Thursday 12 April 2007
I was flipping through the channels last night, and happened upon the movie "8 Mile" (sadly, the only thing a lot of people know about Detroit) at a point when Eminem was swearing (the likelihood of which is pretty good, after all.) I was very surprised to note that they wrote the curses out in the subtitles, but then blanked them out. I'd never seen this before - usually they just write a non-offensive word like "maldición" (curse!) or whatnot. I wondered if it was a request from the movie-makers to the translating company, to get a better feel for the lyrics, or what.
I won't translate what it says here, because it's pretty rude. But I thought I'd take a moment to comment on the TV translating here. It's terrible! I like to read the subtitles to pick up new words in Spanish, and I notice two or three mistakes every show! Sometimes it's a small mistake, you can tell that the translator just heard wrong, wrote the word for sat instead of set, or something like that. But sometimes it's just wrong, just absolutely the opposite meaning! I sometimes wonder how Spanish-speakers can follow the story line when this happens at a crucial point, which is often does.
Also, the Spanish used to translate it is often very very basic, very neutral. I would guess that this is because they want to broadcast it in many different countries and regions, and so don't want to commit to one style of slang. But it's strange seeing, for example, the very colorful, slangy, casual, inner-city English of "8 Mile" turned into completely neutral Spanish. "Yo, wassup dog?" becomes "¿Cómo estás, amigo?"
I was flipping through the channels last night, and happened upon the movie "8 Mile" (sadly, the only thing a lot of people know about Detroit) at a point when Eminem was swearing (the likelihood of which is pretty good, after all.) I was very surprised to note that they wrote the curses out in the subtitles, but then blanked them out. I'd never seen this before - usually they just write a non-offensive word like "maldición" (curse!) or whatnot. I wondered if it was a request from the movie-makers to the translating company, to get a better feel for the lyrics, or what.
I won't translate what it says here, because it's pretty rude. But I thought I'd take a moment to comment on the TV translating here. It's terrible! I like to read the subtitles to pick up new words in Spanish, and I notice two or three mistakes every show! Sometimes it's a small mistake, you can tell that the translator just heard wrong, wrote the word for sat instead of set, or something like that. But sometimes it's just wrong, just absolutely the opposite meaning! I sometimes wonder how Spanish-speakers can follow the story line when this happens at a crucial point, which is often does.
Also, the Spanish used to translate it is often very very basic, very neutral. I would guess that this is because they want to broadcast it in many different countries and regions, and so don't want to commit to one style of slang. But it's strange seeing, for example, the very colorful, slangy, casual, inner-city English of "8 Mile" turned into completely neutral Spanish. "Yo, wassup dog?" becomes "¿Cómo estás, amigo?"
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