3 ms·
This goes beyond the point at hand. I'm not necessarily disagreeing (I'm not from the US), but we're discussing the compulsive need to translate culture, presen
by babarock 15y ago
This goes beyond the point at hand. I'm not necessarily disagreeing (I'm not from the US), but we're discussing the compulsive need to translate culture, present in the US but in other parts of the world (like aforementioned french-speaking world).
Trying to define the racial "identity" of what's American and who consider it such is a slight straw man. Regardless of who is or isn't American, and what languages they speak, we're discussing the need for "original" titles.
Here in France, referring to the movie by its title "Das Leben Der Anderen" would raise eyebrows at best, it would often get you dismissed as pedantic douche. In other parts of the world, it's a given that you just don't translate titles.
- carguy1983 15y agoIt's not a strawman, it's the exact argument that freehunter posed (that americans never see 'foreigners'). I'm refuting it by saying no, that's not true, and the global idea of what an american vs. what a foreigner is cloudy at best.
- freehunter 15y agoI didn't mean to imply that Americans never encounter foreigners, but that they never encounter an area where they have to speak another language and deal with another foreign culture. Think of it in this context: when I travel to Illinois, the people there are still American and still speak English. When a Danish person travels to Belgium (same distance, ~400 miles), they are now in a country where they speak Dutch/German/French and have a Belgian culture. There are almost 10 million Belgians in Belgium, there are just over 350,000 in the US. Of those, how many speak French, how many speak Dutch, and how many speak German? I'll bet almost all of them speak English.