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Translation conventions
Sep. 6th, 2010 05:48 pmHere'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.)
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.)
