Deutsche Sprache, schwere Sprache

[kahvi_elf]

During the last weeks on LJ the German language has become a topic in fandom posts. One reason is the unbelievable bad German in Grimm. I watched 6 episodes recently and I'm suprised I didn't bleed from my ears ... I guess because their pronounciation is really bad and you often don't understand the gibberish that's supposed to be some arcane and

Comments

[akkajemo]

I feel your pain!!! I don't watch Grimm, but I had a similar cringing moment many times during Fringe's first season, the worst one being a literal translation of "sun tanning lotion": Sonnen Gerbe Lotion. Wer will sich DAS denn bitte auf die Haut schmieren? Hahaha... Frage mich aber auch oft, ob es hier in LA nur Prop-Designer gibt, die per Babelfish uebersetzen anstatt mal ordentlich zu recherchieren... Ich denke, dass Deine "try to be amused"-Rangehensweise hier sehr gute Taktik ist, sonst verdirbt man sich zu viele Serien. ;)

[journal_ist]

Herrjee, Grimm... Habe den Pilot gesehen und konnte es kaum ertragen. Blutbaden?! Vermutlich aus (Blut-)Badenwürtemberg? :-( Kann doch eigentlich nicht so schwer sein, das vernünftig hin zu bekommen!

[frogspace]

What the hell is a "Vandgefecht"??? Jagerbar? Is that a bar where you can drink Jagertee???

A Jagerbar ist a Jagdbär aka a bear shapeshifter. A Vandgefecht? I have no idea. Maybe "Vand" as in the Danish "water" (Wiktionary says it's derived from the Old Norse vatn and the Proto-Germanic *watōr) and "gefecht" as in "combat"? That would make it a mean water creature. Or they mean "fechten" as in the Rotwelsch "betteln", but water begging doesn't seem to fit. Hmm.

det kan godt være

[kahvi_elf]

Or it's related to vöndr. I always thought that it's odd that vand (Wasser) and wand (Zauberstab)sound alike - although they mean different things.
A Jagerbar ist a Jagdbär aka a bear shapeshifter. So I always missunderstood "Snow White and Rose Red"? And will Grimm or Once upon a time adress Snow Whites bigamy? Did she divorce Prince Charming and then move in with her sister?
I also have to reread the Grimm stories - I don't know how I could have missed the tales about promiscous goats. Gives a whole new meaning to "goat-sucker" ....

[hiyami]

I just got out my age-old French editions of the X-Men, Dark Phoenix era, to check. And interestingly enough, in them Nightcrawler says DANKE and LIEBCHEN ;)
So the translators either knew this much German, or did at least this little research.

Though he's called "Diablo" by translators, so eh, you can't have everything...

[kahvi_elf]

I think the 70s and 80s were a lot different in matters of language. I thinks it's nice that they tried to make the X-Men more diverse at all ... and they thought the occasional word-dropping (like Wolverines "Bub" or Colossuses Russian) was cool. If they did that in todays comics I would cringe - but reading the old issues just make me giggle and feel nostalgic ^_^

Unfortunately I don#t have my old German X-men issues anymore (the "reboot" with Nightcrawler etc was actuallly my very first X-Men comic). My mum threw them all away when I went to university :-(
They kept most of the English names in German except for calling the comic "Gruppe X". I don't know how they decided whom to rename. We had Superman, Hulk, Batman, Daredevil, Captain America, Dr. Strange and Wonder Woman but also Gruppe X, Die Spinne, Die Rächer, Der Rote Blitz and Licht & Schatten (Cloak and Dagger).