[Multilingual Monday] Perepea

[aadroma]

I've said, repeatedly, that translation is just as much of an art as it is a science. It's one thing to directly translate, say, lines of dialogue in a story, sentence for sentence. But does the MEANING remain? What is said is as important as why it is said and what remains unsaid, so indeed, conveying that same "feeling" in another language can

Comments

[ciddyguy]

Can't offer you any more examples of what you are looking for but have you noticed in the Cool Whip clips, the Spanish clip is reversed? I mean, they play the clip reversed so left now appears right and cool whip is now in reverse.

[aadroma]

Yeah, I don't know why, but a bunch of the clips are flipped for some odd reason. :: shrug ::

[bluebear2]

It's because the adjective comes after the noun in Spanish.

[gorkabear]

Yes... That clip is from la Sexta, hence the TV channel symbol is flipped over, as it's a 6

The word game is ridiculous, so it's not a good translation. First of all, cool whip is not "nata batida" and Steve is actually saying "nata Vatida", with a V that doesn't exist in Spanish.

[gorkabear]

Every TV cartoon gets dubbed in Spain. All of them. This is perpetuating the former dictatorship habit of censorship, so most people can't even read subtitles.

As you point out, sometimes the jokes are well translated, some are not. Some need to be completely redone. I'm thinking of Austin Powers, where Goldmember gets a fake Dutch accent like a Johann Cruyff (former FC Barcelona manager) impersonator.

It's also very irregular. Generally speaking, The Simpsons and Family Guy get usually good translations, but the cultural differences can't be translated by no means. I mean, I didn't know what cool whip was until 2 years ago, and I studied quite a lot of English

[aadroma]

I mean, I didn't know what cool whip was until 2 years ago, and I studied quite a lot of English

Kind of like how I wasted 40 minutes trying to explain to an Israeli what a Fruit Roll-Up was. :: laugh :: Some things you just have to be surrounded by, or grow up with, or the references just don't make sense. I'm amazed shows like The Simpsons or Family Guy EVER make any sense as they're so loaded with American pop culture references.

[gorkabear]

Well, as the major superpower in the world, the US have expanded a lot of its culture.

I mean, the obvious things are McD, cigarettes and Coca Cola. But you have to count that most of the TV and cinema production is controlled by big American corporations. Hence when we see a happy family, we see an American family. Spaniards never had houses with two stories and a garden around, basically because we live in limited space and have little water, yet you have myriads of terraces now to mimic what people see on their screens and becomes desirable.

That's just one aspect, but I'd say that 75% of the things that you have in cartoons also exist here, mostly adapted from the invading US culture, as the US is the current world emperor. I mean, we got Latin from the Roman Empire, so it's not a weird process :)