this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2023
29 points (100.0% liked)

Entertainment

5164 readers
1 users here now

Movies, television and Broadway.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
Whom@beehaw.org
alyaza@beehaw.org
remington@beehaw.org
29
(Mis)representation of language in Hollywood movies (beehaw.org)
submitted 2 years ago by Pantoffel@beehaw.org to c/entertainment@beehaw.org
28 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Through the years I've noticed that quite a few Hollywood films play fast and loose with any other language than English.

I was watching Oppenheimer yesterday and the titular character was supposed to be speaking Dutch fluently, but the actual lines spoken were mostly jibberish, and more like German than Dutch. As a native speaker, I found this quite jarring and sloppy. Though I can imagine that to non-native speakers this would probably fly under the radar.

This got me thinking if there were more examples of shoddy translation, weird pronunciation, mishandling of language or dialect that you as a native speakers have noticed when watching movies?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] aka_oscar@beehaw.org 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

A very clear example for me is Gustavo Fring from Breaking Bad. The character is supposed to be chilean and lived in Chile for a good portion of his life, yet his spanish is atrocious. Huge contrast with Lalo, whose actor is actually bilingual in spanish and english, and therefore speaks both languages fluently.

I also remember watching a yt clip of Jim Cearrey speaking Korean. I think it was from the Yes movie. My K-drama fanboy self thought he did a good job from the shows ive seen, but actual koreans in the comments were clarifying his accent was kinda weird.