Bad, German Simpson dubbing decisions

[FelixSH]

I generally like the German version of the Simpsons. Maybe because I grew up with it.

But, while rewatching the show, I sometimes find really bad translation decisions. Which is saying something, my English is fine, but has probably a lot of weird quirks. For example, it took me a really long time to get why "This guy are sick!" was a problem, I had to actually take a look at the sentence. Stuff that immediately pops out to a native speaker doesn't even register with me, sometimes.

But I'm also not a paid translator, so I think it's still ok to point out the really weird stuff. As I said, I like the translation, and am not going to just make fun of them. I do find these cases interesting, though, and maybe people here will too.

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I just rewatched S5E11, Homer the Vigilante. There is the scene, where Abe tells the family about Malloy. "I noticed Malloy wore sneakers. For sneaking!"

It is probably just a case of a hard to translate joke. The German word for "sneaking" is "schleichen". So they translated "Sneakers" as "Schleicher". Which would be fine, someone who "schleicht" would be a "Schleicher", and technically, if you had a tool for it, you could call it "Schleicher".

But this tool doesn't exist. No one ever called any shoe a "Schleicher". By now, we just use the word sneaker here too, or call them "Straßenschuhe".

Sure, the joke gets lost, but I'm not sure you could do anything about that. It just doesn't work in German. It makes it feel like the translator used Google translate, except that it didn't exist, back then.

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Another thing that blew my mind was from Treehouse of Horror V "The Shinning". The part where Willy tells Bart that he has the Shinning, and the whole joke is about them not wanting to get sued.

Well, in the German version, that part makes no sense, and it confused me for years, until I watched the show in English. I'll write down the German sentences, and translate them to English:

Bart: Hey, dass ist ne Abkürzung durch dein Heckenlabyrinth.
Translation: Hey, that's a shortcut through your hedge maze.

Willie: Du verdammter Kleiner...! Gedanken: Nein, nein, sei lieb zu dem Kleinen, sein Vater wird durchdrehen, und ihn bestimmt zu Hackfleisch verarbeiten.
Translation: Oh, you little...! Thoughts: No, no, be kind to the boy, his father will go crazy and put him through the meat grinder.

Bart: Wieso Hackfleish?
Translation: Why meatloaf?

Willie: Oh, Junge, du kannst meine Gedanken lesen. Du hast das Shining.
Translation: Oh, boy, you can read my thoughts. You have the Shining. (Note: It's already Shining with one n, not the Shinning with two.)

Bart: Du meinst die Sonne scheint?
Translation: You mean the sun is shining?

Willie: Shht, soll ich dich etwa anzeigen?
Translation: Hush, do you want me to sue you?

So, instead of making a joke about copyright issues, it's just nonsense. They just say Shining from the start, Bart doesn't know what the Shining is, and Willie threatens to sue him for no appearant reason. I guess the translator just didn't know what the Shining is. Which is weird, because Stephen King was always well known here too, and the title of the movie is "Shining" (they just dropped the "the").

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I will put them here, if I find any other weird decisions.

 

[Neo Skimbleshanks]

Excited to see where this goes...

 

[Octopus Prime]

I, too, am deeply invested in this

 

[Johnny Unusual]

I'm always interested in this kind of stuff. I feel like there should be a whole thread for bone-headed/weird translation choices.

Or even great ones.

To be fair, this is probably fortunate happenstance but for Dragon Quest: the Adventures of Dai anime's most recent episode (spoiler for anyone who hasn't read the entire manga) a new baddie introduces himself as the assassin of Vearn, "the main villain". And he is, constantly killing and advancing his plan. But in fact, he's literally Vearn's assassin in that he's assigned by Hell to kill Vearn if he fails, making him the literal assassin of Vearn.

 

[Violentvixen]

I love language stuff like this, please share more! The Shining interchange is amazing.

 

[ozacrot]

This is fantastic. I'm reminded again of the differences between the Quebecois and Parisian dubs of the Simpsons.

I am very curious about how they changed one joke in S5E2 ("Cape Feare"): Sideshow Bob's DIE BART DIE tattoo and the juror's exclamation that "no one who speaks German could be an evil man!"

 

[FelixSH]

I'm always interested in this kind of stuff. I feel like there should be a whole thread for bone-headed/weird translation choices.

Or even great ones.

To be fair, this is probably fortunate happenstance but for Dragon Quest: the Adventures of Dai anime's most recent episode (spoiler for anyone who hasn't read the entire manga) a new baddie introduces himself as the assassin of Vearn, "the main villain". And he is, constantly killing and advancing his plan. But in fact, he's literally Vearn's assassin in that he's assigned by Hell to kill Vearn if he fails, making him the literal assassin of Vearn.

Hmm, yeah, I feel like this topic would deserve a general thread. Maybe I will change the title, and make the thread into a general one. But I also got the idea of doing an episode-by-episode comparison, which might produce interesting decisions. Hmm, we'll see. There should definitely be a thread that talks about the different localications of the Ace Attorney games. They are super fascinating, in that regard.

That info about the DQ anime is really great. Thanks for sharing.

This is fantastic. I'm reminded again of the differences between the Quebecois and Parisian dubs of the Simpsons.

These two French dubbings are fascinating. Love the way they went with the scene in "The Crepes of Wrath". Really clever.

I am very curious about how they changed one joke in S5E2 ("Cape Feare"): Sideshow Bob's DIE BART DIE tattoo and the juror's exclamation that "no one who speaks German could be an evil man!"

Unfortunately, the boring answer is: They didn't change it. Maybe the explanation is at least somewhat interesting.

In Austria and Germany at least, we learn a lot of English. Can't speak for other schools, but I started in a playful way, when I was in the third grade of Elementary. No vocabulary, I think, but we learned how to say our birthday, simple stuff like that. We are also entranched in US culture. The Simpsons were never translated in a way, that made it seem like it played in Germany. It was always clear: This show takes place in the US.

So, we know more than enough English to understand what DIE BART DIE means. A translation would have been interesting, and probably bad, but whoever was responsible here knew, that most of the audience would get it.

Our English level is generally pretty, so that many people just watch the original, English version of TV shows. I started doing that too, a few years ago, but especially with comedy shows, it's done a lot, specifically because of hard-to-translate jokes. While I think that the translation is pretty well done (honestly, me and my friends always loved the show, despite always watching it in German), there are some diehard fans who think the German dub is godawful. I don't understand them, but I guess fans are just fans, wherever you go.

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While writing this, I thought of another show, which has a dub of questionable quality, and I'll just put that here too, because why not. You need no knowledge of the show, or any context.

In season five of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, there appears a magical artifact called "Dagon Sphere". Which would translate to something like Dagons Kugel. Or maybe not, because that sounds dumb. Maybe we had just called it Dagon Sphere, because we often don't even translate names.

Anyway, I guess the translator didn't have the actual text in front of him, and translated what he heard. Because what we got was "Dagons Furcht", which would translate back to English as "Dagons Fear" (instead of "Dagon Sphere", which, granted, sounds pretty similar when spoken out loud). I just don't understand how a mistake like this could have happened. I really think the translator just had no script, and translated each episode while watching. In writing, that mistake makes absolutely no sense, and the thing itself is a ball. It's just bafling on so many levels.

 

[karzac]

This is fantastic. I'm reminded again of the differences between the Quebecois and Parisian dubs of the Simpsons.

Oh wow, this is really cool. And kind of amazingly, the steamed hams joke actually works better in French.

 

[keurig]

This is a really interesting thread. I'm going to bring this up to my brother who spent years learning German over a decade ago. He previously told me that he actually watched some of the German dub back on an exchange trip and he thought it was pretty decent at the time.

 

[FelixSH]

This is a really interesting thread. I'm going to bring this up to my brother who spent years learning German over a decade ago. He previously told me that he actually watched some of the German dub back on an exchange trip and he thought it was pretty decent at the time.

It's perfectly fine. Someone described it as "Great voice actors with a bad translation." Not really inaccurate.

I don't have anything too interesting, but maybe you guys enjoy a bit more information about the German language. The relevant scene is in the very first episode, when Patty or Selma call, Homer picks up the phone, and Marges sister only says something like "Marge, please." without talking to Homer at all. At one point, the German version lets Patty/Selma say "Geben Sie mir Marge."

There are two translations for "You" in German: The casual "Du" and the formal "Sie". "Du" is used for children (no matter if you know them or not) and adults you have a good relationship with. Can be friends, your partner, your parents or your colleagues at work (if you like each other).

"Sie" is more formal, and is used for superiors, teachers, generally people of respect and adult strangers. So, if there is a new neighbour, you would use "Sie", but if they are nice, they might offer you the "Du". Outside of relatives, where you use "Du" for everyone (including parents, grandparents and aunts/uncles*), you generally are "per Sie", until the other person offers you the "Du", or you offer it. But then, if you start at a club (a choir, for example), you generally say "Du" to the others, at least in my experience. Honestly, it's a kind of weird and sometimes arbitrary system.

The point that I want to make is, that Patty/Selma wouldn't call Homer "Sie". You could maybe just point to the fact that Marges sisters have no respect for Homer, and use the "Sie" to show him emotional distance. It still always struck me as weird. Normally, in such a relationship, we would use "Du".

*In earlier times, children used the "Ihr" for all adults, including their own parents. The "Ihr" is normally a plural, except that in earlier times, we used it to show respect for other people. The point is, that the language reflected the formal relationship that children had with their parents, and I like how that transformed over time. By now, no kid would use anything but the "Du" for their parents.

 

[FelixSH]

I have another one that is just strictly bad. You all know it:

"That's the joke".

The German translation of that is: "Das ist der Humor." Which is so weird, and made me not realize what people talked about, when they referenced that line, for years.

The German word for "joke" is "Witz". The word they used, "Humor", simply translates to "humour", and means the same thing, I think. Like, "dark humour" or "dry humour" exist in German too, as "schwarzer Humor" / "trockener Humor".

So, imagine if Wolfcastle had said "That's the humour.", which would be the translation of the German version back to English. I'm not quite sure, but I guess it sounds as nonsensical as it does in German (am I correct there?). What became a meme in English never even registered here. For years, I didn't even understand what he meant.