A women’s group has issued a report on the “sexist” dubbing of foreign films and dramas, reports women’s newspaper Ilda The group took a look at some 27 English-language dramas shown on terrestrial broadcasting in September and October. It found that most of them employed sexist sexist practices when dubbed into Korean. Namely, male characters spoke in banmal, or “low language,” while female characters used jondaenmal, or “high/respectful” language, even though the original English dialogue made no such distinctions.
This tendency was most often seen in dialogue between husbands and wives or lovers. Besides dramas, foreign films showed the same tendency, with 12 of 15 films monitored by the group employing this dubbing practice.
The same went for dialogue between villains and female characters. Male characters, including the films’ heros, tended to use banmal when addressing villains, while female characters continued to use jondaenmal.
The tendency continued regardless of characters’ social positions. In the film “Far From Heaven,” for example, the white female homeowner spoke to her black gardener or black maid in jondaenmal, while the white male homeowner spoke to the gardener and store clerks in banmal.
The group noted that the fact that the films were dubbed into Korean using sexually-determined differences in speech despite the lack of such distinctions in the original language showed just how discriminatory Korean society was toward women.
Kind of interesting…
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I’ve seen movies where the two protagonists, father and son, spoke to each other in a very informal manner, even by western standards…but not in the Korean translation. Jondaenmal from beginning to end, thus changing the whole premise of the movie.
Oh…and I really liked how the line “My dad thinks smoking is a sign of weakness” to “My dad doesn’t like smoking” in the Korean translation of the movie Meet the Parents.
Yeah, my girlfriend complains about this a lot (CSI has this problem a lot, iirc). A spot-on complaint, imho.
Translating can be such an interesting game. Often it reveals as much about the translator as it does about the original writer. Cannot whine too much, though, as most English-to-Korean translators in Korea get paid far too little for their work. There is a sense that “anyone can do it,” so most producers would rather go cheap than go good.
There’s also the gem “I don’t want no Daewoo on my hands” (Queen Latifah in the movie ‘Taxi’) that was translated to “I’m not riding in a compact car”.
If you want a real translation comprehension challenge then buy the VCDs with homemade subtitles instead of official DVDs. They throw up some really strange interpretations.
Interesting angle. I think I remember reading a feature somewhere that Korea’s most famous movie translator is a woman.
my personal favorite is when you buy a DVD off the street and the guy they hired to write the subtitles includes comments like ‘they are speaking too quickly here” and “sorry. i have no idea.” i appreciate the honesty.
i told know why wives would be using formal language with their husbands in movies. years ago there was a korean woman working in the same school as i was and she talked on the phone with her husband at least once a day while sitting at the big couch in the middle of the staff room. i was told by a few of the korean teachers (all women) that they thought it was strange that she used formal langauge while talking with her husband. none of them did.
slim:
i remember reading an article in the korea herald years ago about how the top subtitle writer was a dude. also, i seem to remember a quote from him about how if he thought a joke in a hollywood movie would be lost on koreans he would just make up his own routines. that way, he claimed, he could get everyone laughing at the right times.
At least the subtitles match the dialog and the movie. It is not uncommon for pirated DVDS in China to contain subtitles from a different movie. For some reason, piraters usually choose subtitles from the movie The Piano to add on to their bootlegged flicks. Lest anyone lecture me on the morals of buying pirated DVDS, the selection of legally produced DVDs is paltry and many films, especially non-Hollywood, are available only from bootleg shops.
How does properly translating crappy American movies and TV shows makes any difference?
“i remember reading an article in the korea herald years ago about how the top subtitle writer was a dude. also, i seem to remember a quote from him about how if he thought a joke in a hollywood movie would be lost on koreans he would just make up his own routines. that way, he claimed, he could get everyone laughing at the right times.”
jd, I also read that article. The reporter wrote that some Koreans hate his translations for those reasons.
“How does properly translating crappy American movies and TV shows makes any difference?”
Someone is paying good money to see those crappy movies in the theatre. They deserve better dubbing than that. Besides, don’t you know that a lot of Koreans rely on the translation of TV shows and movies to study English? Just imagine how frustrating it would be to do so.
Do feminazis ever worry about abused Arab women in third world countries?
In any nation of hooligans, linguistic inequality builds an essential foundation upon which to build and maintain order.
“Do feminazis ever worry about abused Arab women in third world countries?”
________________
Just what does that have to do with this topic?
The Goat wrote:
“Do feminazis ever worry about abused Arab women in third world countries?”
________________
Just what does that have to do with this topic?
————————————————————–
You seem to be very slow in problem solving department:
I’m suggesting that feminazis have better things to worry about than stupid TV shows.
I once heard translation defined as the courtship between languages. But if one knows nothing of courtship then it’s just a muck around.
In the movie “Grease”, Riz and Kinicky (sorry for the spelling) are in the backseat of Kinicky’s car, about to “do it” (lol)
U.S. version:
Riz: “Did you you bring protection?”
Kinicky checks his wallet.
Korean version:
Riz: “do you have any money?”
Kinicky checks his wallet.
LOL!
Origami,
I nominate you for dumb comment of the day.
Different topic, different time. Stay on topic or write your own blog entry about why women’s groups in Korea should be more concerned about 3rd world Arab women than their own situation.
Get a grip.
It’s always amusing to hear foreign dramas dubbed so that a woman in an office is calling another woman “older sister” and addressing boyfriends as “older brother” (that one’s kinky all by itself).
this all reminds me of when i saw jackass in seoul with a friends from australia and a few hundred koreans…..we(my friend and i ) were the only ones laughing in the whole cinema. a very strange experience indeed. i guess there are limits to what you can do with subtitles when the comedy is based around visual humour.
My wife was a translator for a while. She worked on one season of “The Gilmore Girls.” If you have ever seen the show, you would know what a nightmare it is to translate.
They are grossly underpaid for the work load they are given (except for Lee Mi-do, who sucks up all the well-paying gigs). She eventually left the company last year just before she had our daughter. They still own her money.
Worst translation so far:
“You’re the shit!” –> 재수 없어
Second worst:
Hi, sorry I spilled beer on my hands (said by a guy who was about to shake the hand of a person that walked into his office) –> 어서오세요
mithridates, you’re second example is exactly the point I was trying to make. The translator would be aware that Koreans sometimes say rude things, too. Obviously, the translators are purists who, by fear of corrupting their idealized Korean language, feel that it’s more important to promote the use of socially stifling ‘honorifications’ in lieu of conveying accurately the moviemaker’s message in its entirety.
Just found another example of poor translation, one that is somewhat more worrisome…
My son likes to watch ‘Dora the Explorer’. He’s got DVDs and VHS cassettes we bought back home. Well, I was flipping through the TV channels for him and by chance found a channel that was airing an episode of that show. He smiled, happy to see a new episode of his favorite TV show, but then he suddenly frowned when it was interupted by the Korean ‘hostess/interpreter’. Her job is to explain/translate the chants for the kids, a concept that is apparently an anomaly for a kid who’s been watching the original ‘Dora’ episodes. Well, she made a mistake in the chant. It was supposed to be ‘The stick, the stick, can do magic tricks’, but said it was ‘The stick, the stick, can do magic sticks’. The same error was presnt in the subtitles. Seems to defeat the purpose if you make mistakes, doesn’t it?
I do not know if there is any truth to it, but I remember being told that the “blunt-speech husband and polite-speech wife” relationship was a custom imported from Japan. The Korean who told me that said that in Joseon Korea husbands and wives normally spoke to each other in blunt speech, which he claimed was a sign that they viewed each other as equals.
gbevers, maybe, but some Koreans will also argue that ancient Koreans were ‘pure of mind’ while ignoring the obvious erotic symbolism found in some ancient Korean art and literature.
PS. In Shilla, rich Korean women could have more than one husband. I doubt the Japanese had nothing to do with that tradition going out of style.
At least they got it right in “Bachelor Party” when Hanks, responding to the father-in-law’s question about whether they are going to have kids, says, “We are considering adopting. I have my eye on an 18-year-old Korean girl right now.”
The Chosun Ilbo has deemed this topic worthy of comment. Is “honorifics and humilifics” the correct expression?
http://english.chosun.com/w21d.....00016.html
A lifetime ago I freelanced for a company doing subtitles for videos, and there were strict rules. And little pay too – so don’t be surprised if the quality is bad, you get what you pay for.
You couldn’t swear back then – nothing like the language in recent Korean movies was allowed, even if the original English was crude; the women spoke politely to men. The men panmal’ed the wiminfolk.
Most people doing that job back then were housewives who had an academic command of English – at best. Even in present times, with bootlegged .AVI movies, their subtitles produced by litterally gangs of young Koreans [see the "credits" with a bunch of people, and the usual injunction not to pirate their work, mwahahaha], the quality is poor. Again, in this case, you get what you pay for. Nada. I haven’t watched a movie with Korean subtitles that wasn’t fubared. We’re talking 30%+ mistakes. Not just huge blunders – and there’s a lot of ‘em – but little things that don’t match, and show the translators know diddly about the language and the society. Sad really.
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