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Hiya! Every so often I'll randomly put on a movie I've seen in a different language track for curiosity's sake and I thought I'd make a space here if there's anyone else like me who might want to just chat about whatever interesting things we've might have stumbled upon. In general I've always been interested in how movies translate, both in language and how they're presented or come across, between cultures, so any talk of that nature is welcome here: remakes, poster or video artwork, advertizing, it's all good here. I wish I had a more interesting example to get the ball rolling, but I just got the itch to talk about this when watching Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter in Spanish - or should I say Viernes 13 - El capítulo final? (this despite the fact that in many Spanish speaking countries it's Tuesday the 13th (Martes 13) that's the traditionally unlucky day) and I felt like I was watching the world's bloodiest Mexican novella. Nothing spectacularly different, but I did find the phrase "dead gently caress" (used about three dozen times in this movie, basically meaning "bad lay") translated to something like "dead penis", and I learned about the word "JODENTE". Also, they had the usually mute Jason make lots of lurching "rrrrrrraaarrrrr.....grrrrrr" sounds which may not necessarily be a cultural thing, but I still found it an interesting decision and I was surprised how different this made his character seem.
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Jun 4, 2014 01:39
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ClearAirTurbulence posted:A more subtle example of this is the Disney dub of Kiki's Delivery Service. There's no explanation for the bells in the trees, the parting scene between Kiki and her dad is completely different, and Kiki acts like a brat a few times in the English dub while in the original she's never rude and almost always polite. There's also the cat thing, but I think expecting American audiences to handle a male cat who sounds like a female might be a bit much for a children's movie. There's definitely a "thing" in the west about appealing to kids' mischievous sides (and making teens more comfortable watching) with kid/family movies. See: DreamWorks face, "angry Kirby", etc., that simply doesn't fly in Asia. I remember hearing in Japan they had to push Lisa as the star of The Simpsons because folks would be too put off by Bart's behavior.
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Jun 4, 2014 19:53
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JoeCL posted:The Simpsons would be an interesting case study in this sort of thing because its been so widely exported. Apparently there is even an Arabian version. How do you work around the fact that the main character is an alcoholic in a culture where alcohol is illegal? The Simpsons has a huge international presence, which I'm sure is helped by the appearance of the characters (even those with darker skin you could say are merely a darker shade of yellow). The Arabic version, titled Al Shamshoon is one of the few that didn't take, though according to Wikipedia a Pakistani-specific version is popular in that country, and the English-version of the show (with Arabic subtitles) has a cult Middle Eastern following, but it's not widely aired. Simpsons Wikia posted:In addition to being dubbed in Arabic (with subtitles provided for shots including written English, such as the chalkboards), references to alcohol (Duff Beer & Moe's Tavern), pork (bacon & hot dogs), and numerous other themes have been deleted or significantly modified. For instance, Homer drinks soda-pop instead of beer and eats beef sausages as opposed to pork and all references to Moe's Tavern were cut. I imagine they just didn't bother with any episodes that spent a lot of time in Moe's bar or dealt with drunkenness or alcoholism. I also found it interesting that the Simpsons family were portrayed as Islamic and most of the major characters were understood to be Arabic, but the show still took place in the US, the idea being they lived in an American town with a major Arabic population, like a Chinatown or little Italy. Wikipedia has a lot of little tidibts about international versions of The Simpsons and how there are two versions of Spanish Simpsons (one for Latin America and one for Spain) as well as two versions of French Simpsons (one for France and one for Quebec). There's an academic journal article-turned-book-chapter titled "Dubbing The Simpsons: How Groundskeeper Willie Lost His Kilt in Sardinia" that outlines some of the hoops translators had to go through when creating an Italian version of the show, and uses the Groundskeeper Willie character as a case study: the character in his original form is a conglomeration of Scottish stereotypes (through the eyes of Americans). Italy, though, doesn't have the same stereotypes for Scottish folks and so those in charge worried the character wouldn't make much sense; so they decided to make his character from the island of Sardinia, who the Italians have a similar stereotype as being rural, rustic and stubborn. This created a predicament when an episode had the characters actually fly to Scotland and meet Willie's family. The producers decided to just kind of go with it: Willie's family are Sardinians that live in Scotland (in fact, this might actually explain the kilts, bagpipes, etc. that Willie is sometimes seen with throughout the series that previously had just been an eccentric part of his personality in the Italian version).
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Jun 5, 2014 20:31
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Davros1 posted:Here's something I've always wondered. American studios will by the rights to foreign films and remake them for American audiences (The Ring, The Departed, etc) but does that happen the other way around? I'm not talking about unlicensed knock-offs (Turkish Star Wars, etc), but actual foreign studios by the rights to American films and then making their own version. Remakes of American movies aren't super common (as others have pointed out, largely because most foreign studios can't really compete with Hollywood production values) but remakes of American TV shows happen all the time. From what I've heard, the Russian version of Married With Children is one of the biggest hit TV shows of all time in that country. As for film, it's not quite a remake, but Japan has their own alternate Paranormal Activity 2. There's also a Japanese version of Sideways as well as a Chinese remake of What Women Want (this is available on Netflix Instant the last time I checked!).
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Jun 6, 2014 02:02
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Honest Thief posted:In Portugal the Die Hard movies tried to mantain a franchise going on by naming them Assault on ______, so the first was Assault on the Skyscrapper, the second Assault on the airport; but the third movie didn't involve an assault, so we literally just kept the english name and translated the subtitle. I would have thought Assault on New York would have been a pretty easy one in that sequence. The last one could have been Assault on Russia, though Live Free or Die Hard/4.0 would be a toughie. On another note, Americans wound up getting their own "every zany comedy has to have a similar title for whatever dumb reason" with all the <Blank> Movies over the years, I wonder if that naming convention held overseas.
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Jun 6, 2014 21:28
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K. Waste posted:That, my friends, is the Japanese poster for Monster King Godzilla, the Japanese dub of the international market re-edit of Gojira. Most of what I'm about to write is apocryphal, so just know that I'm printing the legend. You just sort of jump right into this story while I'm still trying to process that they made a Japanese version of an international version of a Japanese movie... 
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Jun 7, 2014 00:41
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wdarkk posted:They did that twice for Final Fantasy games, although I think that was at least in part a "we got this content ready in time for the EU release but not the Japanese one" thing. This reminds me of how Super Mario Bros. 2--which in the US was actually a modification of an unrelated Japanese game that replaced the existing characters with Mario and friends--was released in Japan as "Super Mario USA". And THAT reminds me of Street Fighter: The Movie... not the movie itself, but the videogame based off the movie... which was based off the videogame... But I digress! Desperado Bones posted:It's "jodete" without that "n", for those goons that don't know...that's the translation for "gently caress you/gently caress off". Mierda! Friday the 13th The Final Chapter in espanol also taught me "sucia!" I wasn't kidding about the whole 'feeling like a novella' thing.
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Jun 7, 2014 18:20
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