everything's not lost.

(the title is a quote from a friend and i got to hear it after almost every entry i released on tv series. so i had to take this photo.)

well, this was a shitload of tv series i was writing about. and it will not be the last time i wrote about that, i’m just finished with the series i wanted to introduce for now. sure, i could have expanded and also talked about american dad, family guy, simpsons, futurama, malcolm in the middle, scrubs, 24 and so on, but that did not feel right this time. but for sure i will write about the upcoming scrubs and 24 season and whatever comes out.

for now, here is a list of shows i have talked about so far:

• how i met your mother +++++
• the it crowd ++
• weeds ++++
• psych +++
• my name is earl +++++
• burn notice ++
• prison break ++++
• californication +
• the big bang theory +++
• battlestar galactica ++++
• pushing daisies +++
• house ++++
• jekyll +++++
• entourage ++++
• heroes ++++
• lost -/~/+
• the office (uk and us) —-
• reaper +
• dexter +++++

i don’t really think these are too many shows, you can easily arrange watching throughout the whole week if you have a tv-recorder. still, it’s a lot to keep track of. that’s why i love www.myepisodes.com.

lost in translation:

also, i’d like to point out the thesis Espy wrote in 2005. topic: The Effects of Dubbing on the Depiction of the United States in American Movies and Television Series in Germany. i asked him and he allowed me to link to the download – pdf with 103 pages. i’ve read his work as a whole and was blown away. there were a lot of arguments about what can go wrong with translating original series for german-speaking audiences – a lot of what i have been telling other people for quite some time. though, if you can live with a translated series, i’m totally ok with it, you just have to consider that you do not see the original work but merely another version, as Espy elaborates in his paper.

what i found most interesting was not the examples of very, very bad translations of futurama jokes (they really did translate a lot quite literally without thinking), but the example movie that he is talking about: Aliens. you might think that in a sci-fi/horror-movie like aliens, where there is not much talking involved, that bad synchronization can’t do that much damage, but you’re totally wrong. and the examples provided are freaking hilarious. hilarious, but also very sad. providing excerpts would be hard, since the examples are in german. yet i know, 99% of my readers are of a german-speaking audience, but still… if you want to, check out the document and just skip the theoretical part right to the comparisons.

there is “proof” that by simply changing the translation you can change a whole character or the whole mood a scene is trying to set up. like when Ripley in Aliens find the little girl Newt:

Ripley: These people are here to protect you. They’re soldiers.
Newt: It won’t make any difference

in the german version, the dialog would be:

Ripley: We all want to protect you. Even/Also the soldiers.
Newt: I don’t care, I don’t want that.

(Ripley: Wir wollen dich doch alle beschützen. Auch die Soldaten.
Newt: Das ist mir egal, ich will es nicht.)

this changes the whole mood of the scene from the creepy child that knows what’s about to happen to a small child rejecting help.
astonishing, yet alarming.

i recommend reading it if you’re interested and the whole point is, that if there’s any chance, stick with the original version - even if you don’t understand every word (heck, sometimes I have a hard time myself) – not only do you learn the language, but chances are good that you end up less confused. like the engineers in the german Apollo 13 version who had to learn how to push a square pig (they translated peg to “Schwein”/pig) through a round hole.

i rest my case.

if you want to share your opinions, feel free to comment on this article or spam Espy directly at alex [at] momoi [dot] de.