Movies and Films
This is the forum for Movie and Film discussions. Again, our topic is naval warfare in WWII for the most part.
RE: Languages
Posted by:
J.T. McDaniel
()
Date: May 01, 2001 01:31PM
<HTML>The true classic may be \"Bonanza\" on Japanese television. Dan Blocker (Hoss) was voiced by a guy who sounded a little like a Japanese Don Knotts.
Americans prefer dubbed films mostly because of a lack of foreign language skills. Not at all surprising, when you consider that the entire continent north of the Mexican border is linguistically homogenous (with the exception of Quebec, where the majority are bi-lingual). And, frankly, American reading skills have deteriorated in the last few decades as most information media transitioned from a printed to an audio/visual format. (The internet may help to reverse this trend, but if the spelling on many web sites is an indication, it may not help all that much.)
Any dubbing, titles, or other efforts at translation are always going to leave something to be desired. Literal translations frequently sound awkward. \"I have the report to the captain given\" sounds terrible in English, but would be just fine in German, for instance. Idioms are even worse. The Yiddish \"kein hoch mir a chainik\" (lit: \"don\'t bang me a teapot.\") doesn\'t exactly convey \"Quit complaining\" in most other languages. Some languages, like Japanese, follow very formal grammatical patterns, with subject, object, direct object, and verb placement within a sentence dictated. (The verb is always last, making Japanese the bane of simultaneous translators.)
Some films have tried to compromise and use different languages for different characters, as in \"The Longest Day,\" or \"Tora! Tora! Tora!,\" where the characters spoke in their \"native\" languages and titles were supplied. (Which titles depended on where the film was being shown.) Others, like \"Hunt for Red October\" established the Russian characters in that language, then transitioned to English for the bulk of the film.
One thing I do not have a problem with is the idea of, say, a U-Boat crew in an English language film speaking American English. The question to ask, when considering, \"Why don\'t they have German accents?\" is probably, \"Do they speak with an accent when they\'re speaking German?\" If people are supposedly speaking their native language, they would probably not have an accent.
J.T. McDaniel
</HTML>
Americans prefer dubbed films mostly because of a lack of foreign language skills. Not at all surprising, when you consider that the entire continent north of the Mexican border is linguistically homogenous (with the exception of Quebec, where the majority are bi-lingual). And, frankly, American reading skills have deteriorated in the last few decades as most information media transitioned from a printed to an audio/visual format. (The internet may help to reverse this trend, but if the spelling on many web sites is an indication, it may not help all that much.)
Any dubbing, titles, or other efforts at translation are always going to leave something to be desired. Literal translations frequently sound awkward. \"I have the report to the captain given\" sounds terrible in English, but would be just fine in German, for instance. Idioms are even worse. The Yiddish \"kein hoch mir a chainik\" (lit: \"don\'t bang me a teapot.\") doesn\'t exactly convey \"Quit complaining\" in most other languages. Some languages, like Japanese, follow very formal grammatical patterns, with subject, object, direct object, and verb placement within a sentence dictated. (The verb is always last, making Japanese the bane of simultaneous translators.)
Some films have tried to compromise and use different languages for different characters, as in \"The Longest Day,\" or \"Tora! Tora! Tora!,\" where the characters spoke in their \"native\" languages and titles were supplied. (Which titles depended on where the film was being shown.) Others, like \"Hunt for Red October\" established the Russian characters in that language, then transitioned to English for the bulk of the film.
One thing I do not have a problem with is the idea of, say, a U-Boat crew in an English language film speaking American English. The question to ask, when considering, \"Why don\'t they have German accents?\" is probably, \"Do they speak with an accent when they\'re speaking German?\" If people are supposedly speaking their native language, they would probably not have an accent.
J.T. McDaniel
</HTML>
