Lost in Translation

  
Recently I decided to try my hand at translating movie subtitles. Translating anything is hard enough, but movie subtitles brings a host of special challenges to the table. It didn't help that the movie I chose to translate provided nearly every single one of these challenges.

The movie was Mädchen, Mädchen, directed by Dennis Gansel, one of Germany's best young directors (The Wave, We Are the Night). The film is story of three young women, Inken, Vicky, and Lena. They are about to graduate from high school and are looking to get laid. There are several subplots involving a crucial volleyball game, the new girlfriend of Inken's father, and a lout who gets his comeuppance, but most of the action centers around Inken (the delightful Diana Amft) and her efforts to experience her first orgasm. It is a frank and funny film, but it is also pretty raunchy. The dialog is casual and realistic, which means lots of contractions and slang. Any attempt to get a meaningful translation out of the German subtitle source file by feeding it through Google Translate was bound to result in gibberish. A quick check online at the movie subtitle sites revealed that there were English subtitles already available, but they were obviously written by someone schooled in the King's English. “I have to go to the loo” wouldn't mean much to the average American, and I can't see an American girl saying, “My knickers are too tight.” Not to mention that these subtitles were not timed to the actual film, but were probably intended for a bootlegged bit torrent of the movie. I wanted my subtitles to be suitable for an American audience, and I wanted it to sync with the legitimate German DVD copy of the film.

Right off the bat, the movie presents a problem with its title. How do you translate “Mädchen, Mädchen?” IMDB lists the US title of the film as Girls on Top, which is almost as bad as the German translation of the title of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Vergiss mein nicht—or, “Forget me Not”). A more literal translation (Girls, Girls), would have been better, although the nature of English dictates a third “Girls” in the title, but Elvis already made a film with that title. Maiden, Maiden would also work, but who uses the word “maiden” anymore? I decided to not waste too much time on this conundrum and go straight to the dialog.

The film starts easily with the other girls wishing Inken a happy birthday. Things don't really get complicated until we encounter Tim, Inken's insensitive boyfriend. Tim likes to wear T-shirts with stupid sayings on them. When first we see him, he is walking into the gymnasium during a volleyball game. His T-shirt reads: “Trübsal ist nicht das einzige das Man blasen kann.” Feed this into Google Translate and you'll get: “Tribulation is not the only one that can blow,” which one could further finesse into “Misery isn't the only thing you can blow,” but even this doesn't come close to capturing the meaning of the saying, nor, for that matter, does it make much sense. The joke of the saying relies on the fact that the verb blasen (to blow) is the verb of choice for the noun Trübsal to mean to be down, or depressed, and blasen can also have the same obscene connotation that it has in English. Since the joke of the slogan is based entirely on the double entendre of “blow,” I decided to drop “misery” and find a word that would create the same effect in English, leading me to translate the shirt as “Smoke isn't the only thing you can blow.” I imagine that if this was shown in a theater, at this point, there would be Germans muttering to their American dates, “That's not what is says,” but at least this way the English-speaking viewers also have a pun to groan at.

Tim’s next T-shirt, though, proved even more problematic: “Andere Länder, Andere Titten.” Literally, this translates to “Other Countries, Other Tits,” but to translate it like that would miss the terrible pun in the saying. In German, one might say, “Andere Länder, andere sitten” to mean something along the lines of “When in Rome,” or “Different strokes, for different folks.” I had to find some way to get this across. My first thought was to take the English expression “different folks,” and turn it into something like “Different pokes for different folks,” but that didn’t really work for me. “Pokes” was too mild. Tim’s T-shirt were offensive and I wanted something equally offensive. I decided to go with “Different Cities, Different Titties,” which changes the meaning of Länder (countries) but keeps everything else more or less the same. Most importantly, it’s the kind of stupid thing that Tim might put on a T-shirt.

One of the biggest challenges with this film was dealing with obscenities. You might think that German would be a great language for obscenity, but it can't hold a candle to English when it comes to flat-out, blue-streak swearing. German leans heavily on Scheiß (shit) to convey most of the vulgar sentiments that Germans have to offer. The use of "fuck" is limited to the sexual act, and when intended as an obscenity, it is usually spoken in English. Arsch (ass) is also used a lot in German. So much so that Mozart actually named one of his canons, "Leck mich im Arsch." This translates literal to "lick me in the ass," but would translate more idiomatically to "kiss my ass." Clearly Mozart was in a nasty mood that day. Here, I had to use my imagination, and choose the obscenity that the average teenager would be most likely to use in a given situation. The problem is compounded a bit by the fact that girls don’t swear like boys do, but I decided that these girls were a little more foul-mouthed than average, especially Vicky. I took my cues from Sex and the City, with Inken as Carrie, Vicky as Samantha (of course), and Lena a little like Charlotte (Miranda gets lost in the shuffle).

Songs present a special problem in translation. If you translate the words literally, you usually lose the rhyme. Ideally, you want the translation to read like songs lyrics, yet still make sense in context. One of the best examples of this I have ever seen is in the subtitles for The Legend of Paul and Paula. Here, the lyrics of the songs by the band, die Puhdys, are translated almost verbatim and yet still rhyme. The British version of the Mädchen, Mädchen subtitles don't even try to maintain the rhyme, but I wasn't going to be daunted. I managed to come up with a pretty good translation, but I don't think the lyrics are going to win any Grammys. More problematic were the little rhymes that Inken and Vicky were creating for the personals ad. Most problematic of all was Schwengeln drängeln, which translates to something along the lines of  “pushy penises.”  After wrestling with it for a while, I decided to give up. It would have to stay “pushy penises.” It doesn’t mean much when Vicky first suggests it, but it doesn’t seem to mean much to Inken either. Later on when she uses it in a sentence, the meaning becomes clearer.

I am not 100% satisfied with my translation, but maybe no one ever is. I do think it’s a better translation than any of the others that I’ve encountered. It captures the spirit of the film and the humor in most scenes. If you have a copy of the movie and would like to add these subtitles to it, you can download them here:

Mädchen, Mädchen subtitles.

Google Docs is Down

Friday, August 26, Google Docs went offline. As of this writing, it is still offline. Judging from the posts on the Google Docs Help Forum, the problem started at 9:46 am (PT) and have continued for over an hour. Most interestingly, the forum people at Google, who were so good about responding quickly to user questions only an few minutes earlier are remarkably mum all of the sudden, both on the Google Help Forum and on Twitter. Meanwhile, the rest of us, unable to access our online documents, are sitting back and contemplating this inherent and inescapable flaw in the cloud computing concept.

Follow up: Google Docs came back online around 11:25 am (PT). Still no explanation from Google yet as to what happened, but I expect that will come later. Meanwhile, people all over the world are backing up every single file they have online.

Why I Hate MST3K

Okay, let me get this out of the way right at the top: the writers for Mystery Science Theater 3000 can be very funny. They can make me laugh, I won’t deny it. They have found a clever way to deliver jokes that are just obscure enough to make their audience think they are hip, but not so esoteric as to lose them. It is a fine balancing act and they perform it sensationally well. Yes, I know that most TV critics love this show; that the series won a Peabody Award; was nominated for two Emmys; and that James Poniewozik at Time Magazine called it one of the “100 Best TV Shows of All Time” (a worthless list, since it did not include That Was the Week That Was, Slattery’s People, or Naked City). Yes, I know that I am in a serious minority on this, and that many of you have probably already stopped reading lest I say anything bad about your favorite show.


All of this said, I implore you: Don’t watch this show. For goodness sake, just get the original movie and watch that instead. I don’t say this lightly, nor am I in any way intending to be troll about this. If MST3K is on, just change the channel. Someday you’ll thank me.


I first encountered MST3K back in its early days. A friend of mine was raving about it and wanted me to come over and watch an episode. This was back when there was no Tivo and many of my friends still didn’t have VCRs (and the ones that did were divided between VHS and Beta). This woman was one of the wittiest and most perspicacious writers I knew, so I assumed any show she would endorse had to be a winner. I went to her house and...I was horrified! I made polite conversation and got the hell out of there. I spent the rest of that afternoon brooding on what I had just seen. Nothing since then has caused me to change my mind about this show. Further attempts to “get” this show have made me dislike it all the more.


For those of you who have never seen the show, allow me to set up the scenario. MST3K is about a likable janitor who is imprisoned on a space station and forced to watch cheesy movies by two evil scientists (or one evil scientist and his sidekick, or two evil sidekicks and a woman in a minibus—I never got all this straight). His only companions are robots that he built from parts he could spare. During the films, the janitor and the robots made clever quips about what they see on the screen. Sometimes the jokes are obvious references to pop culture, but sometimes they are remarkably obscure. Most of the films they watch are low-budget exploitation films from the fifties, sixties, and seventies—the so-called “Golden Turkeys” as the concept was christened by the Medved brothers.


I don't dislike the show because they make fun of these movies. I’ve been known to do the same thing while watching them myself. My problem with the show is that it only goes in one direction: toward ridicule. If you are watching a low-budget movie on your sofa, with your friends, you may make similar comments to those made by the characters on the show, but you are also more likely to give credit where credit is due. A cheesy line, or absurd situation might elicit a sarcastic remark, but the next moment, you can acknowledge an effective shot or scene. MST3K cannot do this. Nothing is ever impressive. All observations have to have a punchline. If a scene works, Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot are not going to say so. They will either try to make a joke (which usually falls flat in these situations) or wait until they can say something arch.


Worse still is that, by interjecting their comments, they remove the viewer from the experience of the movie. You are watching Joel (or Mike) and his puppets make fun of a movie, you are not really watching the movie at all. If you have any clever things to say, they are held in check in favor of the comments on screen. Your own wit is put on hold while someone else does the movie-watching for you. No good can possibly come from this.


But the worst thing about this show is that, like an invasive species, it has overtaken Netflix and forced out the distribution of many classic low-budget films in favor of the MST3K versions. You cannot, for instance rent Manos: The Hands of Fate, The Beast of Yucca Flats, The Giant Gila Monster, The Robot vs. The Aztec Mummy, The Wild Rebels, and half a dozen other interesting oddities that deserve to be seen in their original forms. Only the MST3K versions are available.


Right now, for instance, Netflix does not offer Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies except in the MST3K version. That’s really a shame, because if the only way you ever see this movie is with their comments, you are missing a world of delights. The songs are solidly entertaining, the camerawork—some of the first work in Holllywood by Vilmos Zsigmond and László Kovács—is spectacular, and, if you bother to pay closer attention to the film, you might learn a few clever low-budget tricks on the use of MOS (shooting without sound) to save money. All of this is lost on the MST3K viewer, who walks away from the film feeling oh so clever without learning a thing.


With this in mind, I would like to make the following suggestion to the makers of the MST3K DVDs: Give the viewer the option of turning off the peanut gallery and simply watching the movie. This is not too much to ask. It would solve the lack of access that presently exists with these films, and still allow people without any native wit to experience the comments of people cleverer than themselves.


The writer I mentioned at the start of this article stopped publishing her zine shortly after my visit to her house. Mostly this was due to the insertion of a new attention-sucking device into her life (i.e., a baby), yet I can’t help but think it is partly because of MST3K. Did the effect of being placed as a spectator where she used to actively participate cause her imagination to atrophy? I hope not, but I suspect the worst. I don’t care how funny you think this show is, it is stealing from you one of the great joys of watching these films: the opportunity to become one with the movie, giving you the ability to see them both as unintentionally hilarious and as stunningly imaginative. When watching MST3K, all that is left is you, sitting on a couch, watching the lives of others without a thing to say.

Follow up: After finishing this post, I tweeted it with the hashtag #mst3k, which, naturally, put the fans of this show on my tail. I decided to publish their remarks to allow the opposite viewpoint some breathing room. The most interesting post to me was the one that claimed that MST3K discs contain bother the original and the riffed versions of the film. Had this been true, I still would not have cared for MST3K, but they would have risen in my estimation somewhat. Alas, it turns out not to be true. Although some contain other material (usually mini-docs about the films and filmmakers that are as snarky as the show), they do not offer you the ability to watch the movies as they were intended.

I was amused at how many of the irate posters felt compelled to point out that the reason the show does not offer anything other than sarcastic comments is because it's a comedy show. Um, yeah, that was kinda my point. Although many of the posters tried to explain why they objected to my rant, none made a very convincing argument. One person surmised that I was a film snob based on my statements about the quality of the camerawork in some low budget films. If by "film snob," sir, you mean I care about movies as an art and pay attention to all the aspects of the work that goes into making them, then I plead guilty. The saddest comment is the last one (I've closed new posts on the topic for now): "If you want to see the movie untouched by the hands of the MST3K crew, rent or buy it in it's [sic] original form." Yes, exactly, but therein lies the problem. Many of these are currently only available in the bastardized versions, and MST3K has never done anything to help alleviate this.

Most of the emails and Facebook responses I received that supported my rant came—not coincidentally, I think—from people who either make films or write about them. One fellow film historian summed things up nicely: "It's worth remembering that those films were created by people who cared about them.... [MST3K] is piggybacking on someone else's work and should be seen as such."

I Hear Europe Singing

One of my great joys in life is sitting down every May with a cup of coffee and a cinnamon roll and watching the annual nonsense known as the Eurovision Song Contest. Once a year, all the countries in Europe—plus a few that aren't—get together to vote on the best song of the year. Each country enters one song and every one votes. The catch, of course, is that you can't vote for your own country. As a consequence, countries often tend to vote for whatever country is closest to them. In spite of this, a song gets chosen, and it can be from anywhere. A hit song on Eurovision can launch a career. The most famous example of this is ABBA, who won the contest in 1974 with their first hit, "Waterloo." Most of the time, the song that wins is pretty lame, but what can you expect from a contest based on average taste?

I first encountered Eurovision in 2004 while I was working the Drupa trade show Düsseldorf. Our hotel was situated in Langenfeld, a town without any distinguishing features. Once you were back in the hotel, there wasn't much to do but sit in your room and watch television. My first night there happened to fall on the same night as the Eurovision finals. That year, the winner was Ruslana from the Ukraine, doing a perfect imitation of a Xena Warrior Princess. I was hooked. I have tried to watch it every year since, which is remarkably easy no matter where you are thanks to the Eurovision web site.
   

   
Most of the time, the songs are pretty forgettable, but every once in a while the population of a country will go completely mad and send some oddball group to represent their land. Such was the case in 2006, when Finland entered the GWAR-like rockers Lordi to sing "Hard Rock Hallelujah"; or Silvia Knight from Iceland, who seemed to be intentionally awful, and managed to alienate from the entire continent with her song, "Congratulations (I'm Silvia Knight)".
  

  

   
As usual, the bands that were the most fun, did not win. True to form, this year's winner was Azerbaijian with "Running Scared," a song that incorporates the two most important principles of the Eurovision Song Contest: catchiness and mediocrity. But I think the contest needs a few more categories and I'm here to give them to it. So without further ado, here are my choices:

Band I'd pay to see: Dino Merlin and his band (Bosnia-Herzegovina).

Silly? Yep? Bad clothing? Check. But they actually seemed to be enjoying themselves. The song manages to be both ethnic and pop, which is what I watch Eurovision to see. If this band came to San Francisco, I'd go see them in a heartbeat. 
  

  

Best Retro Number: Čaroban by Nina (Serbia)

This was a rich vein of material. Plenty of bands had a strong retro vibe, which is always to be expected at Eurovision. Nina gets the win for her pitch perfect sixties look and the Laura Nyro vibe of her song. Coming in a close second is Ireland's Jedward, singing "Lipstick" and looking like they just escaped from a 1982 music video.
 

 

  

Worst Song: I Love Belarus by Anastasia Vinnikova (Belarus)

This is a tough category. There are plenty of bad songs to choose from, but most are just bad because they have nothing to offer. How many mediocre boy bands do we have to sit through? But Belarus's entry pushes bad to a new low. I mean, "I Love Belarus"—really? The most oppressive country in Eastern Europe—are you frickin' kidding me? Different lyrics and this might have made it into the final top ten, but apparently enough people in Europe speak English now to know what this song was saying. Perhaps the singers did not.

  

Best demonstration of the dangers of Autotune: Haba Haba by Stella Mwangi (Norway)

Everyone thought this song would be in the top ten. It was a popular song in Europe and a fairly catchy number too; even if it had about as much to do with Norway as The Lion King. Then Stella Mwangi opened her mouth and what came out was...well, just awful. Ms. Mwangi managed to stay a quarter-note flat throughout most of the song, and even the catchy repeats at the end could do nothing to salvage this catastrophe. It was frighteningly obvious that this song was the product of some serious Autotuning. Norway went down in flames in the semi-finals.
 

I could probably come up with a few more categories, but I think that will do it for now. My ears are burning. Did you have a favorite? Or a least favorite? If so, let me know.