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(Mis)representation of language in Hollywood movies (beehaw.org)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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?

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Swedish used to be misrepresented, but now Swedish actors have become more prominent and they can at least pronounce their native lines correctly. That being said, even a Swedish actor sometimes fails to point out translation errors, which I find amusing.

Also, ostensibly Swedish characters with non-Swedish names is weird. A couple that spring to mind:

Kurt Hendricks (John Wick)
Dieter Stark (The Lost World: Jurassic Park)
Solomon Eddie (Minority Report)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I assume the muppets nailed its Swedish representation?