I'm ever so grateful I live in a country which doesn't dub foreign audiovideo.
One of the things which really annoy me when watching some English-language news and documentaries is when they dub foreigners. You know, reporter interviews a guy on the streets of Gaza or a Professor in Moscow, and you hear the real person's voice for one second before an English voice-over, sometimes even with "Funny Accent", cuts in. Subtitle, people, don't steal the voice and language of the interviewed!
Accuracy is always a translation deficiency. But subtitles have the advantage of being easier to ignore. While I'm myself only being capable of decent understanding of two foreign languages (not counting the East Scandinavian ones) - English and German - it does mean I don't have to read subtitles on English and German interviewees unless their dialect is very difficult. Keeps up the language skills a bit too.
Oddly enough, I find I cannot ignore subtitles. Since English is my husband's second language, he likes to have the English subtitles on. It surprises me to watch a movie that I've already seen and realize how much of the dialogue I had actually missed without them. Of course then you miss the *action.*
Sadly, my German by now probably *needs* subtitles, as it has been so long since I taught it or used it on a daily basis. Where I *can* pick up discrepancies (aside from English language to English subtitles) is in Spanish, which I've never formally studied. This is especially true in the translation of epithets. The American English movie is far more vulgar than the Spanish or Latin American censors allow, so the good, old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon oaths come out with the equivalent of "oh, darn."
That's not the only place. In one of my 4th year French textbooks [the one claw-delivered by Dinosaur Express], in an excerpted Camus essay, the footnote translated a phrase as "Go to hell." I found out the embarrassing way it actually meant "Scr3w you." :(
This puts me in mind of a similar event. A friend was teaching a very elementary Spanish conversation class at the local community college. I took one semester of it, thinking I'd get some grammar out of it. Anyway, one exercise involved the conversation bubble of the Family Circle cartoon was erased. Mom was shaking her finger at Little Jeffy. We were supposed to write in what Mom could be saying.
I had no problem at all with this, because in Honduras the word "hodido" means rascal, scalliwag, and is slang, but in no way vulgar. My mother-in-law, who is a very proper person, uses it. So, it was the perfect word. Anyway, I wrote, "Que hodido, Jeffy!" Well, the teacher was walking around looking at people's work. When she got to me, I heard a big intake of breath and "Oh, my God, NO! You can't use that word!!" Puzzled, I looked up and asked why not, since it wasn't vulgar...she advised me that I had just had Mom calling Little Jeffy a "m*ther-f*..." I am very careful now when using Honduran slang around Mexicans...
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2006-09-07 02:48 pm (UTC)One of the things which really annoy me when watching some English-language news and documentaries is when they dub foreigners. You know, reporter interviews a guy on the streets of Gaza or a Professor in Moscow, and you hear the real person's voice for one second before an English voice-over, sometimes even with "Funny Accent", cuts in. Subtitle, people, don't steal the voice and language of the interviewed!
no subject
Date: 2006-09-07 07:18 pm (UTC)And, since we watch a fair number of foreign language films, we can see first hand how inaccurate even subtitles can be.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-08 04:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-08 06:24 pm (UTC)Sadly, my German by now probably *needs* subtitles, as it has been so long since I taught it or used it on a daily basis. Where I *can* pick up discrepancies (aside from English language to English subtitles) is in Spanish, which I've never formally studied. This is especially true in the translation of epithets. The American English movie is far more vulgar than the Spanish or Latin American censors allow, so the good, old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon oaths come out with the equivalent of "oh, darn."
no subject
Date: 2006-09-18 12:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-27 05:06 pm (UTC)I had no problem at all with this, because in Honduras the word "hodido" means rascal, scalliwag, and is slang, but in no way vulgar. My mother-in-law, who is a very proper person, uses it. So, it was the perfect word. Anyway, I wrote, "Que hodido, Jeffy!" Well, the teacher was walking around looking at people's work. When she got to me, I heard a big intake of breath and "Oh, my God, NO! You can't use that word!!" Puzzled, I looked up and asked why not, since it wasn't vulgar...she advised me that I had just had Mom calling Little Jeffy a "m*ther-f*..." I am very careful now when using Honduran slang around Mexicans...
no subject
Date: 2006-09-28 02:07 am (UTC)