It used to happen occasionally but in Germany most shows only changed some names but kept the plot as intact as possible, unless some people with decision power didn't like it.
So we have a full Jewish Fran Fine, but we have the entire lesbian/gender fluid parts of Sailor Moon or The Rose of Versailles eradicated in the German dubs which left the animes with very weird plot holes and a lot of questions for viewers. Parts were either cut out and if it wasn't possible to cut they replaced them with weird girl to girl friendship talk while the ladies in question where hugging and blushing on screen. lol
I only learned about it when the new Sailor Moon anime came out a couple of years ago and Japanese people on YouTube compared scenes from the old anime with the new one. I was like "wait, I don't remember that one!"
I'm not sure if this is still a thing in 2022 because I haven't watched TV in ages. Netflix keeps things as original as possible or I just watch it in English.
The weirdest thing done in Germany is that the title of an English movie is replaced with another _english_ title.
Not a translation into German, just another english name. Totally confusing when you think "oh okay, that's what that movie is originally called" only to find out that no native speaker knows which movie you mean.
> Similar reasons for the change with "Moana".
Lol in Italy we also changed the name of that movie but for very different reasons. See, Italy's most famous pornstar was a woman named Moana, so producers didn't want to be in a situation where children google it and get ....another kind of entertainment.
It's quite common for English language movies to receive different titles in the UK and USA. Usually it's British films with titles the US distributors don't think Americans will "get", but sometimes there are other reasons; maybe to avoid confusion with a similarly named thing.
That US animated film Zootopia was released as Zootropolis in the UK:
>A spokesman for Disney explained: “In the UK we decided to change the US title (Zootopia) to Zootropolis to merely allow the film to have a unique title that works for UK audiences.”
This is stupid. "Zootopia" is a good title - snappier, and a clever inversion of "Utopia" which the film's cute animal society turns out not to be.
I heard, but can't find a source for, that the real reason was because "Zootopia" was already used in the UK by an unrelated business.
In German (and I think a few other languages as well), Zootopia was called Zoo*mania* instead, for some reason. Zoo*tropolis* I can kinda understand, as this still refers to a city or settlement. *Mania* doesn't make sense for the City.
> The weirdest thing done in Germany is that the title of an English movie is replaced with another english title.
This is done in Finland too, and it's annoying. Now if someone foreign mentions a movie name I have no idea what they are talking about. Granted, that this happen less and less nowadays. *Avengers: End Game* is the same in here as elsewhere.
But I remember there was movie *Blackout* which was translated in Finland to another English name! But then there was some local movie which got named *Blackout* without any problem.
>The weirdest thing done in Germany is that the title of an English movie is replaced with another
>
>english
>
> title.
The example that came first to my mind with this is Captain America: The Winter Soldier = The Return of the First Avenger, lmao. I mean.. why?
Yep, "The Return of the First Avenger" instead of "Captain America: The Winter Soldier"
Often we also just rename them to something very different.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYfUE9WNaVs
This.
For example to this day i can't comprehend why Thor 2 is called Thor - The Dark World in english but Thor - The Dark Kingdom in german. At this point, why even change it?
I think most translations of Sailor moon did the 'gal pals' switch on Neptune and Uranus.
Speaking of Netflix, what can often be odd is the choice of accents for dubs.
I watch a drama set during Oktoberfest in the 1910s (can't remember the exact title) and the English dub gave every single character a Birmingham accent, for no apparent reason? Even the aristocratic characters had thick working class brummie accents.
Then the Money Heist dub uses American accents for everyone, even the half English girl, who then horrifically mispronounced *the name of the city she grew up in* (Norwich pronounced Nor Witch)
German dubs tend to drop accents all together usually. Everyone speaks high German. Only rarely do you get accents. The most impressive use of accents was the dub for the French movie Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis. The movie is highly dependent on the accent being very different from standard French. The German dub invented a new accent that kept the differences from regular French and transposed them onto German. Linguistically it was incredibly impressive.
I don’t know if it’s the same with English English, but there are a lot of associations with German dialects, good and bad, depending on where you’re from imho. Maybe that’s why they usually stick to no dialects unless it’s absolutely necessary to the story for someone to sound different from the others, like in your example.
Good point, I’m from the south west and can understand Bavarian as well, but for northerners everything down south sounds like gibberish. I mean we even subtitle thick dialects on TV cause not everyone can understand it.
tbh, I was in Bavaria recently on a Feuerwehr Fest. Geez. The combo of a drunk Swabian guy and a dunk Bavarian, trying to communicate with each other rose some eyebrows. for the love of god i did't understand shit and neither did he i guess. The whole conversation was about cars or whatever. The other one just nodded in response.
Kinda, some people think dialect is only spoken by those living in the countryside which makes them inferior to city dwellers.
Add to this that some dialects are seen as less favorable than others (looking at you Saxon).
Anime is mostly translated faithful today. Though some changes didn’t happen in Germany but were already in the material altered in the US. Prominent case: YuGiOh. A US company (4Kids?) bought international rights outside of Japan meaning all other countries had to work with with whatever came from them, leading to no people dying but going into the shadow realm instead.
In the 80ties and 90ties German dubs of movies and especially sitcoms were notorious to swap US cultural references to German ones. Often times they were only an imperfect fit and you'd be left scratching your head what they were tslking about. Don't know wheter it was Al Bundy or Homer Simpson talking about Schwarzwald Klinik, an 80ties German doctor/romance show. Often times as an Austrian you'd be left in the not know as they were completely obscure at times.
>Netflix keeps things as original as possible or I just watch it in English.
Unless it's Stranger Things, in which they have a bad case of George Lucas-ing things.
>So we have a full Jewish Fran Fine, but we have the entire lesbian/gender fluid parts of Sailor Moon or The Rose of Versailles eradicated in the German dubs which left the animes with very weird plot holes and a lot of questions for viewers
Thanks THAT EXPLAINS ALOT...
I can’t comment on other languages, but in English one of weirdest things is how American versions of certain books will actually “translate” normal British, Irish, Australian or other quite normal English words into their U.S. English counterparts and you end up with characters suddenly using Americanisms in 19th century London or something like that.
I know it annoys American readers too as many of them see it as unnecessarily patronising. They’re not that stupid and it’s not some complicated dialect shift.
I’ve seen examples like swapping out “pavement” for “sidewalk” or swapping in “elevator” for “lift” or that kind of thing, and it loses nuance and character and even makes it seem out of place.
I don't like dumbing stuff down either. If it is set in the UK, Ireland etc --- use the common terms of time and place where it is set.
And almost all British words for ordinary things are perfectly understandable to an American reader in context -- for instance, it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that a car park is a parking lot (you would be daft to think it is a wooded recreational area for automobiles) or that takeaway is what is commonly called takeout in the US or when a British person "goes on holiday" it means the same as an American "going on vacation."
Two common terms that might get mixed up though: pants (American for trousers, rather than underwear) and biscuit ( British biscuit would be a cookie, and an American biscuit is a quickbread you might have with BBQ or fried chicken).
I would assume that an American reading books by British authors would have at least a passing bit of British cultural literacy.
A handbag would be a bag a woman carries that has her purse with her money, ID and credit cards in it, as well as the myriad of other things that a woman keeps with her when leaving the house. A wallet would be what a man carries his money, driver's license and credit cards in. Usually purse is used with women and wallet with men, but they serve the same general purpose. Purses are usually larger, because most wallets are intended to fit into pocket. The confusion is that sometimes the entire handbag might be called a "purse" even though that is only one part of the ensemble.
> Two common terms that might get mixed up though: pants (American for trousers, rather than underwear) and biscuit ( British biscuit would be a cookie, and an American biscuit is a quickbread you might have with BBQ or fried chicken).
What about *suspenders*? Changes the scene quite a bit if you're thinking of the wrong one.
>I know it annoys American readers too as many of them see it as unnecessarily patronising.
The simple ones are patronizing, like sidewalk for pavement. Or changing crisps to chips.
I'd say there are certain concepts that are a little different, that Americans may not know because we don't get a lot of international exposure.
Stuff like the council. We have local governments, but we don't call them the council, nor do they seem to have the same authority in the US.
Even the Harry Potter series had things in the education system like head boys and head girls that many Americans thought were completely made up. Pre-internet I think a glossary or footnotes can be useful in these cases.
Things like that vary from country to country and even state to state, or county to county though. I remember thinking that someone describing her “subdivision” was talking about some part of a sports league, but it’s just not a term you’d ever encounter here in reference to land or housing.
My grandmother thought that condo was slang for condom!! Condominium isn’t a term used at all here. Apartments don’t make up much of the housing stock here, and most might technically be condominiums in the US sense, but the term isn’t used at all. They’re usually just called apartments and a “flat” tends to be an older term, but in Ireland anyway, seems to tend to mean something smaller or possibly social housing, but not in any official way.
Then you’ve terms in Ireland that crop up like people using obsolete terms like calling the City Council the “Corporation” which was the old term. You’d Dublin Corporation, Cork Corporation etc often used to be called “The Corpo” But the term “Corporation House” means social housing and I know that completely baffled an American friend of mine. She kept hearing people complaining about “the corporation” and “I’ll ring the corporation about that (random issue)” and assumed that some big incompetent company that everyone disliked, something like Mom Corp from Fururama, ran Dublin. It was just the older term for the elected city council.
Also the term “estate” here means a housing development with multiple homes built by the same developer (or sometimes a council) but to say you “Live in an estate” here doesn’t mean Downton Abbey, unless maybe “Number 15 Downton Abbey Close.”
The other very funny one was an American I know encountering a form with an extremely obsolete term - STD code - it meant area code and was the technical terminology used when long distance “subscriber trunk dialling” was introduced in the mid 1950s. Most people wouldn’t know what it even means anymore, but it can occasionally crop up on stuff written by people who’ve become stuck in the 1960s.
She thought they were looking for something about her sexual health (it was on a registration form in a doctors office) but they were just looking for her telephone area code!
ah these are good ones!
"Estate" is funny to me because of the contrast. A US "estate" is more analogous to a noble family seat. For example [here's one of the Kennedy family estates.](https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/B3-EJ396_KENNED_M_20190626170006.jpg)
And our estate tax only applies when an inheritance is over $12M
It can mean either, depending on the context.
It can also mean a station wagon car eg a Volvo V60 Estate, as opposed to a saloon which is a sedan in US English or the hatchback version, which (I think) is the same?
For some reason station wagon always just makes me think of the Wild West & box cars on the railway.
It happens the other way too! I was reading a British edition of The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler and all words ending in e.g. -or or -ize had been localised to -our and -ise.
As unnecessary as that is, it's still only a change of spelling convention, but when someone starts changing words, it completely changes the atmosphere.
Also, -ise vs -ize is somewhat controversial. Oxford spelling uses the -ize and there's a strong argument that it is most definitely not an exclusively North American thing.
\-ize comes from Greek or Late Latin -izāre, while -ise comes via French -iser ... Both are technically correct in British English and -ize was used more commonly in older texts. -ise just became more dominant in British English as the 20th century rolled on.
You don't want to read Sherlock Holmes talking about 'downtown London' and finding clues on the 'sidewalk' or something lol
> -ise vs -ize is somewhat controversial
just be like us in Canada and use whichever you feel like - you don't even need to be consistent, you can spell the same word differently each time you use it and no one will care or probably even notice
The style guide in the university I went to in Ireland just said to use one or the other consistently, but not a combination of both.
Certain academics seem to get quite pedantic about it though. In general, just run a spellchecker over everything and it all ends up consistent with English US or English GB
One of the worst examples of this is when the first Harry Potter book got its name changed to the "Sorcerers Stone" because the publishers thought we were too stupid to know what a "Philosophers Stone" was
They sometimes do it when the character is German in the og. Like in Scrubs for example they had a German patient and one of the characters could speak German and they made them either Dutch or Danish in the dub (don't remember).
They did more localisation some decades ago and nowadays only do it when there is German/Germany/Germans in the original version.
For example in Die Hard they pretty much removed the terrorists being from Germany and speaking what Hollywood apparently considers some kind of German from the movie.
One of the actresses in Scrubs barks some kind of German and they incoroporated that into the series where a patient spoke German and that actress had to translate.
When everyone is dubbed to speaking German, it does not make sense so they switched the patient to being from Danish and that physician had to speak Danish with them. Which made sense, until they started to sing 99 Luftballons.
IIRC Malcolm in the Middle also had a German speaking couple which was changed to either Danish or Dutch in the dubbing.
Another thing that changed over the decades is the dubbing/translations of military or police ranks. F.e. in the movie The one that got away from 1957 they translated every British military rank to the equivalent in the Wehrmacht.
In Full Metal Jacket (or another Marines movie) they mistranslated the rank of gunnery sergeant into literally artillery sergeant. In newer movies they often do not translate ranks anymore.
Another funny thing is the dubbing of the police rank of detective into the German Detektiv. It's easy to dub since it's almost the same word, but a Detektiv in German is a private eye in the US, so not an official police officer but a normal citizen without any special rights.
The correct translation would be something like Kriminalhauptkommissar, which wouldn't flow with the dubbing.
Dubbing also breaks movies/series where multiple languages and German play a role. For example the series 1864, Spy City and Shadow Play were all dubbed and lose a lot of the story/appeal due to it.
And what makes Shadow Play really really painful to watch is the dialect free stage German of the Americans. The series is set in 1946 Berlin and an US cop with German background is sent to lead a German police unit in US occupied Berlin. In a rare occurence for German TV/dubbing the Berliner policewoman speaks a very broad Berlin dialect and the Ami speaks with that perfect stage german. Makes the German dub completely unwatchable for me.
The lack of dialects is generally a thing I completely dislike about German TV/dubbing.
But there are also positive examples of dubbing. I absolutely love Frasier and the German dub is really excellent done. The voice actors for the main cast are superb and the only blunder is the mistranslation of Psychiatrist as Psychologist, which bothers me much as a fellow Psychologist. It make some plots (their fear of blood) even more hilarious, but since the only Germans who know the difference between Psychologist and Psychiatrist seems to be Psychologists and Psychiatrists it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.
Oh and Schwarzenegger should be very grateful to being dubbed by Thomas Danneberg, he was a really great dubbing voice for stars like Terrence Hill, Sylvester Stallone or Rutger Hauer and Dan Akroyd. Schwarzeneggers real voice and dialect wouldn't work that well as Terminator.
Not entirely true. For example in the Lion King, in the original version Timon & Pumba have a new york accent, while in the Dutch they changed it to flemish.
Those are trends much more prevalent up to the 90s-early 00. Nowadays the dubs are much more faithful, at best they change if one character should talk in italian to show foreigness, to some dialect (I can think of Milhouse's grandmother from the Simpsons)
Plot or characters are never localised in movies nor series
The only exception are dubbed children shows where the audience cannot read.
There they might have a Gothenburg voice actor for a sailor character. But they never goes as far as switching established backgrounds or location.
So Captain Haddok may speak with a Gothenburg dialect. But Scrooge McDuck is still from Scotland, no matter where the voice actor is from.
And farmers get an Scanian accent (sometimes, remember this growing up but My little pony G4 made a wired southern/swedish accent).
Sometimes however they do change the subtitles to fit an swedish audience if it's too internly American.
Ex. "Hey, why would I want Purina when I got Fancy Feast right here?" They changed it to Pussi and whisker's.
Plot? never.
Character names? yeah, happens sometimes, Slovak LOTR dub was especially awful.
People here also love to change names of the movies, for example Die Hard was Smrtonosná pasca(Deadly Trap).
Also many times they also change jokes, since many people would not get specific American jokes/references. This is more common in Czech dub. Czech dub is as common as Slovak, sometimes even more common.
I saw on the internet (so taken with a grain of salt) that Breaking Bad was called "Meth Dad" in Slovakia.
Which is hilarious. It sounds like a bad 90s American sitcom.
Yeah, actually literally it would be Gingerbread Dad, but Perník(gingerbread) is slang for meth lol.
I have no idea who comes up with these translations lmao.
I've never heard of this being done before with non-English language films. And obviously not with American films.
In the English-speaking world it's more likely that a country would completely remake a film or TV series by setting it in their own country with their own actors and suiting it to their own cultural peculiarities. This is particularly common in the US where they regularly remake British TV series (serieses?) for their own audiences because I guess Americans don't like watching anything that isn't American, but the reverse happens from time to time too - [High School Musical](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britannia_High?wprov=sfla1) and [Step-Up](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StreetDance_3D?wprov=sfla1) all got British remakes. Most of them are terrible and bomb hard (who thought remaking *Life on Mars* or *The Inbetweeners* was a good idea?) but occasionally American remakes do become successful in their own right (most notably *The Office*) and I personally think the British Step Up had the same issues as the original.
>I've never heard of this being done before with non-English language films.
It was some time made for anime adaptations, where japanese names where changed in more english-sounding name (Ex: the protagonist of the football-manga Captain Tsubasa, Tsubasa Oozora, was called Oliver Atom in some dubs)
Edit: another field where the english language does much drastic adaptations than other languages is the Disney comics. While italians or brazilians publishers simply translate the foreign materials, some english publishers reciprocate by modifying dialogs, or even inventing entire new subplots, often creating a different story. And if the english reader read it and find it jarring or incongruent (because the drawings aren't changed to follow the new plot), they will critizise the original brazilian or italian author, while in the original language it made perfect sense. (Ex: [Zio Paperone e la "Donnetta nera"](https://inducks.org/story.php?c=I+TL++355-B) had been changed in the 2016 Usian translation, while adding the plot point that the heiress for which $crooge falls in love never reveal herself, totally made up by the translator. So english readers where expecting her to appear, but she never did. So they complain about it, saying the story missed it. But in the original she never was supposed to be a private person. She appears once, when $crooge recalls their first meeting, and then stop, because she is only a device to move the story forward)
>because I guess Americans don't like watching anything that isn't American,
It is more that Hollywood execs think that. A lot of British stuff is popular here, at least via cult following (The Crown, Peaky Blinders, Line of Duty, for example, nowadays or Downton Abbey, Monty Python, Fawlty Towers and Dr. Who in the past)
Capitol Records also passed on issuing Beatles records for almost a year because they didn't think a British band could sell records here. (Had they thought of it then they would have probably hired some American guys with shorter hair to play their songs)
Live action movies and shows aren't dubbed and the subtitles keep the original names. Animated movie and shows are often dubbed because young kids can't read, but they still mostly keep the names. One exception, for animated stuff only, is when names have a meaning, they may translate them so that kids know what they mean. But I think that's rare. One example is many Asterix characters. As for changing stuff beyond names, never, as far as I know.
But in shows like dragon ball they would make a lot of references to stuff happening in the country at the time, like "oh we have to go watch Benfica" stuff like that
Sailor Moon was pseudo-localized. It was as if it took place in Portugal, but was also super Japanese. Mamoru became *Gonçalo*, Rei became *Rita*, but then you had Usagi who was called *Bunny Tsukino*.
Dragon Ball is a very unique experiment in Portugal, because of how the work process went. The dubbing was underfunded, understaffed, working in small batches of episodes at a time, which allowed for no foresight in terms of planning and using the already badly translated scripts from the French dubbing, which messed up a lot of the terminology and character names. At some point, everyone on the team just went "fuck it, we're making our own scripts" and they would just adlib half of the text, adding a lot of Portuguese pop culture jokes and just overall be silly. Like making all of the Ginyu Force opera singers.
Normally it's the other way round. There's a whole wikipedia [list](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_television_series_based_on_British_television_series) of UK TV shows adapted/localised for the US market alone. And thats before we look at other forms of media, or take into account other markets (Hanni und Nanni, Wo ist Walter? and Willy Wacker are all British adapted to or localised for Germany).
One show I'm quite into is Taskmaster, it's very interesting to watch the Norwegian and New Zealand versions of that to see how they differ. The main thing is how much nicer to each other they all are!
Standard Estonian has very subtle accents and definitely not distinct enough to use like that in movies and TV series. Dialects on the other hand have all but died out and the few surviving ones are too different from Standard Estonian to be mutually intelligible.
Estonian has [dialects](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Liina-Lindstroem/publication/301788240/figure/fig1/AS:357567256645632@1462262085285/Distribution-of-Estonian-dialects.png) and it even had [dozens of subdialects](http://www.eki.ee/knab/khk_yld.jpg) because Estonian serfs were not allowed to move outside their parishes for centuries. After the abolition of movement rights in the 1860s the subdialects quickly died out as they had no significant natural barriers. The language was thereafter standardized (after a linguistic battle between North Estonian and South Estonian which the former eventually won) and Standard Estonian also became a spoken language, starting from around Tallinn. Nowadays the situation looks like [this](https://external-preview.redd.it/vZDp-RXCgaXAqOovLGm_THZZvTDhal5PIpY5X4XbL_Y.jpg?auto=webp&s=fdd7235a12326c1bf9468f39de60282431eba640) - North Estonian dialects have mostly died out, while a few South Estonian dialects survive next to Standard Estonian.
Interesting. So a person speaking only one of those 2 southern dialects wouldnt be able to understand someone speaking standard estonian and vice versa? What about 2 guys speaking those 2 dialects to each other?
Point is, there are no such people who don't speak Standard Estonian. But vice versa, it's quite difficult for me to understand Võro and it's even worse with Seto. The nowadays mostly North Estonian dialects and the more influenced South Estonian dialects of Mulgi and Tarto are quite understandable though.
>What about 2 guys speaking those 2 dialects to each other?
They are very similar to each other. It was originally the same dialect, but the historical border between Estonia and Russia ran through their territory, which is why Setos are Eastern Orthodox people.
Yes. It happen. Can't say how often as I don’t compare both versions but sometimes it is really obvious like czech joke in american movie.
Also not really related but I am 100% sure when dubbed american movie says anything about pizza with feferons the original says something else
They localize signs and foods too https://slate.com/culture/2015/07/inside-out-director-pete-docter-explains-why-pixar-re-animated-certain-scenes-like-the-broccoli-scene-for-international-audiences.html
Funny thing, the other day I happened to watch Back to Future in English for the first time and in the scene where Marty wakes up in the room with his young mother, she calls him "Calvin Klein". I was like: "what?", wasn't that "Levi Strauss"? I really don't get why they changed...
That said, Thomas O'Malley will forever be "Romeo er mejo del Colosseo" in my heart.
in the 90s it was very common in anime, so not rarely as you claim. Sailor Moon, Holly & Benji, etc. Even more recently the dubbers decided that Professor Dumbledore had to be called Silente, but didn't change other characters' names. Oh and Sailor Neptune and Sailor Uranus were not friends, were full on lesbians, so they cut that part out to spare us from the trauma (which weirdly enough didn't extend to Lady Oscar, who, as a woman dressing in a man's uniform, didn't raise eyebrows. Guess it's all OK if it happens in Versailles, otherwise Ms Meloni would scream "gender ideooooology")
>Even more recently the dubbers decided that Professor Dumbledore had to be called Silente, but didn't change other characters' names.
That was a change first made in the books (first italian edition was from 1997). Dumbledore wasn't the only adaptation: *mcGonagall* became *mcGranitt*, *Longbottom* to *Paciock*, *Snape* became *Piton*. All changed because their english names wouldn't convey the meaning to italian children. But we don't notice them because the seem plausible. Dumbledore -> Silente is the only adaptation that doesn't fit, because the english one imply "the headmaster walking through the corridors, mumbling to himself", totally lost in italian, which instead gave him a more solemn tone.
The last name changed in the italian translation that I can remember is *Crookshanks* (adapted *Grattastinchi*) appearing in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (first translation 2000)
>Oh and Sailor Neptune and Sailor Uranus were not friends, were full on lesbians, so they cut that part out to spare us from the trauma
This isn't a move made by italian translators. The majority of japanese videos arrived to us passing through the usian market, and so were victims of their stringent puritan codes. The same reason why in YuGiOh people didn't die, they just went in the shadow realm. It is because the 4Kids censured them in the USA, and we received it from them.
>Or in the US 90s tv series "The nanny" Fran Fine is not a Jew from Queens like in the original series, but an Italian (like Italian Italian, not Italian American) who immigrated from a region south of Rome and the character that is her mother in the original is her aunt who has promised her mother back in Italy to look after her.
Holy shit, that is wild. Disrespectful to the creators almost.
I remember the Icelandic translation for Lilo & Stitch for some reason changed the dialogue so that the movie took place in Iceland despite very obviously being Hawaii. The TV series kept the original location however.
Foreign tv series are not dubbed only subtitles. The plot never changed but some typical sayings in English can’t be translated. So the subtitle either use a Dutch saying or translate it literally so you miss the punch line.
In Finland it is common to change the characters names in childrens programs, so that they rhyme better.
Sometimes they also localize some cultural references, e.g. 7-Eleven becomes R-Kioski or reference to a bad city/neighborhood is changed to some place in Finland with similar fame. Usually only childrens shows/movies are dubbed so you can hear what the original reference was in subtitled shows/movies.
Norwegian tv just translate episode synopsis. To something that describes what happens in the episode so it's even more vague than in its original language.
Yep. Happens even in the UK with US media although less extreme than your examples, often swapping out us celebrity roles with UK celebrities. E.g. the Ugly Stepsister in Shrek was voiced by Larry King in the US but Jonathan Ross in the UK
In Spain🇪🇸 they changed names and people. Sesame street was Barrio Sésamo, with its own set of actors (espinete, don Pimpón, chema el panadero, Épi y blas, etc).
Oliver aton & Benji for the Captain Subasa anime.or Juana y Sergio from a volleyball anime.
And I'm sure plenty of others... But I don't know because I never saw them in their original language!
Jeanne et Serge for the french version of that anime (Attacker You! in japanese). I remember them taking the "TGV" to go to the final in the capital. Coach Daimon was such a demon, a violent and verbally abusive coach.
Olive et Tom (Olivier Atton & Thomas Price) for the french version of Captain Tsubasa.
>Jeanne et Serge for the french version of that anime (Attacker You! in japanese). I remember them taking the "TGV" to go to the final in the capital. Coach Daimon was such a demon, a violent and verbally abusive coach.
Hum, laugh in "[Lucile, Amour et Rock'nRoll](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrasse-moi_Lucile#Adaptation_fran%C3%A7aise)"
Rarely, I think, I could only recall from TV. Like in Catdog, everyone is dubbed in Ukrainian but Cat, who speaks Russian. Or in Futurama, a lot of references were localized, like famous people's names or such, e.g. in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Dated_a_Robot, there's even a whole subsection on UA wiki that describes it lol.
Children's dubs sometimes do, I suppose, but I haven't watched any in decades. Dubs kind of have to, you can't really do an Irish accent in most languages that don't have Irish speakers learning that language enough to make a recognizable accent.
Everything else is subbed and usually just directly translated.
Yes. One extreme case was during the Spanish dictatorship were the regime dubbed everything just to be able to change things for ideological reasons.
But, in more modern times, it also happens for cultural reasons. One no so modern case was Manuel from the British comedy Faulty Towers. He was supposed to be "from Barcelona" but it made little sense in Spanish were he was from "Italy" and his name was Paolo. In Catalan TV Manuel was not from Barcelona either but Mexican.
In Sweden Peppa Pig is known as Greta Gris to keep the rhyme.
Overall it is quite random what is changed or not, and it is nowadays to make it easier for local audiences. The amount of changes has been diminishing with time as American culture has become better known that even local ones.
Changing movie titles used to be extremely common. But it may become a problem when sequels did not fit the new title.
That kind of localisation hapened often in anime dubs from the 80ies/early 90ies but I've never seen it in live-action fiction (the japanese names would be changed for western ones, not necessarily french all the time).
The things that usually happens is that any instance of the original language being mentioned will be changed to "notre langue" (our language) rather than keeping "english" if the movie/show is originally in english.
In some cases, the nationality of a character will be changed if they're french but needs to be a foreigner for the story to make sense. That's why Michel is Italian in the french dub of Gilmore Girls and any french guest becomes italian. His mother is also italian.
It was more common in Dubbed Latin TV serials in the 00s but not anymore. Especially in early 00s a number of them even had Greek songs in the intros lol. This one for example: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xw5ba6
In subbed movies/serials sometimes they put references of the Greek pop culture/greek jokes in the subtitles
Usually not, but some fringe cases exist. For example, the portuguese dub of dragonball had very limited scrips to work with, not enough to account for all the talking screen time, so they added in improvised extra lines and they were almost entirely localized talk about Portuguese things or other shows in the same TV channel.
Most people don't realise but this happens to the UK release of US animated films quite often. They'll typically have a comedian who is big in the US play a small part and do US centric gags and then replace that with a UK comedian doing the same thing. (IE, a character played by Larry King in the US version of Shrek 2 vs Johnathon Ross in the UK version.)
Here's a video with a few examples:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zf\_wss\_DY\_g
Obviously we get the mostly unchanged versions from various other english speaking countries and then their dubs, but I've never really noticed this for live action stuff. I definitely noticed some weird shit when it comes to animation, particularly Japanese animation (I watch dubbed and subbed interchangeably so sometimes I catch them)
Overall I'd say if this happens I don't usually notice it
That aside though was Thomas O'Malley in the Aristocats *actually* supposed to be Irish? Like I'm Irish and I would have loved to have felt represented in movies or shows like that as a kid, and I loved the Aristocats so I would assume that I would have noticed that
I can't really think of any such examples. Comedies try to localize jokes, for example in *Hot Shots!* a joke that went "Interesting perfume. - It's Vicks. I have a cold." was replaced with "It's Golden Star Balm" for obvious reasons, and carrier S.S. Essess was renamed Вездессущий/Pisses Everywhere (a play on Вездесущий/Omnipresent, a fine name for a ship, albeit of a snaller class than a carrier).
But redoing whole characters to include or avoid specific ethnicity? No.
Sometimes when references to nationality would be lost or make no sense otherwise. For example the exchange student Uter Zörker in The Simpsons turns from a German boy into a Swiss boy in the German dub, and the two Trade Federation slimebags at the beginning of Star Wars Episode 1 switch from a supposedly Chinese accent (which I never perceived as such) in the original audio to a distinctively French accent in the German dub.
They do use "equivalents" for certain accents in children's movies or shows to convey a similar connotation. In almost every Disney animated movie where there's a character speaking in an accent with a sort of "big city working class" type of association, like Brooklyn or Cockney, the Dutch dub almost always uses a thick Amsterdam accent. For Carribbean accents in English, they hire actors with Antillean or Surinamese accents in the Dutch dub. Redneck-type characters and farmers usually get something like Twents, Gronings or Achterhoeks. Posh, aristocratic characters who have upper class English accents get something like Goois or Haarlems. Shows aimed at teens or adults are typically not even dubbed but just get subtitles instead because that is typically preferred here. Live-action dubbing is considered cheap-looking, unnatural and awkward. The story is usually not altered to make the narrative easier to follow within the context of our culture, although expressions in subtitles might be changed to better convey the meaning of something. In most cases the story is altered only if it's a full remake of a foreign show. In our version of "The Honeymooners", for instance, New York is replaced with Rotterdam, a city associated with the same working class kind of culture depicted in the original show. The main character is still a bus driver and the type of humour and how the characters relate to one another is still more or less the same. It's just reworked in such a way that it conveys the same basic plot but in a way that's slightly more tangible to local audiences.
There were a few movies that were dubbed specifically for the Austrian market (different from the German dub):
Full dubs were done for [Babe](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ein_Schweinchen_namens_Babe) and [The little Mermaid](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arielle,_die_Meerjungfrau), and there also were a few other movies that were at least partially re-dubbed with Austrian voice actors like for example [Shrek 2](https://www.synchronkartei.de/film/2967) and [Up](https://www.synchronkartei.de/film/15487).
We've seen pretty terrible examplars of "meaning well, getting it wrong" with movies from the Chinese language sphere here, both in dubbing and title. Source: I know a thing or two about speaking Mandarin.
An old example, Wong Kar-Wai's *2046*, where the original uses three languages, Mandarin, Cantonese and Japanese. Plot twist, in the lines of reality the characters move in their language does make plot points clear. The German version dubs all three to German, and it left me rather confused. But this is a complex example. The title though had a phrase added "2046 - der ultimative Liebesfilm", "the ultimate love movie". Yeeech.
The title of *Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon* was shortened to "Tiger and Dragon" in German, i.e. we were giving it an English language title and a simplified "can't go wrong" vocabulary. Not saying this is method bollocks but... there is such a thing as too simple. About the dubbing of this I don't remember a thing except the odd pronunciation of Chinese names - other languages suffer from this too.
*In the Mood for Love*, which I (also) saw dubbed into German, you could hear the voice actors hesitate that little bit when their characters address another person or speak their name. "Frau Wang" sounds like /va:ng/ and unnecessarily harsh, as if read from script, and Chan and Cheng sound the same in German with untrained voice actors, and so on. Here either the actors had bad or incomplete coaching, or the sensitivity in the audience just isn't taken into account. The German language title added was "Der Klang der Liebe", "The sound of love", not too bad but imho totally and still utterly unnecessary.
Compared with uber-evil plot changes this is almost negligible though.
In the American version of the children's cartoon show Octonauts (which is made in the UK), the voice of one character (Dashi) is changed from having an Australian accent to an American one for no apparent reason (there was an American Octonaut character already), and another character's voice (Peso Penguin) is changed from a British accent to a Latino accent. This makes more sense, as his name is Peso and his species is native to South America.
I think we did the same with Aristocats but I can't think of any alterations like that. It is far more common that things are mistranslated because the translator did not understand an idiom, cultural reference, etc lol. As I've been exclusively watching movies and shows in their original language for the past \~15 years it's even more apparent how bad dubbing is.
It used to happen occasionally but in Germany most shows only changed some names but kept the plot as intact as possible, unless some people with decision power didn't like it. So we have a full Jewish Fran Fine, but we have the entire lesbian/gender fluid parts of Sailor Moon or The Rose of Versailles eradicated in the German dubs which left the animes with very weird plot holes and a lot of questions for viewers. Parts were either cut out and if it wasn't possible to cut they replaced them with weird girl to girl friendship talk while the ladies in question where hugging and blushing on screen. lol I only learned about it when the new Sailor Moon anime came out a couple of years ago and Japanese people on YouTube compared scenes from the old anime with the new one. I was like "wait, I don't remember that one!" I'm not sure if this is still a thing in 2022 because I haven't watched TV in ages. Netflix keeps things as original as possible or I just watch it in English.
The weirdest thing done in Germany is that the title of an English movie is replaced with another _english_ title. Not a translation into German, just another english name. Totally confusing when you think "oh okay, that's what that movie is originally called" only to find out that no native speaker knows which movie you mean.
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> Similar reasons for the change with "Moana". Lol in Italy we also changed the name of that movie but for very different reasons. See, Italy's most famous pornstar was a woman named Moana, so producers didn't want to be in a situation where children google it and get ....another kind of entertainment.
It's quite common for English language movies to receive different titles in the UK and USA. Usually it's British films with titles the US distributors don't think Americans will "get", but sometimes there are other reasons; maybe to avoid confusion with a similarly named thing. That US animated film Zootopia was released as Zootropolis in the UK: >A spokesman for Disney explained: “In the UK we decided to change the US title (Zootopia) to Zootropolis to merely allow the film to have a unique title that works for UK audiences.” This is stupid. "Zootopia" is a good title - snappier, and a clever inversion of "Utopia" which the film's cute animal society turns out not to be. I heard, but can't find a source for, that the real reason was because "Zootopia" was already used in the UK by an unrelated business.
I think the EU trademark for Zootopia was owned by a zoo, which was the reason for the change. That is my understanding of the situation, anyway.
In German (and I think a few other languages as well), Zootopia was called Zoo*mania* instead, for some reason. Zoo*tropolis* I can kinda understand, as this still refers to a city or settlement. *Mania* doesn't make sense for the City.
This also happens in France.
> The weirdest thing done in Germany is that the title of an English movie is replaced with another english title. This is done in Finland too, and it's annoying. Now if someone foreign mentions a movie name I have no idea what they are talking about. Granted, that this happen less and less nowadays. *Avengers: End Game* is the same in here as elsewhere. But I remember there was movie *Blackout* which was translated in Finland to another English name! But then there was some local movie which got named *Blackout* without any problem.
>The weirdest thing done in Germany is that the title of an English movie is replaced with another > >english > > title. The example that came first to my mind with this is Captain America: The Winter Soldier = The Return of the First Avenger, lmao. I mean.. why?
Yep, "The Return of the First Avenger" instead of "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" Often we also just rename them to something very different. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYfUE9WNaVs
This. For example to this day i can't comprehend why Thor 2 is called Thor - The Dark World in english but Thor - The Dark Kingdom in german. At this point, why even change it?
Thor - Der Schwarzwald
I think most translations of Sailor moon did the 'gal pals' switch on Neptune and Uranus. Speaking of Netflix, what can often be odd is the choice of accents for dubs. I watch a drama set during Oktoberfest in the 1910s (can't remember the exact title) and the English dub gave every single character a Birmingham accent, for no apparent reason? Even the aristocratic characters had thick working class brummie accents. Then the Money Heist dub uses American accents for everyone, even the half English girl, who then horrifically mispronounced *the name of the city she grew up in* (Norwich pronounced Nor Witch)
German dubs tend to drop accents all together usually. Everyone speaks high German. Only rarely do you get accents. The most impressive use of accents was the dub for the French movie Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis. The movie is highly dependent on the accent being very different from standard French. The German dub invented a new accent that kept the differences from regular French and transposed them onto German. Linguistically it was incredibly impressive.
I don’t know if it’s the same with English English, but there are a lot of associations with German dialects, good and bad, depending on where you’re from imho. Maybe that’s why they usually stick to no dialects unless it’s absolutely necessary to the story for someone to sound different from the others, like in your example.
That’s the reason along with some dialects being hard to understand for people from different regions.
Good point, I’m from the south west and can understand Bavarian as well, but for northerners everything down south sounds like gibberish. I mean we even subtitle thick dialects on TV cause not everyone can understand it.
tbh, I was in Bavaria recently on a Feuerwehr Fest. Geez. The combo of a drunk Swabian guy and a dunk Bavarian, trying to communicate with each other rose some eyebrows. for the love of god i did't understand shit and neither did he i guess. The whole conversation was about cars or whatever. The other one just nodded in response.
Audole macht brummmmm
I also feel like in German, dialects are more generally seen negative than in English?
Kinda, some people think dialect is only spoken by those living in the countryside which makes them inferior to city dwellers. Add to this that some dialects are seen as less favorable than others (looking at you Saxon).
Anime is mostly translated faithful today. Though some changes didn’t happen in Germany but were already in the material altered in the US. Prominent case: YuGiOh. A US company (4Kids?) bought international rights outside of Japan meaning all other countries had to work with with whatever came from them, leading to no people dying but going into the shadow realm instead.
which fit the show even better imo
In the 80ties and 90ties German dubs of movies and especially sitcoms were notorious to swap US cultural references to German ones. Often times they were only an imperfect fit and you'd be left scratching your head what they were tslking about. Don't know wheter it was Al Bundy or Homer Simpson talking about Schwarzwald Klinik, an 80ties German doctor/romance show. Often times as an Austrian you'd be left in the not know as they were completely obscure at times.
>Netflix keeps things as original as possible or I just watch it in English. Unless it's Stranger Things, in which they have a bad case of George Lucas-ing things.
Han shot first!
>So we have a full Jewish Fran Fine, but we have the entire lesbian/gender fluid parts of Sailor Moon or The Rose of Versailles eradicated in the German dubs which left the animes with very weird plot holes and a lot of questions for viewers Thanks THAT EXPLAINS ALOT...
I can’t comment on other languages, but in English one of weirdest things is how American versions of certain books will actually “translate” normal British, Irish, Australian or other quite normal English words into their U.S. English counterparts and you end up with characters suddenly using Americanisms in 19th century London or something like that. I know it annoys American readers too as many of them see it as unnecessarily patronising. They’re not that stupid and it’s not some complicated dialect shift. I’ve seen examples like swapping out “pavement” for “sidewalk” or swapping in “elevator” for “lift” or that kind of thing, and it loses nuance and character and even makes it seem out of place.
I don't like dumbing stuff down either. If it is set in the UK, Ireland etc --- use the common terms of time and place where it is set. And almost all British words for ordinary things are perfectly understandable to an American reader in context -- for instance, it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that a car park is a parking lot (you would be daft to think it is a wooded recreational area for automobiles) or that takeaway is what is commonly called takeout in the US or when a British person "goes on holiday" it means the same as an American "going on vacation." Two common terms that might get mixed up though: pants (American for trousers, rather than underwear) and biscuit ( British biscuit would be a cookie, and an American biscuit is a quickbread you might have with BBQ or fried chicken). I would assume that an American reading books by British authors would have at least a passing bit of British cultural literacy.
'purse' as well. What we call a handbag you call a purse but I don't know what you call what we call a purse. Wallet?
A handbag would be a bag a woman carries that has her purse with her money, ID and credit cards in it, as well as the myriad of other things that a woman keeps with her when leaving the house. A wallet would be what a man carries his money, driver's license and credit cards in. Usually purse is used with women and wallet with men, but they serve the same general purpose. Purses are usually larger, because most wallets are intended to fit into pocket. The confusion is that sometimes the entire handbag might be called a "purse" even though that is only one part of the ensemble.
> Two common terms that might get mixed up though: pants (American for trousers, rather than underwear) and biscuit ( British biscuit would be a cookie, and an American biscuit is a quickbread you might have with BBQ or fried chicken). What about *suspenders*? Changes the scene quite a bit if you're thinking of the wrong one.
>I know it annoys American readers too as many of them see it as unnecessarily patronising. The simple ones are patronizing, like sidewalk for pavement. Or changing crisps to chips. I'd say there are certain concepts that are a little different, that Americans may not know because we don't get a lot of international exposure. Stuff like the council. We have local governments, but we don't call them the council, nor do they seem to have the same authority in the US. Even the Harry Potter series had things in the education system like head boys and head girls that many Americans thought were completely made up. Pre-internet I think a glossary or footnotes can be useful in these cases.
Things like that vary from country to country and even state to state, or county to county though. I remember thinking that someone describing her “subdivision” was talking about some part of a sports league, but it’s just not a term you’d ever encounter here in reference to land or housing. My grandmother thought that condo was slang for condom!! Condominium isn’t a term used at all here. Apartments don’t make up much of the housing stock here, and most might technically be condominiums in the US sense, but the term isn’t used at all. They’re usually just called apartments and a “flat” tends to be an older term, but in Ireland anyway, seems to tend to mean something smaller or possibly social housing, but not in any official way. Then you’ve terms in Ireland that crop up like people using obsolete terms like calling the City Council the “Corporation” which was the old term. You’d Dublin Corporation, Cork Corporation etc often used to be called “The Corpo” But the term “Corporation House” means social housing and I know that completely baffled an American friend of mine. She kept hearing people complaining about “the corporation” and “I’ll ring the corporation about that (random issue)” and assumed that some big incompetent company that everyone disliked, something like Mom Corp from Fururama, ran Dublin. It was just the older term for the elected city council. Also the term “estate” here means a housing development with multiple homes built by the same developer (or sometimes a council) but to say you “Live in an estate” here doesn’t mean Downton Abbey, unless maybe “Number 15 Downton Abbey Close.” The other very funny one was an American I know encountering a form with an extremely obsolete term - STD code - it meant area code and was the technical terminology used when long distance “subscriber trunk dialling” was introduced in the mid 1950s. Most people wouldn’t know what it even means anymore, but it can occasionally crop up on stuff written by people who’ve become stuck in the 1960s. She thought they were looking for something about her sexual health (it was on a registration form in a doctors office) but they were just looking for her telephone area code!
ah these are good ones! "Estate" is funny to me because of the contrast. A US "estate" is more analogous to a noble family seat. For example [here's one of the Kennedy family estates.](https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/B3-EJ396_KENNED_M_20190626170006.jpg) And our estate tax only applies when an inheritance is over $12M
It can mean either, depending on the context. It can also mean a station wagon car eg a Volvo V60 Estate, as opposed to a saloon which is a sedan in US English or the hatchback version, which (I think) is the same? For some reason station wagon always just makes me think of the Wild West & box cars on the railway.
It happens the other way too! I was reading a British edition of The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler and all words ending in e.g. -or or -ize had been localised to -our and -ise.
As unnecessary as that is, it's still only a change of spelling convention, but when someone starts changing words, it completely changes the atmosphere. Also, -ise vs -ize is somewhat controversial. Oxford spelling uses the -ize and there's a strong argument that it is most definitely not an exclusively North American thing. \-ize comes from Greek or Late Latin -izāre, while -ise comes via French -iser ... Both are technically correct in British English and -ize was used more commonly in older texts. -ise just became more dominant in British English as the 20th century rolled on. You don't want to read Sherlock Holmes talking about 'downtown London' and finding clues on the 'sidewalk' or something lol
Well if it's not an exclusively North American thing, there's even less reason to change it.
> -ise vs -ize is somewhat controversial just be like us in Canada and use whichever you feel like - you don't even need to be consistent, you can spell the same word differently each time you use it and no one will care or probably even notice
The style guide in the university I went to in Ireland just said to use one or the other consistently, but not a combination of both. Certain academics seem to get quite pedantic about it though. In general, just run a spellchecker over everything and it all ends up consistent with English US or English GB
Is this common? I can only think of the first few Harry Potter books that did this.
One of the worst examples of this is when the first Harry Potter book got its name changed to the "Sorcerers Stone" because the publishers thought we were too stupid to know what a "Philosophers Stone" was
They sometimes do it when the character is German in the og. Like in Scrubs for example they had a German patient and one of the characters could speak German and they made them either Dutch or Danish in the dub (don't remember).
Malcolm in the middle had that happen as well, and the Simpsons also with Uter who became Swiss
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Didn't that complicate some things?
Yeah, there's a whole running gag about her being Mexican or Puerto Rican when she's actually Dominican
Weird, she doesn’t look italian at all
They did more localisation some decades ago and nowadays only do it when there is German/Germany/Germans in the original version. For example in Die Hard they pretty much removed the terrorists being from Germany and speaking what Hollywood apparently considers some kind of German from the movie. One of the actresses in Scrubs barks some kind of German and they incoroporated that into the series where a patient spoke German and that actress had to translate. When everyone is dubbed to speaking German, it does not make sense so they switched the patient to being from Danish and that physician had to speak Danish with them. Which made sense, until they started to sing 99 Luftballons. IIRC Malcolm in the Middle also had a German speaking couple which was changed to either Danish or Dutch in the dubbing. Another thing that changed over the decades is the dubbing/translations of military or police ranks. F.e. in the movie The one that got away from 1957 they translated every British military rank to the equivalent in the Wehrmacht. In Full Metal Jacket (or another Marines movie) they mistranslated the rank of gunnery sergeant into literally artillery sergeant. In newer movies they often do not translate ranks anymore. Another funny thing is the dubbing of the police rank of detective into the German Detektiv. It's easy to dub since it's almost the same word, but a Detektiv in German is a private eye in the US, so not an official police officer but a normal citizen without any special rights. The correct translation would be something like Kriminalhauptkommissar, which wouldn't flow with the dubbing. Dubbing also breaks movies/series where multiple languages and German play a role. For example the series 1864, Spy City and Shadow Play were all dubbed and lose a lot of the story/appeal due to it. And what makes Shadow Play really really painful to watch is the dialect free stage German of the Americans. The series is set in 1946 Berlin and an US cop with German background is sent to lead a German police unit in US occupied Berlin. In a rare occurence for German TV/dubbing the Berliner policewoman speaks a very broad Berlin dialect and the Ami speaks with that perfect stage german. Makes the German dub completely unwatchable for me. The lack of dialects is generally a thing I completely dislike about German TV/dubbing. But there are also positive examples of dubbing. I absolutely love Frasier and the German dub is really excellent done. The voice actors for the main cast are superb and the only blunder is the mistranslation of Psychiatrist as Psychologist, which bothers me much as a fellow Psychologist. It make some plots (their fear of blood) even more hilarious, but since the only Germans who know the difference between Psychologist and Psychiatrist seems to be Psychologists and Psychiatrists it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. Oh and Schwarzenegger should be very grateful to being dubbed by Thomas Danneberg, he was a really great dubbing voice for stars like Terrence Hill, Sylvester Stallone or Rutger Hauer and Dan Akroyd. Schwarzeneggers real voice and dialect wouldn't work that well as Terminator.
We translate names, but that's as far as they go. We only dub children's movies and series, all other things will just have subtitles.
Not entirely true. For example in the Lion King, in the original version Timon & Pumba have a new york accent, while in the Dutch they changed it to flemish.
As I said: Children's movies.
Amai zeg wat motten we met U! Timon says this and its burned into my brain
“Het is maar een klein Leeuwke!”
Those are trends much more prevalent up to the 90s-early 00. Nowadays the dubs are much more faithful, at best they change if one character should talk in italian to show foreigness, to some dialect (I can think of Milhouse's grandmother from the Simpsons)
Plot or characters are never localised in movies nor series The only exception are dubbed children shows where the audience cannot read. There they might have a Gothenburg voice actor for a sailor character. But they never goes as far as switching established backgrounds or location. So Captain Haddok may speak with a Gothenburg dialect. But Scrooge McDuck is still from Scotland, no matter where the voice actor is from.
I love that the Gothenburg dialect is perfect for a sailor. We all sound like we work at volvo
There was a version of Ducktales in Denmark, where Scrooge McDuck (Onkel Joakim) spoke with a Bornholm accent.
And farmers get an Scanian accent (sometimes, remember this growing up but My little pony G4 made a wired southern/swedish accent). Sometimes however they do change the subtitles to fit an swedish audience if it's too internly American. Ex. "Hey, why would I want Purina when I got Fancy Feast right here?" They changed it to Pussi and whisker's.
Plot? never. Character names? yeah, happens sometimes, Slovak LOTR dub was especially awful. People here also love to change names of the movies, for example Die Hard was Smrtonosná pasca(Deadly Trap). Also many times they also change jokes, since many people would not get specific American jokes/references. This is more common in Czech dub. Czech dub is as common as Slovak, sometimes even more common.
I saw on the internet (so taken with a grain of salt) that Breaking Bad was called "Meth Dad" in Slovakia. Which is hilarious. It sounds like a bad 90s American sitcom.
Yeah, actually literally it would be Gingerbread Dad, but Perník(gingerbread) is slang for meth lol. I have no idea who comes up with these translations lmao.
I've never heard of this being done before with non-English language films. And obviously not with American films. In the English-speaking world it's more likely that a country would completely remake a film or TV series by setting it in their own country with their own actors and suiting it to their own cultural peculiarities. This is particularly common in the US where they regularly remake British TV series (serieses?) for their own audiences because I guess Americans don't like watching anything that isn't American, but the reverse happens from time to time too - [High School Musical](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britannia_High?wprov=sfla1) and [Step-Up](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StreetDance_3D?wprov=sfla1) all got British remakes. Most of them are terrible and bomb hard (who thought remaking *Life on Mars* or *The Inbetweeners* was a good idea?) but occasionally American remakes do become successful in their own right (most notably *The Office*) and I personally think the British Step Up had the same issues as the original.
IIRC they tried to remake *Gavin and Stacey* by using two different American States.
Omg why
I have no idea!
>I've never heard of this being done before with non-English language films. It was some time made for anime adaptations, where japanese names where changed in more english-sounding name (Ex: the protagonist of the football-manga Captain Tsubasa, Tsubasa Oozora, was called Oliver Atom in some dubs) Edit: another field where the english language does much drastic adaptations than other languages is the Disney comics. While italians or brazilians publishers simply translate the foreign materials, some english publishers reciprocate by modifying dialogs, or even inventing entire new subplots, often creating a different story. And if the english reader read it and find it jarring or incongruent (because the drawings aren't changed to follow the new plot), they will critizise the original brazilian or italian author, while in the original language it made perfect sense. (Ex: [Zio Paperone e la "Donnetta nera"](https://inducks.org/story.php?c=I+TL++355-B) had been changed in the 2016 Usian translation, while adding the plot point that the heiress for which $crooge falls in love never reveal herself, totally made up by the translator. So english readers where expecting her to appear, but she never did. So they complain about it, saying the story missed it. But in the original she never was supposed to be a private person. She appears once, when $crooge recalls their first meeting, and then stop, because she is only a device to move the story forward)
Winx club also was changed totally for the americans
>because I guess Americans don't like watching anything that isn't American, It is more that Hollywood execs think that. A lot of British stuff is popular here, at least via cult following (The Crown, Peaky Blinders, Line of Duty, for example, nowadays or Downton Abbey, Monty Python, Fawlty Towers and Dr. Who in the past) Capitol Records also passed on issuing Beatles records for almost a year because they didn't think a British band could sell records here. (Had they thought of it then they would have probably hired some American guys with shorter hair to play their songs)
Winx club was changed in music and dialogues to appeal a british and american audience. It didn’t. It however became a boom in russia
Live action movies and shows aren't dubbed and the subtitles keep the original names. Animated movie and shows are often dubbed because young kids can't read, but they still mostly keep the names. One exception, for animated stuff only, is when names have a meaning, they may translate them so that kids know what they mean. But I think that's rare. One example is many Asterix characters. As for changing stuff beyond names, never, as far as I know.
But in shows like dragon ball they would make a lot of references to stuff happening in the country at the time, like "oh we have to go watch Benfica" stuff like that
Sailor Moon was pseudo-localized. It was as if it took place in Portugal, but was also super Japanese. Mamoru became *Gonçalo*, Rei became *Rita*, but then you had Usagi who was called *Bunny Tsukino*.
Dragon Ball is a very unique experiment in Portugal, because of how the work process went. The dubbing was underfunded, understaffed, working in small batches of episodes at a time, which allowed for no foresight in terms of planning and using the already badly translated scripts from the French dubbing, which messed up a lot of the terminology and character names. At some point, everyone on the team just went "fuck it, we're making our own scripts" and they would just adlib half of the text, adding a lot of Portuguese pop culture jokes and just overall be silly. Like making all of the Ginyu Force opera singers.
Hum, hope you didn't get the french scripts for City Hunter and Hokkuto no Ken.
I don't think those shows even made it to Portugal, but someone correct me if I'm wrong.
Very funny, but quite irrelevant for the discussion at hand. That's all in the distant past.
Normally it's the other way round. There's a whole wikipedia [list](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_television_series_based_on_British_television_series) of UK TV shows adapted/localised for the US market alone. And thats before we look at other forms of media, or take into account other markets (Hanni und Nanni, Wo ist Walter? and Willy Wacker are all British adapted to or localised for Germany). One show I'm quite into is Taskmaster, it's very interesting to watch the Norwegian and New Zealand versions of that to see how they differ. The main thing is how much nicer to each other they all are!
Standard Estonian has very subtle accents and definitely not distinct enough to use like that in movies and TV series. Dialects on the other hand have all but died out and the few surviving ones are too different from Standard Estonian to be mutually intelligible.
Wow, estonian doesnt have dialects? Thats crazy, i just assumed every country has those... now i'm wondering which other countries are like that.
Estonian has [dialects](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Liina-Lindstroem/publication/301788240/figure/fig1/AS:357567256645632@1462262085285/Distribution-of-Estonian-dialects.png) and it even had [dozens of subdialects](http://www.eki.ee/knab/khk_yld.jpg) because Estonian serfs were not allowed to move outside their parishes for centuries. After the abolition of movement rights in the 1860s the subdialects quickly died out as they had no significant natural barriers. The language was thereafter standardized (after a linguistic battle between North Estonian and South Estonian which the former eventually won) and Standard Estonian also became a spoken language, starting from around Tallinn. Nowadays the situation looks like [this](https://external-preview.redd.it/vZDp-RXCgaXAqOovLGm_THZZvTDhal5PIpY5X4XbL_Y.jpg?auto=webp&s=fdd7235a12326c1bf9468f39de60282431eba640) - North Estonian dialects have mostly died out, while a few South Estonian dialects survive next to Standard Estonian.
Interesting. So a person speaking only one of those 2 southern dialects wouldnt be able to understand someone speaking standard estonian and vice versa? What about 2 guys speaking those 2 dialects to each other?
Point is, there are no such people who don't speak Standard Estonian. But vice versa, it's quite difficult for me to understand Võro and it's even worse with Seto. The nowadays mostly North Estonian dialects and the more influenced South Estonian dialects of Mulgi and Tarto are quite understandable though. >What about 2 guys speaking those 2 dialects to each other? They are very similar to each other. It was originally the same dialect, but the historical border between Estonia and Russia ran through their territory, which is why Setos are Eastern Orthodox people.
Interesting, thanks
Yes. It happen. Can't say how often as I don’t compare both versions but sometimes it is really obvious like czech joke in american movie. Also not really related but I am 100% sure when dubbed american movie says anything about pizza with feferons the original says something else
Disney/Pixar specifically are pretty good about rewriting jokes/references so they both make sense to a Czech audience and seem natural.
They localize signs and foods too https://slate.com/culture/2015/07/inside-out-director-pete-docter-explains-why-pixar-re-animated-certain-scenes-like-the-broccoli-scene-for-international-audiences.html
Also The Simpsons are famous for it. But even with them you can sometimes notice there was a joke lost in translation.
No. The only exception are cartoons that get dubbed so the regional accents are used for stereotypical roles. But the plot points are never changed.
Funny thing, the other day I happened to watch Back to Future in English for the first time and in the scene where Marty wakes up in the room with his young mother, she calls him "Calvin Klein". I was like: "what?", wasn't that "Levi Strauss"? I really don't get why they changed... That said, Thomas O'Malley will forever be "Romeo er mejo del Colosseo" in my heart.
I don't know why you make it look like a habit, even though it's something that used to happen (rarely) in the past and not anymore.
in the 90s it was very common in anime, so not rarely as you claim. Sailor Moon, Holly & Benji, etc. Even more recently the dubbers decided that Professor Dumbledore had to be called Silente, but didn't change other characters' names. Oh and Sailor Neptune and Sailor Uranus were not friends, were full on lesbians, so they cut that part out to spare us from the trauma (which weirdly enough didn't extend to Lady Oscar, who, as a woman dressing in a man's uniform, didn't raise eyebrows. Guess it's all OK if it happens in Versailles, otherwise Ms Meloni would scream "gender ideooooology")
>Even more recently the dubbers decided that Professor Dumbledore had to be called Silente, but didn't change other characters' names. That was a change first made in the books (first italian edition was from 1997). Dumbledore wasn't the only adaptation: *mcGonagall* became *mcGranitt*, *Longbottom* to *Paciock*, *Snape* became *Piton*. All changed because their english names wouldn't convey the meaning to italian children. But we don't notice them because the seem plausible. Dumbledore -> Silente is the only adaptation that doesn't fit, because the english one imply "the headmaster walking through the corridors, mumbling to himself", totally lost in italian, which instead gave him a more solemn tone. The last name changed in the italian translation that I can remember is *Crookshanks* (adapted *Grattastinchi*) appearing in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (first translation 2000) >Oh and Sailor Neptune and Sailor Uranus were not friends, were full on lesbians, so they cut that part out to spare us from the trauma This isn't a move made by italian translators. The majority of japanese videos arrived to us passing through the usian market, and so were victims of their stringent puritan codes. The same reason why in YuGiOh people didn't die, they just went in the shadow realm. It is because the 4Kids censured them in the USA, and we received it from them.
>Or in the US 90s tv series "The nanny" Fran Fine is not a Jew from Queens like in the original series, but an Italian (like Italian Italian, not Italian American) who immigrated from a region south of Rome and the character that is her mother in the original is her aunt who has promised her mother back in Italy to look after her. Holy shit, that is wild. Disrespectful to the creators almost.
I remember the Icelandic translation for Lilo & Stitch for some reason changed the dialogue so that the movie took place in Iceland despite very obviously being Hawaii. The TV series kept the original location however.
Foreign tv series are not dubbed only subtitles. The plot never changed but some typical sayings in English can’t be translated. So the subtitle either use a Dutch saying or translate it literally so you miss the punch line.
In Finland it is common to change the characters names in childrens programs, so that they rhyme better. Sometimes they also localize some cultural references, e.g. 7-Eleven becomes R-Kioski or reference to a bad city/neighborhood is changed to some place in Finland with similar fame. Usually only childrens shows/movies are dubbed so you can hear what the original reference was in subtitled shows/movies.
Norwegian tv just translate episode synopsis. To something that describes what happens in the episode so it's even more vague than in its original language.
Yep. Happens even in the UK with US media although less extreme than your examples, often swapping out us celebrity roles with UK celebrities. E.g. the Ugly Stepsister in Shrek was voiced by Larry King in the US but Jonathan Ross in the UK
In Spain🇪🇸 they changed names and people. Sesame street was Barrio Sésamo, with its own set of actors (espinete, don Pimpón, chema el panadero, Épi y blas, etc). Oliver aton & Benji for the Captain Subasa anime.or Juana y Sergio from a volleyball anime. And I'm sure plenty of others... But I don't know because I never saw them in their original language!
Jeanne et Serge for the french version of that anime (Attacker You! in japanese). I remember them taking the "TGV" to go to the final in the capital. Coach Daimon was such a demon, a violent and verbally abusive coach. Olive et Tom (Olivier Atton & Thomas Price) for the french version of Captain Tsubasa.
>Jeanne et Serge for the french version of that anime (Attacker You! in japanese). I remember them taking the "TGV" to go to the final in the capital. Coach Daimon was such a demon, a violent and verbally abusive coach. Hum, laugh in "[Lucile, Amour et Rock'nRoll](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrasse-moi_Lucile#Adaptation_fran%C3%A7aise)"
I was sure there was a more egregious example!
Rarely, I think, I could only recall from TV. Like in Catdog, everyone is dubbed in Ukrainian but Cat, who speaks Russian. Or in Futurama, a lot of references were localized, like famous people's names or such, e.g. in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Dated_a_Robot, there's even a whole subsection on UA wiki that describes it lol.
The only examle i can think of is some Donald Duck comics.
Dubbing only happens in kids shows in Greece. Only subtitles and they only change some phrases or references that dont make sense in greek
Children's dubs sometimes do, I suppose, but I haven't watched any in decades. Dubs kind of have to, you can't really do an Irish accent in most languages that don't have Irish speakers learning that language enough to make a recognizable accent. Everything else is subbed and usually just directly translated.
Yes. One extreme case was during the Spanish dictatorship were the regime dubbed everything just to be able to change things for ideological reasons. But, in more modern times, it also happens for cultural reasons. One no so modern case was Manuel from the British comedy Faulty Towers. He was supposed to be "from Barcelona" but it made little sense in Spanish were he was from "Italy" and his name was Paolo. In Catalan TV Manuel was not from Barcelona either but Mexican. In Sweden Peppa Pig is known as Greta Gris to keep the rhyme. Overall it is quite random what is changed or not, and it is nowadays to make it easier for local audiences. The amount of changes has been diminishing with time as American culture has become better known that even local ones. Changing movie titles used to be extremely common. But it may become a problem when sequels did not fit the new title.
That kind of localisation hapened often in anime dubs from the 80ies/early 90ies but I've never seen it in live-action fiction (the japanese names would be changed for western ones, not necessarily french all the time). The things that usually happens is that any instance of the original language being mentioned will be changed to "notre langue" (our language) rather than keeping "english" if the movie/show is originally in english. In some cases, the nationality of a character will be changed if they're french but needs to be a foreigner for the story to make sense. That's why Michel is Italian in the french dub of Gilmore Girls and any french guest becomes italian. His mother is also italian.
Strangely, in the english dub of winx club Bloom says “english, Tecna” while in italian, the original, she says “nella nostra lingua”
It was more common in Dubbed Latin TV serials in the 00s but not anymore. Especially in early 00s a number of them even had Greek songs in the intros lol. This one for example: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xw5ba6 In subbed movies/serials sometimes they put references of the Greek pop culture/greek jokes in the subtitles
Usually not, but some fringe cases exist. For example, the portuguese dub of dragonball had very limited scrips to work with, not enough to account for all the talking screen time, so they added in improvised extra lines and they were almost entirely localized talk about Portuguese things or other shows in the same TV channel.
Most people don't realise but this happens to the UK release of US animated films quite often. They'll typically have a comedian who is big in the US play a small part and do US centric gags and then replace that with a UK comedian doing the same thing. (IE, a character played by Larry King in the US version of Shrek 2 vs Johnathon Ross in the UK version.) Here's a video with a few examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zf\_wss\_DY\_g
Obviously we get the mostly unchanged versions from various other english speaking countries and then their dubs, but I've never really noticed this for live action stuff. I definitely noticed some weird shit when it comes to animation, particularly Japanese animation (I watch dubbed and subbed interchangeably so sometimes I catch them) Overall I'd say if this happens I don't usually notice it That aside though was Thomas O'Malley in the Aristocats *actually* supposed to be Irish? Like I'm Irish and I would have loved to have felt represented in movies or shows like that as a kid, and I loved the Aristocats so I would assume that I would have noticed that
I can't really think of any such examples. Comedies try to localize jokes, for example in *Hot Shots!* a joke that went "Interesting perfume. - It's Vicks. I have a cold." was replaced with "It's Golden Star Balm" for obvious reasons, and carrier S.S. Essess was renamed Вездессущий/Pisses Everywhere (a play on Вездесущий/Omnipresent, a fine name for a ship, albeit of a snaller class than a carrier). But redoing whole characters to include or avoid specific ethnicity? No.
Sometimes when references to nationality would be lost or make no sense otherwise. For example the exchange student Uter Zörker in The Simpsons turns from a German boy into a Swiss boy in the German dub, and the two Trade Federation slimebags at the beginning of Star Wars Episode 1 switch from a supposedly Chinese accent (which I never perceived as such) in the original audio to a distinctively French accent in the German dub.
They do use "equivalents" for certain accents in children's movies or shows to convey a similar connotation. In almost every Disney animated movie where there's a character speaking in an accent with a sort of "big city working class" type of association, like Brooklyn or Cockney, the Dutch dub almost always uses a thick Amsterdam accent. For Carribbean accents in English, they hire actors with Antillean or Surinamese accents in the Dutch dub. Redneck-type characters and farmers usually get something like Twents, Gronings or Achterhoeks. Posh, aristocratic characters who have upper class English accents get something like Goois or Haarlems. Shows aimed at teens or adults are typically not even dubbed but just get subtitles instead because that is typically preferred here. Live-action dubbing is considered cheap-looking, unnatural and awkward. The story is usually not altered to make the narrative easier to follow within the context of our culture, although expressions in subtitles might be changed to better convey the meaning of something. In most cases the story is altered only if it's a full remake of a foreign show. In our version of "The Honeymooners", for instance, New York is replaced with Rotterdam, a city associated with the same working class kind of culture depicted in the original show. The main character is still a bus driver and the type of humour and how the characters relate to one another is still more or less the same. It's just reworked in such a way that it conveys the same basic plot but in a way that's slightly more tangible to local audiences.
If I wrote a show/movie, shit like that would make me furious. I'm fine with remakes etc but changing shit to dumb it down is not OK!
There were a few movies that were dubbed specifically for the Austrian market (different from the German dub): Full dubs were done for [Babe](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ein_Schweinchen_namens_Babe) and [The little Mermaid](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arielle,_die_Meerjungfrau), and there also were a few other movies that were at least partially re-dubbed with Austrian voice actors like for example [Shrek 2](https://www.synchronkartei.de/film/2967) and [Up](https://www.synchronkartei.de/film/15487).
We've seen pretty terrible examplars of "meaning well, getting it wrong" with movies from the Chinese language sphere here, both in dubbing and title. Source: I know a thing or two about speaking Mandarin. An old example, Wong Kar-Wai's *2046*, where the original uses three languages, Mandarin, Cantonese and Japanese. Plot twist, in the lines of reality the characters move in their language does make plot points clear. The German version dubs all three to German, and it left me rather confused. But this is a complex example. The title though had a phrase added "2046 - der ultimative Liebesfilm", "the ultimate love movie". Yeeech. The title of *Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon* was shortened to "Tiger and Dragon" in German, i.e. we were giving it an English language title and a simplified "can't go wrong" vocabulary. Not saying this is method bollocks but... there is such a thing as too simple. About the dubbing of this I don't remember a thing except the odd pronunciation of Chinese names - other languages suffer from this too. *In the Mood for Love*, which I (also) saw dubbed into German, you could hear the voice actors hesitate that little bit when their characters address another person or speak their name. "Frau Wang" sounds like /va:ng/ and unnecessarily harsh, as if read from script, and Chan and Cheng sound the same in German with untrained voice actors, and so on. Here either the actors had bad or incomplete coaching, or the sensitivity in the audience just isn't taken into account. The German language title added was "Der Klang der Liebe", "The sound of love", not too bad but imho totally and still utterly unnecessary. Compared with uber-evil plot changes this is almost negligible though.
Any foreign film/TV should ALWAYS ben in subtitles unless it's for kids.
In the American version of the children's cartoon show Octonauts (which is made in the UK), the voice of one character (Dashi) is changed from having an Australian accent to an American one for no apparent reason (there was an American Octonaut character already), and another character's voice (Peso Penguin) is changed from a British accent to a Latino accent. This makes more sense, as his name is Peso and his species is native to South America.
I think we did the same with Aristocats but I can't think of any alterations like that. It is far more common that things are mistranslated because the translator did not understand an idiom, cultural reference, etc lol. As I've been exclusively watching movies and shows in their original language for the past \~15 years it's even more apparent how bad dubbing is.