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....
I don’t have any specific examples, but the things that don’t translate well are usually either jokes relying on an understanding of the culture or wordplay.
This is typically either solved with a TL note explaining the situation, or the whole joke is replaced with something else.
It was a common issue with anime localization in the 90s, especially when it came to media for children.
The “jelly donuts” from pokemon were actually onigiri, but the translators thought that American children wouldn’t know what a rice ball was, so they just called them jelly donuts.
In Sailor Moon’s case, the network would not let them show a full-out lesbian couple in a cartoon for children, so they were rewritten in the dub to be cousins instead. Standard 90s homophobia aside, that one was especially egregious because you could very clearly tell they had a romantic relationship, so it just made them look like incestuous lesbians instead.
Oh yeah, Japan is a bit weird that way, or it might be more accurate to say that the west is weird.
The anti-gay sentiment you see in conservatives in the west largely stems from Judeo-Christian doctrine.
In Japan, Abrahamic religions are in the extreme minority so oftentimes homosexuality isn’t seen as a sin but rather just something that differs from the norm.
However, Japanese society is also more intolerant to differences, so instead homosexuality ends up in this weird grey area where it’s used mostly for drama or humor in the media, but in real life it’s very much a case of “don’t ask, don’t tell”
what are some of the most glaring and significant mistranslations in movies? add spoiler tags if necessary, please.
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....
Floppy disks were high-tech weapons once (files.mastodon.social)