I just finished watching the Argentine movie Nueve reinas (Nine Queens), which I heartily recommend to all lovers of con/heist movies — I figured out the scam in House of Games pretty quickly, but this one kept me guessing till the end. But for LH purposes what matters is an infuriating problem with the subtitles. For whatever reason, the software that put them on the screen couldn’t handle accents (mind you, this is a Spanish-language movie), so people named Sebastián, Fabián, and Cárdenas wound up in the subtitles as Sebastin, Fabin, and Crdenas. Crdenas! You’d think somebody along the way would have noticed!
¡Oño!
¿noño?
Es difcil, el espaol.
Cllate, hombre! Dios mo! Qu brbaro!
Dios mo!
I guess that sort of problem is less likely to be caught if it is a result of your display not being compatible with how the relevant characters are encoded in the text-based subtitle file provided with the movie, than if it’s the sort of subtitle who’s appearance is set before distribution.
Were you watching with English subtitles or Spanish subtitles?
Were you watching with English subtitles or Spanish subtitles?
“ (mind you, this is a Spanish-language movie)”
That suggests, to me at least, that the subtitles were English. As English typically lacks the acute accents common in Spanish, an act of extreme Anglicization caused those accents, and the associated letters, to vanish.
For example, if the original were rápido, instead of writing rapido, the software would display rpido. ¡Qué asco!
What cuchuflete said. I was watching it on the Criterion Channel, so I presume it’s the best version available.
(mind you, this is a Spanish-language movie)”
That suggests, to me at least, that the subtitles were English.
Not to me. I always watch Spanish language movies with Spanish subtitles – because I can read Spanish fluently but sometimes struggle to follow spoken Spanish at speed, especially if it is an accent that is different from the Columbian soap opera standard I learned in school. One of the nice benefits of Netflix, if you are a polyglot reader, is that you can watch foreign language movies with the appropriate foreign language subtitles- so Romanian subtitles for Romanian movies, Polish for Polish,* etc. Not sure if Criterion offers that.
*or get crazy and watch Romanian with Polish subtitles.
I watch trash anglophone TV at double speed with English subtitles; a trick I learned from Microserfs
One of my memories of my days roaming around Europe in the early 1970s was staying at my cousin’s apartment near Rotterdam, drinking beer with her husband and watching Bonanza dubbed in German with Dutch subtitles.
Stranger on horseback to Hoss Cartwright: “Also, wo finde ich die Ponderosa?”
It continues to boggle my mind (and cause me frequent headaches in my professional life) that Excel does not use utf-8 encoding by default.
JB: Vous espériez que je parlerais, Goldfinger?
AG: Non, M Bond! J’espère que vous mourrez!
JB: Erwarten Sie von mir, dass ich rede?
AG: ˥Nein, ˦Mr. ˧Bond! ˦Ich er˩warte von Ihnen, dass Sie ˥˧sterben!
(I’ve tried to spell out the intonation with IPA tone letters. It’s different from the original for no discernible reason and doesn’t fit the facial expression very well.)
Bonanza dubbed in German with Dutch subtitles.
Foreign films and shows are normally dubbed on German TV and in German cinemas (except for art-house films, which are sometimes shown in the original with subtitles). Dutch TV, OTOH, usually shows them in the original with subtitles, so what you saw was unusual (I guess they acquired the show from the German right holders). Back in my youth, friends sometimes organized showings of films we wanted to watch in the original using copies videotaped from Dutch TV.
Re Bonanza, which was big in Germany in the 70s, I don’t remember any episodes, but I can still hum the intro music – very catchy.
I just watched The Death of Stalin dubbed into Bulgarian. It was eerie — in the original film all the actors use their normal English accents, and/but {ала} the dubbers used Bulgarian communist terms, rater than Soviet ones.
and/but {ала}
“and yet …” is one way to render that in English.
the dubbers used Bulgarian communist terms, rater than Soviet ones.
Are you up to an example or two ? Do the differences reflect ideological distinctions ? I thought all communists were required to think, speak and look the same, with beards and fiercely glinting eyes. Except for Rosa Luxemburg.
> I thought all communists were required to think, speak and look the same, with beards and fiercely glinting eyes. Except for Rosa Luxemburg.
One of my favourite bands is The Murder of Rosa Luxemburg — download The Beard is Immortal if you can find it on a torrent.
EDIT: I’m very much anti-communist. I guess I’m an anarchist, and I admire Rosa Luxemburg.
– mon semblable, – mon frère!
Stu Claton : Do the differences reflect ideological distinctions — I’m not sure — for example товарищ has a different weight from другар. They went with “drugar/ko/jat/kata”, which is normal as the film is originally in English and comrade has a different weight from both другар and товарищ.
Товарищ was commonly translated into Bulgarian as другар, but I think the words have different connotations. Also, I noticed a slip-up in the translation when [I think] Khrushchov addresses the pianist that will play on Stalin’s funeral as другарю rather than другарко — search and replace error I think.
Having them say товарищ instead of другар would be silly anyway — the charm of the film when I first saw it is that the actors speak their natural English accents — having them insert Russian words in the Bulgarian dub would have ruined it. But There were still some Russianisms that slipped through, especially in Zhukov’s rants.
The best scene IMO is when they are standing at wake and everyone is shocked when the bishops come in and Khrushchov asks Beria* “did you also invite Nazis”. Then there’s some shuffling — seriously you have to see it. What follows is comedy gold, I’m not spoiling it.
*EDIT: Not Beria, Beria is upstairs with Svetlana, someone else.
** EDIT2 — it is Beria, I’m confusing two scenes.
Yes, the whole movie is full of comedy gold.
As a speaker of British English, I have been known to watch American popular drama with English subtitles so that I don’t miss the sense of rapid colloquial speech.
languagehat : “Yes, the whole movie is full of comedy gold.”
Well, except for all the other scenes involving Beria.
Not really the original: movies originally in widescreen format were broadcast in 4:3 versions that visually ruined them. Apparently they used versions originally destined for US TV — I remember one movie where it was obvious the dialogue had been censored (swear words replaced by “harmless” substitutes obviously spoken by a different actor).
Still on TV in the 90s. (I never watched.)
As a speaker of British English, I have been known to watch American popular drama with English subtitles so that I don’t miss the sense of rapid colloquial speech.
As an American, I do the same thing in reverse.
Re Bonanza, I can remember seeing old episodes of Gunsmoke as dubbed into German (and renamed “Rauchende Colts,” i.e. “Smoking Colts”) in ’82. I was far enough south that IIRC we got tv channels from Switzerland and Austria as well as West-Germany-proper tv, and I don’t recall which one was showing it.
The only thing I remember of Bonanza is that the patriarch had three sons who weirdly seemed to be of approximately the same age he was and that there were no women in that family at all. Even as a child I thought this was rather weird.
@ulr: I never watched a lot of Bonanza, but I got that the premise was that all three of Lorne Green’s wives had died prematurely, leaving one son each. Dan Blocker, who played my favorite son Hoss, died young, and the show eventually went on with just one of the three original sons.
The actor who played the father, Lorne Greene Sr., was born in 1915. Two of the actors playing the sons were born in 1928; the third, Michael Landon, in 1936.
I had a lot of trouble watching English and American TV in the Netherlands during my six-week house swap because of those Dutch subtitles: my instinct was to ignore the vocal track and try (and fail) to read the subtitles.
I can remember seeing old episodes of Gunsmoke as dubbed into German (and renamed “Rauchende Colts,” i.e. “Smoking Colts”) in ’82. I was far enough south that IIRC we got tv channels from Switzerland and Austria as well as West-Germany-proper tv, and I don’t recall which one was showing it
I don’t know about Austria and Switzerland, but it was definitely shown on German TV; I remember watching episodes as a kid.