Hi, I'm just rewatching TOS in TV and enjoying it very much, but since I watch a translated version, I began to wonder about some translating problems. For example the nickname "Bones": it is not really easy to translate. In German it's "Pille", but in other languages? I would love to know! Thanks
In Finnish, it's Bones. We don't get dubbing, we get subtitles, and generally speaking (that is, Harry Potter, LotR or other already thoroughly and imaginatively translated literary works excluded) it's not worth the trouble to try and change characters' names or nicknames if one both reads them and hears them spoken. A mismatch would be found jarring. Thus, Miles "Smiley" O'Brien also remains "Smiley" IIRC. (It does help that about 100% of the current generation is fluent in English here.) OTOH, every single piece of technobabble seems to get translated: we now have native words for phasers, warp drive, transporters and so forth. Timo Saloniemi
I think that fact #2 is in large part a result of #1. Both those things are also the case here in Serbia (and Croatia, and all of the former Yugoslavia): 1) subtitles are used; dubbing has, fortunately, never been used for anything but children cartoons, 2) most of the younger generations speak English more or less fluently or at least understand it well enough (a fact that's I've also heard pointed out by most of the foreigners I've met). As for the question from this thread, I've never seen TOS on TV, only TNG, DS9, VOY and ENT, but TOS movies were on TV a few times. I think it was just "Bones", no translation. "Kosti" would sound way too weird. And if memory serves, Urban's line in the new movie was translated with the English "Bones" added in parenthesis, which suggests that the translators assumed the audience was familiar with the nickname "Bones" in its original, English form.
Well, the original is the best and on DVD you have always the option to choose subtitles, but in some countries, like France, Italy or Spain, you will get everything in dubbing in TV, if you want it or not. However, even in subtitles some nicknames would be translated, wouldn't they? I am not sure a non native speaker will catch the meaning, even if they speak English
In Italian he's just called Bones, no translation. Growing up I often wondered why Kirk called his friends like that. I thought it was a second name or something. It was only when I was ushered into the great world of the Interweb that I finally found out. To go with the meaning, he would have been called Ossa, which sounds actually really macabre. Italy was always inconsistent with tech translations. Sometimes they kept the original word (phasers, warp, Starfleet), sometimes they translated them. Things is, sometimes they came out with unfortunate words, like fasatori for phasers, which is terrible and nonsensical. Luckily they used that just for a couple of movies. We also had klingoniani for a while, until they decided to call them just klingon. On the other hand, it always was (and still is) vulcaniani for vulcans. It did extended also to pronunciation, especially for TOS: Spock always fluctuated between "spouk" and "spaak", Kirk between "kerk" and "keerk" (we don't have many English vowel sounds in Italian). Well, dubbing is an art in itself. We have many excellent dubber-actors in Italy, and sometimes I just forget I'm not hearing the original voices. They are really good at that, and it makes watching movies much more easy, especially for old people. But sometimes they don't do a good job, in which case the movie becomes almost unwatchable.
Don't get me started about Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings in Italian. Abysmal translations. A drunk chimp with an Ouija board would have done better. Dumbledore was rechristened Silente. Wtf? Dumbledore is not silent. At all. Slytherin, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw? Serpeverde, Tassorosso and Corvonero (greensnake, redbadger and blackcrow). Why? Because. What about Rivendell in LotR? Gran Burrone (grand ravine). Ahah, those wacky elves!
Well, "vaiheinen" would be a nonsense word if not for its usage in TOS translations at least since the first round of reruns I saw, in the eighties. Vaihe is phase, but the "inen" ending refers to the root word possessing some quality, so vaiheinen is "that with phase" or "that in phase". Some comic books attempted to use "vaiheistaja", in which "istaja" either means the root word is a person practicing a profession, or then (in colloquial speech at least) it turns the root word into a machine performing an action (although it should technically be "istin" then, not "istaja", for the purists among us) - so it's the more direct translation and makes more sense, but it never caught on. Satisfied? I've heard nothing but praise for our Harry Potter translations so far, with nearly every name and nickname translated to a suitably humorous-fantastic Finnish equivalent, not necessarily literally but always in keeping with the spirit of the literary source. LotR divides opinions on minor details; some translations (of The Hobbit) go for "hobitti", while others Finnishize it further to "hoppeli", with comical overtones of hopping motion etc. The main body of LotR is not really Finnishized, so we still have entti for ent and so forth - we just add the lazy end vowel that is used for capping virtually all our nouns. Timo Saloniemi
Personally, i would prefer seeing anything in its original language with subtitles. I think it would lose so much if you didn't get the actual performer's voice. Anytime i watch a foreign film, i appreciate it so much more in it's original form. But thats just me.
No, it's not just you. Personally, I find dubbing, even if it happens to be rather good, an abomination and mutilation of the original work. Actors act with their voices as much as with their faces and bodies. (In theatre, they even act more with their voices.) It's practically the same as shooting the same script with different actors and then selling it as the same film/TV show. No, it is not. It is practically a remake, so why not call it so?
Well, dubbing can be fun, however and sometimes - rarely - it can even be better than original. There is one problem with subtitles, IMO. They are fine if you know the original language and you need just some support to understand it better. Since most films (especially s-f!) are in English, it's ok. But did you try to watch a subtitled film in a language you don't know at all? It becames tricky. Subtitles usually reduce the dialogue about 40-60% and they are not always made well. As for "Bones" - it's a funny name in English, isn't it? And has also a function to indicate the informal relationship between Kirk and McCoy. If you don't catch it (I didn't, first time I watched TOS!) you loose something. Another example: in the episode "Empath" there is a girl called "Gem" - first time I heard it, I thought it was a very stupid name and I didn't catch its meaning, which is actually very romantic.
^ The only subtitled films i've watched were ones where i didnt know the spoken language at all (mostly spanish/italian/japanese) films, and the subtitles were in english, which is my native (and only, other than asl) language. Is that what you mean?
Of course, lots of times, since I don't watch dubbed films at all. The only thing that can be bad about the subtitles is bad translation (which happens very often). But that's hardly something that dubbing can fix, is it? What do you gain if instead of subtitles with bad translation you get dubbing with bad translation as an alternative?! Even worse in every way. Then you have even less of a possibility of figuring out what they actually said. And I don't want to watch Chinese people speaking English, or Serbian, or German, thank you. It would sound silly and unnatural. The only movie I had the misfortune of watching in its entirety in its dubbed version was "Lola rennt", because I was at a New Year's Eve party at someone else's house and we decided to watch the movie on TV. Unfortunately, it turned out that the copy they had was one dubbed in English (with Serbian subtitles, of course)! I guess the people at the TV station were idiots and bought the wrong copy. The movie was kinda meh for me, which must have been because American voice actors were bad, especially the guy who voiced Lola's father, and it generally all sounded very weird. A few months later, I saw the movie on another TV channel, in its original, German version. I liked it much better, and realized that it was much better than I first thought.
Dubs suck, Subtitles are better! I have a Japanese Horror film, Ichi the Killer, dubbed, and it's REALLY weird watching the asian characters with sophisticated British accents... I really got a kick out of it. Plus, I love reading subtitles, it helps me better understand what's going on, even though I'm fluent in the language. haha. But, I found it rather funny that they translated the nickname in German, translating nouns is bizarre! haha
Ah, German dubbing of TOS is horrible, really (just remember what they did to "Amok Time" - my fellow German posters know what I mean...). Having said that, German subs aren't much better... They tend to be inaccurate and very often just about half of what is said gets translated... When I saw my first episode - undubbed, with original voices and authentic text (yes, yes, including Shatner's...pauses...and...UNIQUEproNounciatiONS) - it just felt right. I've avoided watching an episode with German dubbing ever since...
Well, I love Spock's original voice... and I am not a lover of dubbing, either. However, subtitles are often really badly done. They cut off a lot of things, reduce all nuancies, especially humour and puns. When the dialogue is short it doesn't matter very much, but when there is a lot of conversation there is always a risk to loose something essential. P.S. I just checked in Italian: it's still "Bones" and almost everyone (Italian) convinced that this is just doctor's first name...