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Subtitling dialects | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4668 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes  Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 17 of 39 11 September 2012 at 8:44pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Some Portuguese movies and soap operas made in Portugal were dubbed from Continental Portuguese into Brazilian Portuguese (since subtitling is not used on public TV channels in Brazil, only dubbing). Paulo Coelho is ''translated'' from Brazilian Portuguese into Continental Portuguese, Brazilian words, expressions and syntax/grammar are changed so Portuguese people are not distracted with ''bad grammar'' (they think of Brazilian Portuguese as ''bad grammar''). But the same thing happened with Harry Potter in the US, it was translated from UK English into US English. These ''translations/adaptations'' are common between Argentine Spanish and Peninsular Spanish, and Brazilian Portuguese and Continental Portuguese. Many Argentinians enable English subtitles when they watch movies made in Spain on DVD (Almodóvar and the like). Edited by Medulin on 11 September 2012 at 8:46pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| SamD Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6659 days ago 823 posts - 987 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 18 of 39 11 September 2012 at 9:09pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Perhaps the most famous example of subtitling English to English is the movie "Trainspotting." Many American viewers would not have been able to understand much of the movie otherwise.
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| mashmusic11235 Groupie United States Joined 5499 days ago 85 posts - 122 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Cantonese | Message 19 of 39 12 September 2012 at 12:08am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I've only ever seen subtitles on English-language American TV shows when the person
speaking has a very strong accent (usually a deep-south dialect), or more commonly when they consistently don't speak clearly or have a problem that prevents them from speaking clearly. In America at least, UK English is rarely subtitled, unless, again, the person is speaking with a thick Scottish or Welsh accent. I personally learned to understand Scottish English through sheer force of will (watching Scottish TV shows like Still Game until I picked up the speech), but Welsh English still seems a bit unintelligible to me. South African English is almost always subtitled, as far as I've seen, and I saw English from Northern Ireland subtitled once. English speakers, in my opinion, are good at working out other dialects, because of how many regional accents there are. From where I am, in central Pennsylvania, I could drive an hour in any direction and hear a noticeable shift in accent, and that's not counting the Pennsylvania Dutch-influenced dialects of, say, Lancaster County. Granted, these accents are similar, but there certainly are a lot of them! Edited by mashmusic11235 on 12 September 2012 at 12:10am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5783 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 20 of 39 12 September 2012 at 2:25am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I was aware of the situation in Portuguese and it is quite sad IMO, sometimes I can't help but think that at this rate they'll be two separate languages in 100 years.
Yeah, but only a few words here and there are different, it's not really a separate translation like in Portuguese. I thought even that was absolutely outrageous, anyway. I would hate it if in the UK we started publishing "UK English translations" of US works, I would want the original and would order it from the US if necessary! Now, of course I know that due to greater exposure we in the UK understand US English better than those in the US understand UK English, and that therefore there are a few words that would be misunderstood; but something is unavoidably lost in even the best translations and it's just plain dumb to translate something that doesn't need translated. That's why in the UK we don't "translate" classics from 100+ years ago by changing words that are no longer used to modern equivalents...we use footnotes! I just can't get my head round why HP wasn't simply published in it's original form as a US edition with footnotes! Even the original title with it's reference to the philosopher's stone is richly evocative of the mysterious world of the alchemists, why change it to something blander? I just don't get it.
I did not know that and you don't know how sad that makes me. I love the diversity in Spanish, I love the diversity of Portuguse a lot less precisely because I see separation coming down the line. It's not that hard for Brazilians to get their heads round European Portuguese (no matter what they say). I've studied Portuguese and I've still not reached a standard where I could work even in a shop; in contrast Brazilians can and do step off a plane and into professional level jobs in Portugal with no study and only a few weeks to adjust. Similarly if Medulin is right and some (hopefully a minority*) Portuguese people see the Brazilian dialect as "bad grammar", they'd do well to reflect on just how important a language spoken by 10.5 million people would actually be in this world, however beautiful it is (and it is!). That doesn't mean they have to speak like Brazilians, or that Brazilians have to speak like them; rather that they celebrate each other's dialects as part of what makes Portuguese so interesting and don't do stupid things like dubbing European Portuguese TV programs or translating Paulo Coelho. Happily for now the Brazilians and the Portuguese still have more in common than they admit. When in a non-lusophone country deep down they know this, I think. I visited a friend in London a while back. He lives in a "Brazilian area" in London and I remember being struck by the fact that in just a few days I saw several Portuguese people there. Celebrating diversity means getting to know and enjoying other people's cultures, languages (or as in this case dialects), etc. It doesn't mean translating them into the nearest equivalent in your own culture/language/dialect...that way we drift further apart. *I think it must be a minority, because none of the Portuguese people I've ever met ever expressed that attitude when I tried my (not very good) Brazilian Portuguese on them. Edited by Random review on 12 September 2012 at 3:02am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 21 of 39 12 September 2012 at 3:12am | IP Logged | ||||||||
As for Portuguese, well, if there was only one edition which one should it be? I can sorta understand it about Coelho (though I'm learning mostly Continental Portuguese and I've just checked and saw that the two books I recently bought are adapted to Continental, yay), but even I wouldn't want to be constantly aware "it's a Brazilian translation, it's a Brazilian translation", and I'm not a native speaker. It CAN be justified if at least the author is Brazilian, but for an English book... And again, we're talking about a book for children. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5783 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 22 of 39 12 September 2012 at 5:31am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I just can't see that. Part of the joy of reading is discovering new images, associations and cultural references etc (especially as a kid discovering references that the adults about you take for granted).
The original! My point is that with exposure people can easily understand other dialects of their own language. At the moment things are translated/dubbed to make them easier to understand for speakers of the other dialect, but with exposure that would cease to be the case. Take one of my favourite shows: the Simpsons. I hate to even imagine a situation where programs like that were being dubbed into UK English, they'd lose so much! And, of course, if US programs were routinely getting dubbed I'd not have had much exposure to US English, so for the first few episodes I'd probably even have genuine difficulty understanding the original version and might even give up and watch the dubbed version saying that US English is too hard. Sounds like a nightmare (right?), yet that's the reality in the lusophone world. Edited by Random review on 12 September 2012 at 5:34am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 23 of 39 12 September 2012 at 5:50am | IP Logged | ||||||||
As for "nightmare", hm... Bear in mind that it's one-sided. Brazilians often really can't understand Continental Portuguese, but most people from Portugal understand the Brazilian variant just fine. Portugal just needs to get more influential :-) But if we fantasize, it would be great if the graduation exam in your native language included listening, not just reading and writing. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6582 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 24 of 39 12 September 2012 at 6:43am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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We spend so much time mourning dead languages that surely we ought to celebrate when a new language is born? Brazilian and Continental Portugese seem to be disconnected enough for each of them to be able to develop independently from the other. The only way to keep that from happening would be to stunt the development of one variety and tie it to the "standard" of the other variety. If it weren't for developments like this we'd all be speaking the same language and this forum would be impossible. Languages change and new languages get born and thats a wonderful thing.
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