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Subtitling is really hard even at the best of times, especially when working off only a script without seeing the program. (This is, incredibly, apparently com

Subtitling is really hard even at the best of times, especially when working off only a script without seeing the program. (This is, incredibly, apparently common practice, because it's faster.) Not only do you need to translate faithfully, but you need to mercilessly crunch it down into a few words that will be understandable if flashes onto the screen for a few seconds. There's a famous blooper in the Finnish translation of Star Wars where the phrase "Maybe it's another drill" is rendered as the type of drill that cuts holes (pora), not drill as in exercise (harjoitus). https://archive.is/3Lyem/bcd9c7ef4efb3ff594bb5dba1d515dc0182deaef.jpg https://archive.is/3Lyem/bcd9c7ef4efb3ff594bb5dba1d515dc0182...

Mediterraneo10 8y ago
The translation blooper that has stood out most to me is also from Finland. Once I was watching a DVD of The Royal Tenenbaums with Finnish subtitles. As a character points to a beaten-up old car and talks about the dents in it, the Finnish translation repeatedly shows hammaslääkari, ‘dentist’.
skgoa 8y ago
It's not just subtitles. The german dubs of both Simpsons and Futurama are infamous for being extremely literal translations.
- tjoff 8y ago
  At least they are done by humans... The English word wear can mean (among other things) something that you have on you or that something is worn down from usage. Guess which interpretation google used in the play store when translating Google Wear to Swedish? Automated translations in UI:s, just don't. You will without question make a fool out of yourself and seem incompetent.
- thesimon 8y ago
  Pulp Fiction is probably also a good example for this. The famous joke >"Three tomatoes are walking down the street -- a poppa tomato, a momma tomato, and a little baby tomato. Baby tomato starts lagging behind. Poppa tomato gets angry, goes over to the baby tomato, and squishes him... and says, 'Catch up.' " Instead of "Catch up", they translated "Ketchup". But as "Ketchup" doesn't sound like the German "Catch up", it sounded like an anti-joke.
  - brusch64 8y ago
    Yeah this joke didn't make any sense in German. The problem I see with this kind of jokes is that they can't be translated to German. e.g. another joke like this Did you hear about the country with the fastest growing capital? It's Ireland - every day it's Dublin. I can't think of any way how to translate this joke so it would be funny in German. But I have a feeling that these word play jokes aren't used much in German speaking countries anyways. Most of the humor is about people acting different or surprising.
    - pluma 8y ago
      As a fellow German: I don't think puns are very popular in German (except for intentionally cheesy dad jokes). The closest equivalent I can think of are sentences where the joke lies in using a different word at the end than the (likely, extremely crass) one the audience expects. These tend to work better in German than in English because of the sentence structure, I think. EDIT: Example of a dad joke pun: "Was sagt ein Sachse auf dem Weihnachtsmarkt in New York? Ä Tännschen, please." -- "What does a man from Saxony say at the Christmas market in New York? A fir, please." The joke is that "ein Tännchen", "a (small) fir", when pronounced with a Saxony accent, sounds a bit like the English word "attention". The joke works because most Germans know the phrase "attention, please" from movies, vacations and/or multilingual announcements. I believe this particular joke was invented some time in the 60s or 70s and ceased being funny about two seconds after, but that wouldn't stop "your dad" from using it.
      - brusch64 8y ago
        I think this is pretty universal between languages that puns and double meanings are hard or impossible to translate.
    - PSZD 8y ago
      Reading Nietzsche translations recently, German does seem to have a considerable capacity for allusion and double meanings that are very hard to translate. Perhaps not in modern or common usage, or nearly as much as English.

Mediterraneo10 8y ago

The translation blooper that has stood out most to me is also from Finland. Once I was watching a DVD of The Royal Tenenbaums with Finnish subtitles. As a character points to a beaten-up old car and talks about the dents in it, the Finnish translation repeatedly shows hammaslääkari, ‘dentist’.

skgoa 8y ago

It's not just subtitles. The german dubs of both Simpsons and Futurama are infamous for being extremely literal translations.

tjoff 8y ago
At least they are done by humans... The English word wear can mean (among other things) something that you have on you or that something is worn down from usage. Guess which interpretation google used in the play store when translating Google Wear to Swedish? Automated translations in UI:s, just don't. You will without question make a fool out of yourself and seem incompetent.
thesimon 8y ago
Pulp Fiction is probably also a good example for this. The famous joke >"Three tomatoes are walking down the street -- a poppa tomato, a momma tomato, and a little baby tomato. Baby tomato starts lagging behind. Poppa tomato gets angry, goes over to the baby tomato, and squishes him... and says, 'Catch up.' " Instead of "Catch up", they translated "Ketchup". But as "Ketchup" doesn't sound like the German "Catch up", it sounded like an anti-joke.
- brusch64 8y ago
  Yeah this joke didn't make any sense in German. The problem I see with this kind of jokes is that they can't be translated to German. e.g. another joke like this Did you hear about the country with the fastest growing capital? It's Ireland - every day it's Dublin. I can't think of any way how to translate this joke so it would be funny in German. But I have a feeling that these word play jokes aren't used much in German speaking countries anyways. Most of the humor is about people acting different or surprising.
  - pluma 8y ago
    As a fellow German: I don't think puns are very popular in German (except for intentionally cheesy dad jokes). The closest equivalent I can think of are sentences where the joke lies in using a different word at the end than the (likely, extremely crass) one the audience expects. These tend to work better in German than in English because of the sentence structure, I think. EDIT: Example of a dad joke pun: "Was sagt ein Sachse auf dem Weihnachtsmarkt in New York? Ä Tännschen, please." -- "What does a man from Saxony say at the Christmas market in New York? A fir, please." The joke is that "ein Tännchen", "a (small) fir", when pronounced with a Saxony accent, sounds a bit like the English word "attention". The joke works because most Germans know the phrase "attention, please" from movies, vacations and/or multilingual announcements. I believe this particular joke was invented some time in the 60s or 70s and ceased being funny about two seconds after, but that wouldn't stop "your dad" from using it.
    - brusch64 8y ago
      I think this is pretty universal between languages that puns and double meanings are hard or impossible to translate.
  - PSZD 8y ago
    Reading Nietzsche translations recently, German does seem to have a considerable capacity for allusion and double meanings that are very hard to translate. Perhaps not in modern or common usage, or nearly as much as English.