Took a picture of this one while at a recent flohmarkt (flea market), and this is as good an example as any to talk about the German language. If you break it down word for word, this says "The With The Wolf Dancing." Now movie titles get routinely switched around in foreign markets for marketing/clarity reasons (the recent film Get Him To The Greek was was called, after translation, Men's Trip here), but this poster really does mean "Dances With Wolves," due to the German language's differences from English. Having the verb as the last word in a sentence is pretty standard, and I really don't want to get into deeper levels of confusion discussing esoterica like "dative case prepositions." But trust me, the title is a carry-over; it's just the language that routinely stymies me despite my continuing efforts.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
German Lesson
Took a picture of this one while at a recent flohmarkt (flea market), and this is as good an example as any to talk about the German language. If you break it down word for word, this says "The With The Wolf Dancing." Now movie titles get routinely switched around in foreign markets for marketing/clarity reasons (the recent film Get Him To The Greek was was called, after translation, Men's Trip here), but this poster really does mean "Dances With Wolves," due to the German language's differences from English. Having the verb as the last word in a sentence is pretty standard, and I really don't want to get into deeper levels of confusion discussing esoterica like "dative case prepositions." But trust me, the title is a carry-over; it's just the language that routinely stymies me despite my continuing efforts.
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3 comments:
This is actually a pretty nicely-translated movie title. It's tricky at first glance, if you've not covered relative pronouns yet. "Der", like all the nominative case definite articles, is multi-purpose; it is also a relative pronoun, i.e., "who." English is more complicated in sitchiations like this — it's more common (in modern fortune cookie style) to say "he who." Germans get by with just "who."
From there it's one-to-one directly translated, but it's extra tricky if you haven't seen the movie to know that homeboy's nickname is actually a pronounless relative clause.
Um, yes, that's what I meant to say... Well played.
Uh....thanks?
The bummer of the thing here is that perhaps the German film title is TOO well-translated. Before I saw the movie, I thought the word "Dances" in the title was a noun. Like it's a movie about lupine choreography. I presume I am not the only one who made that assumption, and that it was a conscious decision by the movie people or book author or whatever.
If via the German title is how you come to know the movie, then you already know there is a dude in it who does the foxtrot (‽) with Little Red Riding Hood's Pseudo-Oma. Perhaps you don't know that that's his name, so it's not 100% given away, but I guess die Katze ist schon aus dem Sack.
A little ambiguity in the title can be a nice treat for the viewer, and the precision of the translation here renders that all but spoiled.
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