I watch a lot of foreign language films, and read a lot of translated literature and I always try to imagine what I’m missing out on by not reading or taking in media in it’s original language.
In film, are there some significant mistranslations that has led non-native speakers of the language to interpret something different from the movie?
Thanks!
My toddler has been watching Moana a lot, and it’s got me to notice a deeply annoying phenomenon.
In the flashback vision scene, the voyagers are singing, and it’s subtitled “[SINGING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE]”. Now, if we’re not meant to outright understand what they’re singing, it’s fine if they don’t add English subtitles, but I feel like it’s deeply disrespectful to not add subtitles in the language in which they are actually singing.
I’ve noticed versions of this in a few other places, where the subtitle just reads something like “[SPEAKING IN FRENCH]” instead of an actual French subtitle. If the viewer speaks French, then they would understand the audio, and if they were hard of hearing but could read French, then they would understand the subtitle, but they’re not going to get a bit of benefit out of SPEAKING IN FRENCH. It annoys the shit out of me.
I feel the same way every time I see that. It’s too common, and I think sometimes the writer or director is purposely not revealing something integral to the plot, but usually it’s just lazy production.
Someone was getting hanged yesterday in a TV show I was watching and he was desperately shouting his last words before being winched up, but the subs just said “speaking in French”