle and language options.)

Comments

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting idea. Unfortunately, it only works if you know the foreign language and can re-translate it.

[bktheirregular]

...yeah, that's a good point. It's easy to forget, working over here, that there are places where the native language and the most common international trade language are one and the same...

[thanatos-kalos.livejournal.com]

The foreign language overdubs are great fun, too-- play the Spanish track on the Fierfly DVDs and giggle everytime they pronounce the 'e' at the end of Jayne's name... ::g::

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

But does it come out with the soft J the way Chico Escuela used to pronounce Jane Curtin's name as "Hane"?

[thanatos-kalos.livejournal.com]

No, it's a 'ch' sound, which is how most Spaniards would pronounce the name 'Jane'. I just have difficulty seeing Jayne let anyone call him 'Janie' apart from his mum...

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

Long ago, there was a similar exercise to this involving the Japanese dubbing of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I think it involved playing the Japanese soundtrack but activating the English subtitles to it. (I have never tried this at home, but perhaps I will now that Labour Day is mostly free of labour.)

The two things I remember about it are from the French castle scene:

- the approach shot is subtitled "Arthur and his knights advance silently, silently;"

- the ensuing dialog, somehow, is rendered back into English via the Japanese via the French without use of the words "hamster" or "elderberry." Do the Japanese not have these things?