Discussion about differences

Aug 21, 2011 12:13

I was writing something to Karen B. Jones about the pronounciation of Metrocity, when I thought about this: what are the differences between the original jokes in English and the versions in other languages of Megamind's movie? Often, fanfiction writers specify that English isn't there first language. So, I'm not the only one in this community who ( Read more... )

discussion: international

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phenixia_sama August 21 2011, 16:46:15 UTC
Mmmm... Poor translation? I don't know. The French canadian version is really close to the original one, with few exceptions. But maybe that was a part of the problem, here. It's always a challenge to adapt the jokes from a language to another.

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phenixia_sama August 22 2011, 13:59:50 UTC
I thought about that over night and I came up with another possibility. After all the comments on this topic, I think that translation isn't the problem for the poor performance. I think that maybe, it's the public targeted.

The movie is basically made for children. But curiously, adults liked it even more. Teens and adults have the maturity needed to understand the consequences of bad treatments and of our own choices.

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phenixia_sama August 22 2011, 13:32:07 UTC
I'm glad to learn that you liked the French version. It confirms what I thought: only French canadians don't like French versions of translation, as much as they don't like our versions... ^_^,

It's great to know that the emotions were kept and that many jokes were adaptated. Thank you for sharing those informations!

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sharelle August 21 2011, 17:23:57 UTC
Karen makes an excellent point. As a language teacher, I've seen the confusion that can be brought on not only by poor translations, but by direct, verbatim translations. My students always want to translate songs, for instance, and then wonder why the lyrics no longer rhyme. Or they'll ask why the words are different between the English version of a song and the Spanish version. What they often don't seem to realize is the fact that there are as many variations to language as there are people who use it.

For many of the jokes in Megamind to even work, it would take a very careful ear of a very careful translator to get it right - since so many of the jokes are based purely on word pronunciation. (Naturally, this is going to vary from place to place all over the world. As would vocabulary. And don't even get me started on slang and regional dialects that would come into play too!)

I've seen movies that do it very poorly (at least in Spanish): This one, for instance includes a segment where the main character suddenly develops ( ... )

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sevandor August 21 2011, 17:43:10 UTC
When I was in college, my major was Music and my primary instrument was Voice. My teacher was a wonderful woman who insisted that we sing songs in many languages - and that we learn enough of those languages to make our own translations of the original lyrics. She said that relying on a standard translation was bad for two related reasons: they were often wrong, done for lyrical rather than literal content, and thus had you putting emphasis in inappropriate places. She was a wise, wise woman, and was absolutely right. I have run across so many truly egregious mistranslations of songs both common and obscure, it isn't funny (though I have to admit, some of the "lyrical" rather than literal translations are. I've found entire verses of songs that had not one word in common between original and the standard translation). I do wonder if part of this carries over into translations of scripts. If the actors rely on someone else's translations and just read what they're given to collect a paycheck, there are bound to be some dumb ( ... )

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sharelle August 21 2011, 17:52:18 UTC
But it's a lot of work, and I imagine some people just don't feel it's worth the effort.

That's what I'm often afraid of. (And I've seen some rather unfortunate results.) As someone who works with language for a living, it bothers me that translations can often be viewed as a place to cut corners. To me, it's just as important as the visual element of the film - especially if studios want the movie that they worked so hard on to appeal to as wide an audience as possible! (Presentation, people!)

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phenixia_sama August 22 2011, 13:41:23 UTC
Sharelle and Sevandor both bring a new point: the rythm. They have to translate, yes, but it has to fit in the space the original language was, and even think about the movement of the character's lips. That brings another level to the challenge.

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polomitas August 21 2011, 17:29:57 UTC
Mmm... I don't have the movie yet (I'm a poor student/junk part-time employee -_-U, but I'll buy it, I promise!), but these are what I remember right now (in spanish-castilian)
Metro city joke is the same, Minion is Esbirro (in the dictionary translates it as "Henchman", I think it sounds more "evil".
Hal's dingo turns into a hyena. "Ollo" joke it's the same.
And I don't remember nothing more -_-U but there are more little things. I don't remember nothing poorly translated right now, but I can be wrong...

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sharelle August 21 2011, 17:34:40 UTC
I would think the "ollo" joke would work well in Spanish because of its similarity to the pronunciation of "hola." ("Metrocity," on the other hand, just doesn't fit well with "Ciudad de Metro.")

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polomitas August 21 2011, 22:07:09 UTC
I have to point out that I'm talking about the Spanish-Castilian version, in America they have their own version, which I think that it is quite different, but I don't listen yet!

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phenixia_sama August 22 2011, 13:45:59 UTC
Oh! It's true... the Spanish from America and the one from Spain isn'r the same! I nerver thought about that before. So there are 2 Spanish version and 2 French versions. How many other languages are doubles like that?

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polomitas August 21 2011, 17:39:20 UTC
Metrocity joke it's the same in English, because they not translated it.

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