Looked Like Merkel was Getting the Scottish Treatment
Sorry, but I just noticed this and there's no one else to share it with.
In the press meeting with Biden and Angela Merkel, I noticed that her lips did not match the voice we were hearing. I realized that they had just simply cut directly to the interpreter, which is a proper practice and a bit less frustrating than the voice-over method.
It reminded me of some comedy videos done by a Scottish comedienne, Janey Godley, in which she takes press briefings given by Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon but she dubs her own dialog over it, filled with a good bit of Scottish profanity (the best kind, though it takes German cursing to open a Mexico City Metro door).
For example, "You were telt":
"Frank, get the door!"
One comment was:
quote:Whenever I hear Nicola for real now, for a split second I think “she sounds different” and “why’s she not swearing?”
Notice that Nicola Sturgeon has a signing interpreter. That must cause problems for those who know signing, since what's being signed will be different from the new dubbed dialog. I'm not sure what the sign is for that ever popular Scottish adjective, "f**kin'". Maybe it's similar to what was used in Airplane 2! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMZOQZz4-qc):
I have the same problem with all those videos from Downfall where Hitler is viciously chewing out his leading generals who had been shielding him from the reality of their battle losses (To the effect of: "Position this unit here." "We cannot." "Why not?" "They don't exist anymore.").
It's been popular to rewrite the subtitles to have Hitler having a temper tantrum of other things, like England at the World Cup, the downfall of the Playstation network, the Watchmen movie ending differently than the book, being denied a gay wedding cake, etc.
I simply cannot watch any of those parodies. Because I know German, I can follow what Hitler is actually saying (only the subtitles are being changed) and so I also know that it's not what the subtitles are saying. When I watch a subtitled show, I am constantly listening to the dialog, reading the subtitles, and comparing the two -- I do that regardless of how meager my knowledge of the language is (eg, Japanese -- when I know nothing about the language it's less interesting, which is why I studied Swedish just so I could better enjoy watching the Millennium Trilogy on Netflix (no longer there, starting with "Män som hatar kvinnor" ("Men Who Hate Women"), AKA "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" -- the Italian translation of the book kept with the original title, so when I saw it in a train station kiosk it took me a couple seconds to realize what it was)). Yes, I do catch when the subtitles do not match the dialog and I treat those as Easter eggs of a sort. However, when none of the dialog matches then I find that disorienting (much like the conflicting reports of your eyes saying you're not moving while your ears say that you are which induces motion sickness). Seriously, it's even worse than Spock using parsecs as a measurement of time!
ABE:
There was a book and then a movie, "Er ist wieder da" ("He's Back", though translated into English as "Look Who's Back." Basically, Hitler suddenly appears in Berlin completely healthy, is taken to be a street performer, and a TV "reporter" turns him into a national sensation.
The book was published in 2012 and the movie was made in 2015. I saw it on Netflix, but it's no longer there (nor can I find it anywhere on my Roku search feature). Most of the street scenes are done like Borat, not staged so the social anxieties being expressed to Hitler are real -- that they would open up to Hitler about such fears should be telling. Once Hitler had the nation's attention (on a national comedy show), it was all straight Hitler -- you are all hurtling towards a chasm, only I can see it and only I can save you from it.
Sound familiar? That's exactly what Trump was saying to us. Watching it during the 2016 campaign, I was amazed at how closely it mimicked Trump's campaign, but then I realized that it was filmed long before Trump was saying the same things.
I think that that's known as the "oh FUCK!!!!" moment.
Edited by dwise1, : Not sure what the sign is for ... Also embedded additional YouTube videos. Shouldn't be any problem for anyone, right?
Re: Looked Like Merkel was Getting the Scottish Treatment
dwise1 writes:
Because I know German, I can follow what Hitler is actually saying (only the subtitles are being changed) and so I also know that it's not what the subtitles are saying.
When Prime Minister Trudeau speaks in Parliament, he does a paragraph in English and then the same paragraph in French. But the interpreter tramples on the French with a translation into English. I feel like yelling at the TV, "I already heard the English! I don't need your second-hand second-rate version."
(One thing that interests me about French-to-English translations is the use of the word "population". French Canadians tend to say things like, "The population likes ice cream," where English Canadians say, "The people like ice cream," and reserve "population for the number of people.)
dwise1 writes:
Yes, I do catch when the subtitles do not match the dialog and I treat those as Easter eggs of a sort.
I have some movies that I downloaded (from possibly questionable sources) that have Portuguese subtitles. I do feel compelled to read the subtitles and it is a bit of a distraction. But I can tell Portuguese from Spanish.
"I've been to Moose Jaw, now I can die." -- John Wing
Re: Looked Like Merkel was Getting the Scottish Treatment
(One thing that interests me about French-to-English translations is the use of the word "population". French Canadians tend to say things like, "The population likes ice cream," where English Canadians say, "The people like ice cream," and reserve "population for the number of people.)
Part of the fun does come from each language having its own characteristics, especially when the results don't fit the English.
Part of French is greater use of "on" than English uses "one" (eg, "On ne dit pas .. ", "One does not say ..." whereas we normally say "We/You don't say ... " -- or should I have written "one normally says"?). I have to smile when I keep hearing "on" being used so profusely in a French film. Kind of the same with the use of the reflexive in Spanish (and I think also in Italian) to express the same idea. Kind of reminds me of the German idea of "Heimatsklang" ("the sound of home") which refers to minor effects one's dialect has on how one speaks Standard German (eg, one's accent, the use of certain words or expressions).
The entire familiar/formal pronoun issue is foreign to English so the subtitles get a bit strange when that dichotomy is central to the dialogue. For example, Netflix USA used to have a French rom-com in which a confirmed bachelor was keeping his female-run family at bay (they took a vote and demanded that he get married) by taking in single woman to pose as his fiancée. When his family was present, they used "tu" and as soon as they were alone they reverted back to "vous". Being a rom-com, of course they end up falling in love. During that process they are conversing over dinner and they slip comfortably into "tu", but then they start to disagree and he returns to "vous" -- as I recall, she even makes a comment like, "So, we're back to 'vous' again?" I forget how the translator handled that in the subtitles, but as I recall it was clumsy.
Similarly, there was a Spanish TV show (El ministerio del tiempo) about a secret time-travel ministry in the Spanish government (a lot of the jokes were about bureaucracy and budget problems) who recruits its agents from various time periods. One main character is a 16th-century soldier who now in the 21st century is getting involved romantically (she looks exactly like his 16th-century wife). When he speaks with her, he keeps using archaic polite forms (eg, "Vos"); while doing so on the phone, his 21-century colleague keeps correcting him with "te". The subtitles try to handle that by using the archaic English "thou" and "thee."
Other subtitling issues are when there's a cultural reference that the translator thinks the target audience would not get. For example in one of Jean Dujardin's "OSS 117" movies (the "French James Bond", but the most recent treatments have been 60's spy parodies) his assignment is to deliver a large blackmail payment. When he's told the amount, he asks whether that's in new francs or old francs and it's confirmed to be in new francs. In 1960, France revalued the franc with the new franc (NF) being worth 100 old francs. For a number of years until the old francs had ceased to circulate, both prices would be posted and every time a price would be quoted one would have to specify which franc that's in. The English speaking world could not be expected to know about that obscure bit of recent French history; I only learned about it as a teenager from one of Ian Fleming's Bond novels. So the subtitles just presented OSS 117's question as being his not quite hearing that right.
Speaking of 1960's French spies, have you watched Au Service de la France, on Netflix as "A Very Secret Service"? It's set in 1960 and is filled with cultural references (including "La vache sérieuse" which competed with "La vache qui rit" -- the trademark lawsuit was interrupted by WWII and was finally settled around 1960 (that Wikipedia page exists only in French) ), but mostly it depicts French attitudes of the time. I am still amazed at seeing a secretary touch-typing reports while holding a lit cigarette between her fingers.
And sometimes the translator goes too far. In the third Millennium movie, "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest", a female cop admonishes a male colleague for his benighted attitude about women by asking him in Swedish if he's from Jurassic Park, specifically naming that movie. The translator had her asking if he's a caveman. As if nobody in the English-speaking world would ever recognize a reference to Jurassic Park.
And knowing the language can get you strange looks at times. When we saw A Bridge Too Far, I was the only one in the audience who knew what Lt.Gen. Maximilian Schell told Lt.Col. Anthony Hopkins as the latter was finally surrendering at Arnhem, at least until Schell's remark was translated by a staff member. As you will recall, the final bridge for Operation Market Garden was at Arnhem and a British airborne brigade landed there to take and hold that bridge until relieved by XXX Corps, but XXX Corps fell behind schedule getting mired down at Nijmegen. Even worse, there was a Waffen-SS Panzer corps in the area on R&R, so the paratroops were immediately pushed back and their landing zone (LZ) overrun. Since their radios also did not work, they could not report on the situation and so Allied planes kept dropping that units supplies in that LZ and the Germans kept gathering them up.
So in the scene in question, as Schell was accepting Hopkins' surrender, he offers Hopkins a chocolate bar which Hopkins refuses. Schell explains that he can freely accept it since it was from the supplies being dropped by the Allies. I chuckled at that, the only one in the audience to do so, and got some puzzled looks until Schell's statement was translated.
Re: Looked Like Merkel was Getting the Scottish Treatment
I do love learning other languages. I've learned French and German, with French being the better for me. (Plus a little bit of Russian). It's something that both expands your mind, and also shows an appreciation and respect for other cultures and people.
(I did in my late teens/early 20s have a French girlfriend for a little while. I spent years waiting to do so, but last year, I finally got to say a line I'd been waiting for ages to say, when explaining to a French shopkeeper that I had a French girlfriend in my youth, then going on to say: "Et avoir une amie Française, c'est quelque chose qui améliore sa langue." Sadly, it didn't work as well as I'd hoped - but I'll try again sometime).
Could there be any greater conceit, than for someone to believe that the universe has to be simple enough for them to be able to understand it ?
Access denied (I am in no way affiliated with them except as a customer) produces many topical pins, patches, t-shirts, etc. From what I gather, they started with Ruth Bader Ginsburg (RBG) dissent collar pins and have branched out to vaccination (et alia) pins and ridiculing QAnon idiocies (especially ones promoted by Republican members of Congress). Half their profits from every Dissent Pins product goes to organizations doing the important work of defending our democracy. Go to their site for more information -- again, I am in no way affiliated with them except as a customer and thinking that a lot of their stuff is cool (I'm planning to use their decoder ring when I train my grandsons in Caesar Cipher a decade or so from now).
It was some Secret Jewish Space Laser Corps products which I have bought: the t-shirt, pin, challenge coin, and decoder wheel. Mazel Tough! They also have patches and a "Goyim Squad" pin (because you need Shabbas Goyim to run the system on the Sabbath, nu?). It's a play on QAnon Betty's (AKA Marjorie Taylor Greene, not to be confused with QAnon Veronica Lauren Boebert) talk of the California fires having been caused by "secret Jewish space lasers".
I have also saved images of a few of their iron-on patches, but which I cannot share here because I haven't yet solved that problem on this forum, but you can find them on their site. For example:
The Bureau of Land Management's (BLM -- that part is not the joke) patch for the Gohmert Mission of the U.S. Forest Service Lunar Orbit Adjustment Program. It depicts a pine tree's trajectory from the earth to the moon. Originally issued as a patch, now upgraded to a pin. It's a play on Rep Louie Gohmert's suggestion for solving the climate change problem:
quote:"Is there anything that the National Forest Service or BLM can do to change the course of the moon’s orbit or the Earth’s orbit around the sun? Obviously that would have profound effects on our climate... If you figure out a way that you in the Forest Service can make that change, I’d like to know.”
—Rep Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) June 8, 2021
*NEW*First Italian Air & Space Covert Operation (FIASCO -- but you have to go to site's description of the product to see that part of the joke). Depicts an Italian satellite in orbit above the earth, a pitted olive with solar panels, with the motto, "Where we go one, we go olive." Issued as a patch. This one is based on a Big Lie conspiracy theory that an Italian satellite had hacked into voting machines (which aren't even on-line, so how?) to change the votes for Biden.
*NEW* this morning A sticker of Texas: "ercot FREEDOM GRID *" -- "* WARNING: Not for use in hot or cold weather".
Re: Looked Like Merkel was Getting the Scottish Treatment
What is British education system policy on teaching foreign languages? Basically in the US, you have to wait until high school for that -- with us graduating from 12th grade around age 18, that would translate to 9th or 10th grade (or age 14 up). Far too late. Though some school districts (education can be very frustratingly decentralized) could start conversational Spanish starting around age 12.
And there is also the other side of that coin. In Europe you have so many different languages surrounding you in rather close proximity, while the US, "surrounded" by only two languages, Spanish and Canadian French, can easily slip into a "fat, dumb, and happy" isolationist state of mind in which we have no need to speak anybody else's language, but rather as the "big dog" everybody must come to us speaking our language if they want to do business with us. It is shocking how many private citizens will actually get upset when they hear anybody speaking another language, almost out of paranoia ("They're talking about me and using their fake language to hide it!").
In short, geographical isolation can make Americans value learning other languages less, whereas geographical propinquity (nearness) can make Brits value it more (though there is that stereotypical British xenophobia, especially regarding food -- eg, Maggie Smith in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel stuffing her luggage with all her favorite snack foods, Netflix' "Very British Problems" series (no longer in the USA) in which Brits going on holiday abroad would also pack their own food, and the Asterix comic, Asterix in Britain (which I have only ever read in the German version), in which the British Gauls would complain how much they distrusted "the foreign kitchen" (mind you, the original was French, so it expressed French stereotypes of the British).
I'm from Southern California, so there's a lot of easy access to Spanish. Since my childhood, my home town has become much more predominantly Hispanic such that the sure sign (literally) that you have entered Santa Ana is that all the billboards are suddenly in Spanish. While many Hispanics (they are not just Mexicans) also learn English as a second language (a common set of courses run by the local education district), there are also a fairly large (I would like to imagine) segment of the non-Hispanic population who has also learned some Spanish.
Similarly, given the close proximity and easy access to the Continent and especially to France, I would expect many Brits to have some experience with French. Along with other languages. You know, we Yanks also watch Doctor Who. I remember a big show (11th Doctor) where the Daleks had this really big invasion and Marsha Jones working for UNIT teleported to a base in Germany which housed some kind of Doomsday Device. Once there, all the dialogue was in German with no subtitles. That has left me always wondering how many Brits have a casual familiarity with German that they would not need any subtitles, just as in US TV/film productions Spanish is often not subtitled.
Of course, the main benefit of learning a foreign language is to understand your own language even better. There's a German quote that I have not been able to track down to the original source: "You don't learn your own language until you have studied a foreign one." ("Man kennt die eigene Sprache nicht, bis man eine fremde learnt.")
So what is foreign language instruction like in the UK?
Re: Looked Like Merkel was Getting the Scottish Treatment
I looked up the National Curriculum and foreign language lessons could start as young as 7 with tests at 11. That’s a change from my days (we started at 10 and even that was likely the school’s decision).
The National Curriculum is compulsory, but it doesn’t have to be a modern language - so some schools might teach Latin. (I don’t think it would be that many, though).
The formation of the Space Force had been an idea that had been under development for some time. And since I retired, I've heard of the formation of joint-service bases combining Navy and Air Force.
But perhaps the worst way in which the US Space Force could have ever been formed would have been by Trump looking for a cheap photo-opt. I feel that most of the public's eye-rolling reaction to the Space Force came from that. And I'm no exception.
In the Air Force, we would hear senior officers and NCOs talk about the "brown-shoe days" of the USAF's early history. While uniform shoes would traditionally be black, aviators' shoes would be brown -- even in the Navy, our "airdales" (aviation types) wore brown shoes as would a fellow Chief who had been in the submarine service (at the same time, officer and CPO white uniforms include white shoes). So in the Navy, surface and shore forces wear black.
I keep wondering if in the future the Space Force will reminisce about their "silver lame shoe days", given that that fabric had been used so widely in 60's sci-fi (think the initial launch costumes in "Lost in Space", et alia). I once caught a 50's sci-fi movie on TV depicting a military unit in space, but I haven't been able to identify it (there was a very recognizable dog-face GI type actor in it whose filmography would help, but I cannot ID him). They had standard GI uniforms and gear of that time, but their boots and the load-bearing web belts (from which you would hang your ammo pouches, first-aid kit, and canteen -- you've all seen them) had been spray-painted silver.
Far as I know, I'm still not able to post images here. Go to the Wikipedia page for the US Space Force to see the USSF Seal: United States Space Force - Wikipedia . Then I wanted you to go to the page for Starfleet or the like for their seal, but I cannot find it now -- I have the images on my computer, but no way to get it to you. Basically, the designs of both seals are virtually identical.
Back in the 1990's with the explosion of web sites, even military organizations jumped onto the bandwagon of going on-line. And then the military quickly realized what a gaping security hole that presented, so they closed it and rightfully so. Within that narrow window, I was able to garner some US Naval Academy class notes (unclassified, of course), plus I visited a number of departments within the US Air Force Academy. And I saw something disturbing/curious which spoke of a strong sense of Star Trek envy.
Here is a YouTube video about new Space Force enlisted insigniae which at least pay attention of the history of the creation of the US Air Force out of the US Army Air Forces, our own "brown-shoe days."
Standard military disclosure:
To my knowledge, that video's image is flipped. Ribbons are displayed on the left breast with the higher-precedence ribbons displayed closer to the center, closer to the heart (AKA, "inboard").
Notice that predominant symbol which is kind of like an arrowhead. They call it a "delta" since it is triangular (like the Greek letter, delta). Back in the 1990's when I was surfing through the US Air Force Academy departments' pages, that "delta" kept showing up all over the place.
And now that very same "delta" shows up as a unifying symbol for the Space Force.
That just proves to me that the US Air Force and now the Space Force have some very serious personal Star Trek issues to work out.
Edited by dwise1, : Standard Military Disclosure -- Stay right and tight!
Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London.I am Finland. Soy Barcelona
"Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android
"Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed. Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London.I am Finland. Soy Barcelona
"Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android
"Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed. Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London.I am Finland. Soy Barcelona
"Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android
"Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed. Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
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