what are some of the most glaring and significant mistranslations in movies? add spoiler tags if necessary, please.
I watch a lot of foreign language films, and read a lot of translated literature and I always try to imagine what I'm missing out on by not reading or taking in media in it's original language.
In film, are there some significant mistranslations that has led non-native speakers of the language to interpret something different from the movie?
In John Wick, when he interrogates Francis the bouncer outside the Russian nightclub, John asks him if he's lost weight. Francis responds, in Russian, "yes, 23 kilograms," but the subtitle converts it to "over 60 pounds." This completely destroys the fact that Francis was using code to tell John there were 23 guards inside.
One of my favorites is in Volver. The woman murders her husband and had to come to the door when a neighbor knocks. She has blood splattered on her face.
The English translation has her explain “I cut myself,” while the original Spanish is a much funnier “women’s troubles,” which better explains the confused look on the neighbor’s face.
There's the one in Shang Chi where his dad says something like "Be careful how you speak to me. I've lived ten of your lifetimes." in Chinese to another high ranking person, but what he really said was, "I've eaten more salt than you have eaten rice." which sounds much cooler IMO.
This makes me think of Pokémon and Sailor Moon. The jelly donut and calling a lesbian couple cousins respectively. I wonder what, in movies, has been edited to either make it recognizable to western viewers or to avoid controversy?
I'm not familiar with either of those incidents, can you elaborate?
Yes, I can't imagine how many countless times mistranslations have occurred and audiences in one country think something means something it just doesn't mean.
It was a common issue with anime localization in the 90s, especially when it came to media for children.
The "jelly donuts" from pokemon were actually onigiri, but the translators thought that American children wouldn't know what a rice ball was, so they just called them jelly donuts.
In Sailor Moon's case, the network would not let them show a full-out lesbian couple in a cartoon for children, so they were rewritten in the dub to be cousins instead. Standard 90s homophobia aside, that one was especially egregious because you could very clearly tell they had a romantic relationship, so it just made them look like incestuous lesbians instead.
There was an episode of Homeland, where they hired a graffiti artist to paint some Arabic language slogans as set dressing. The slogans the artist chose? "Homeland is racist", “Homeland is a joke, and it didn’t make us laugh”, “#blacklivesmatter”, “Homeland is NOT a series”, “The situation is not to be trusted”, “This show does not represent the views of the artists”
As that guy....I checked with 2 separate Asian folks I had connections with through work. And an image search online. I'm very confident that I still shouldn't have got the kanji tats. 20 years afterwards.
Ram-Don was completely made up for the film for English speaking audiences. They actually say Jjapaguri (or Chapaguri) which is a portmanteau of two types of Korean instant noodles, Chapagetti and Neoguri. The subtitle translator found that Jjapaguri was difficult for English speakers to understand, but they would likely be familiar with the Japanese noodle dishes, Ramen and Udon, so she combined them into Ram-Don.
It's doesn't change the meaning too much, but I do take some issue with going from Korean to Japanese in the translation, kind of lumping different types of Asians under the same umbrella, especially since Jjapaguri is a uniquely Korean Dish. But I know people have differing opinions on this.
BONUS: That whole scene also subtlety illustrates the film's theme of classism as well because Jjapaguri, is more of a cheap, comfort food. But Mrs. Park insists that sirloin is added, changing it into this fancy meal. There is another mistranslation here. Mrs. Park actually calls it "Hanu" (loosely meaning premium beef, similar to Japanese Wagyu in its reverence). Using sirloin, while not being a cheap cut of beef, doesn't accurately reflect the significance of using such a high quality meat. The fact that the family can afford to use such premium beef in instant noodles so casually shows how wealthy they are. Jjapaguri is not an marker of wealth, but putting Hanu in it, definitely is.
I did read that they regretted using sirloin because it doesn't have the same effect, but I do kinda wish they had done something other than ram-don. I mean, just call it instant noodles. I feel like most English speaking audiences would understand that, probably moreso than even Ramen or Udon, and especially making up a word.
My toddler has been watching Moana a lot, and it's got me to notice a deeply annoying phenomenon.
In the flashback vision scene, the voyagers are singing, and it's subtitled "[SINGING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE]". Now, if we're not meant to outright understand what they're singing, it's fine if they don't add English subtitles, but I feel like it's deeply disrespectful to not add subtitles in the language in which they are actually singing.
I've noticed versions of this in a few other places, where the subtitle just reads something like "[SPEAKING IN FRENCH]" instead of an actual French subtitle. If the viewer speaks French, then they would understand the audio, and if they were hard of hearing but could read French, then they would understand the subtitle, but they're not going to get a bit of benefit out of SPEAKING IN FRENCH. It annoys the shit out of me.
I feel the same way every time I see that. It's too common, and I think sometimes the writer or director is purposely not revealing something integral to the plot, but usually it's just lazy production.
Someone was getting hanged yesterday in a TV show I was watching and he was desperately shouting his last words before being winched up, but the subs just said "speaking in French"
I don't have any specific examples, but the things that don't translate well are usually either jokes relying on an understanding of the culture or wordplay.
This is typically either solved with a TL note explaining the situation, or the whole joke is replaced with something else.
I really wish they would just put a note in more often. I find it interesting and you learn a little about the culture when they show little jokes or sayings unique to them.