As Long as It Sounds Foreign: Difference between revisions

Many shows and movies don't bother getting a foreign language right when they portray them. The incidence of this increases along with the obscurity of the language. It is easily explained as native speakers are hard to get, especially if the country of origin is on the other side of the globe and the language is fairly obscure. And that's assuming any native speakers are still living, as many languages have died out for one reason or another.

 

 

Names appear especially hard to get right, even European ones, which is all the stranger as most American naming conventions haven't ventured far from their origin. This is why we see female Russians with masculine surnames and patronymics used as names or surnames. This could be explained if their name was anglicized, though the practice has fallen out of favor in recent decades. In most cases, the author [[They Just Didn't Care|just didn't care]].

Contrast with [[Gratuitous Foreign Language]] (and all its subtropes), where the writers take care to give characters lines in a foreign language -- which are often poorly rendered by the actors. Contrast also with [[Poirot Speak]], where everyone in the native country has only an elementary education in their native language but can only say the hard words in heavily accented English.

 

 

 

== Advertisements ==

** [[Word of God]] says that most of his films are set in an alternate version of Europe, one in which [[World War II]] never happened.

* ''[[Excel Saga (Anime)|Excel Saga]]'' : Although the English used by the paramilitaries in the action movie episode is grammatically perfect, it's apparently delivered by actors who haven't a clue what the words are intended to mean (and only the vaguest grasp of English pronunciation). This is deliberate parody of the trope - the Japanese subtitles (which the English subs of the scene follow) are far more eloquent, often to the point where they have very little to do with what is spoken. It's also [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] in the English dub. Originally when the soldier asks her "What is your purpose?" in a really strong Japanese accent Excel just responds "I don't know." In the dub she says [[A Worldwide Punomenon|"A big fish?"]]

* The ''[[Tales of Symphonia (Video Game)|Tales of Symphonia]]'' OVA has the song "Almateria", and while it has some significant words thrown in here and there, it's mostly pleasant-sounding gibberish.

* Done to a ridiculous degree in episode 52 of ''[[Hayate the Combat Butler (Manga)|Hayate the Combat Butler]]'' where "Italian" ranges from reciting Italian foods to saying anime/manga related references with bad pseudo-Italian accents. Considering the [[Gag Series|nature of the show]], this trope was almost certainly done deliberately.

* The [[X Men|X-Men]]'s Cajun mutant, Gambit, likes to toss some French into his dialogue. He sometimes calls Rogue ''"chéri"'' (dear)... which would be nice if he weren't using the masculine form of the word. Luckily for our grammatically-challenged hero, there is no ''audible'' difference between ''"chéri"'' and ''"chérie"''.

** He's not the only one that gets this, unfortunately: Kurt (aka Nightcrawler)'s [[Gratuitous German]] often gets misspelled so that he ends up calling girls "camisole" instead of the intended "sweetheart" or "darling" (''"'''Lieb'''chen"'').

** Blackwing (previously known as Beak) is a mutant who was said to be from Rotterdam, the Netherlands. His real name is Barnell Bohusk, which isn't much of a Dutch name at all. Marvel has since changed his official birthplace to Maryland, USA, though that doesn't exactly solve the problem, either.

** [[New Mutants]]' Roberto da Costa sometimes says sentences in Spanish... even though he came from Brazil, where the language is Portuguese.

{{quote| '''Du Quois''' (introducing the american to the men) : ''This is Chevalier, Montage, Détente, Avant-Garde and Déjà-Vu [...] Over there, Croissant, Soufflet, Escargot and Chocolate Mousse''}}

* In ''[[The Bourne Identity]]'', the name on Bourne's Russian passport is written "Foma Kiniaev" in Latin letters and "Aschf Lshtshfum" (Ащьф Лштшфум) in Cyrillic letters. Apparently, the designers of the prop just typed the name in the Russian keyboard layout without actually translating it. The name was corrected in ''The Bourne Supremacy''.

* ''[[The Princess Diaries]]'' and ''[[The Princess Diaries]] 2: Royal Engagement'' play this trope straight over a cliff by [[Ruritania|inventing a European country]], "Genovia," in which the queen (Julie Andrews) is English, the peasants speak either French or English with French, English, and American accents, and the [[Beautiful All Along|princess's]] name is Princess Amelia Mignonette Thermopolis Renaldi.

** The books do give some explanation -- for some reason it's a Francophone country which used to be part of Italy. And the Amelia and Thermopolis parts come from her (American) mother. And no accents, obviously.

* Movies made during [[World War Two]] that took place in the Pacific Theater usually had Koreans and Chinese as stand-ins for the Japanese. They were told to say phrases like 'I tie your shoe, you tie my shoe' faster than normal to sound like they were speaking Japanese. Note that this was much more common during the war, when actual Japanese people were <s>in internment camps</s> unavailable.

** Parodied by [[Terry Pratchett (Creator)|Terry Pratchett]] in ''[[Discworld (Literature)/Interesting Times|Interesting Times]]'' with the Agatean battle cry: "Orrrrr! Itiyorshu! Yutimishu!"

* The Libyan terrorists from ''[[Back to The Future (Film)|Back to The Future]]'' speak some vaguely Arabic-sounding nonsense language.

** In ''[[Back to The Future (Film)|Back to The Future]] II,'' the older Marty's Japanese boss has a name equivalent to "Mr. General Motors." Also, the Japanese street signs in the town square were found hilarious by Japanese tourists during filming.

== Literature ==

* Subverted in the Russian translation of ''[[Dune]]''. The original novel contains a Fremen funerary hymn, which is actually a real-world Serbian song. The translator mistook it for garbled Russian, and, in the preface, he chastised Frank Herbert for "picking up the most pleasant-sounding words out of a Russian dictionary"; to convey the purported [[As Long As It Sounds Foreign]] effect, he translated the song into (gramatically-correct) Hindustani.

** A straight example in ''[[Discworld (Literature)/The Colour of Magic|The Colour of Magic]]'', where Rincewind's identity in our world is a Swedish scientist named "Dr. Rjinswand", which is nothing like a Swedish name. (In the Swedish translation, his nationality is changed to Dutch; though, confusingly, they left in the bit about his language sounding "Hublandish", the Discworld's equivalent of "northern".) Twoflower becomes a German tourist with the last name "Zweiblumen", which is correct, but translates to "Twoflower''s''" (a straight translation of his name would be "Zweiblume").

*** In the Dutch version, he is named Tweebloesem (Twoblossom) the literal translation of Twoflower would be 'Tweebloem'.

== Live Action TV ==

* In ''[[Don't Trust the B In Apartment 23|Don't Trust the B---- In Apartment 23]]'', the first season's final episode title "Shitagi Nashsi ...", supposedly means 'tall girl no panties' but in reality it's a made up word designed to sound Japanese. It's something like Senotakai on'nanoko inai pantī in real life.

** Subverted when [[Stephen Colbert]] was [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-K47xCUc7E actually speaking German.]

** Even more hilarious if they take a well-known word or phrase in that language and completely mistranslate it on purpose.

* Averted in many series broadcast by Australia's SBS like ''[[Pizza (TV)|Pizza]]'', thanks to the massive translation facilities that network has. It's funny knowing that ''Pizza'' puts more effort into its foreign dialogue than its (tongue-in-cheek [[Special Effect Failure|low quality]]) special effects.

* An odd version appeared on ''[[Emergency]]!'' from time to time. Firefighter Marco Lopez ([[The Danza|played by Marco Lopez]]) would sometimes be called upon to translate for a Spanish-speaking victim or witness. However, for some inexplicable reason, some of these conversations consisted of nothing but meaningless babbling between Lopez and the extra, even if the extra obviously ''could'' speak Spanish.

** There was also a [[Bilingual Bonus]] playing where the foreign language was Spanish and Jeff Davis spoke real (if somewhat silly) Spanish.

** They would often use well-known words and intentionally mistranslate them.

* ''[[Have I Got News for You]]'': On this topical news quiz Paul Merton felt that the trick to speaking French was 'all in the shoulders', probably referring to a French stereotype of shrugging while speaking.

*** The character of Nurse Kellye was self-described in one episode as "part Hawaiian and part Chinese," but in a later episode she mocks Charles (who is wearing a kimono) in Japanese.

**** However, given that before WWII, there were many Japanese immigrants in Hawaii, it's conceivable that she might have picked up a Japanese insult or two...

** On the other side, most TV-crime shows have often Korean characters (especially concerning gang wars with black gangs) but aren't capable of getting people who actually know some Korean.

** Averted, though, in the Season 1 episode of ''[[The Shield]]'' called "Carnivores" which featured Korean-American actors actually speaking Korean.

** There is a rare English Language occurence of this in the ''CSI:Miami'' episode "Dishonour". A woman's father, who is a Hindu, says that she has 'dishonoured the sacrament', which, if you know Catholicism, is wrong, seeing as a sacrament is a Catholic ritual.

*** That's the most common usage, but the word itself can be used more generically for sacred rituals of any sort. Even the Christian usage isn't limited to Catholicism, for that matter.

== Video Game ==

* ''[[Resident Evil 4]]'' is set in a nameless fictional European country apparently set in Spain. Despite this, all the Ganados speak Spanish [[Spexico|with a Mexican accent]].

** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_Y6cVQUJb0&feature=player_detailpage#t=6m57s One of the examples:] АПОСНО! НЕ ВИХОА! <ref>Pure gibberish. Of course, they meant "Danger! Keep out!", but wouldn't it be more accurate to say "Опасная зона! Посторонним вход запрещён!"? If that would have been, then this cutscene would be a [[Moment of Awesome]] to these who knows the language.</ref>

** ''Red Alert 3'' trailer also throws this one for a second. A rebel board that says "Изменение". <ref> They got it wrong on FOUR letters. "Изменение" is directly translated "changing", while for the current context (betrayal), "Измена" would go better.</ref>

* Does de [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqWXO87TlH4 Puffincat] count? [[Adventures of the Puffincat]]

** "Puffincat have clever-smart-mind-concept!"

* ''[[Chaos Fighters]]'' is extremely rife with this in ''almost everything''. As in case of character names, the only normal sounding name is ''Kenny'' Fanal from ''The Secret Programs'' and ''Clair'' Tyranof in ''Route of Land''. It doesn't help that those oddly sounded names are ''completely made up by mixing syllables''. But considering that they were all set in foreign planets, this may be justified.

 

* Any signage shown in ''[[Aladdin (Disney)|Aladdin]]'' is either English in a [[Foreign Looking Font]] or meaningless scribbles that resemble Arabic. (There's a possible exception in a sign above Jafar's door that ''might'' possibly have his name and the word ''wazir'' on it, which leads to a bit of [[Fridge Logic]]; why would he need a sign that nobody else sees to just have his name and title on it?)

* There is an ethnically Hawaiian character in ''[[Rocket Power]]'' named Tito. [[Did Not Do the Research|there is no letter "T" in the Hawaiian alphabet!]]) And while "Tito" is an actual name, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josip_Broz_Tito it is a Serbo-Croatian one], [[They Just Didn't Care|not a Hawaiian one.]]

* [[Played for Laughs]] on ''[[South Park]]'' when Chef joins the Nation of Islam.

* The alien [[Bounty Hunter]] Embo from ''[[Star Wars the Clone Wars]]'' speaks the fictional Kyuzo language, which is really just Dave Filoni speaking intentionally bad French. Interviews say that he mostly just read it out of some French ''[[Smurfs]]'' books, but at least once (in the episode "Crisis on Naboo"), Embo actually says an intelligible French word that fits the situation he's in ("Allez", when telling the other bounty hunters to move).

* One of the biggest reasons that some people have a backlash against anime and manga fans is due to the fact that, a good percentage of them, think adding "-umi" or "-aki" or "-oni" at the end of a bunch of garbled letters equals a Japanese name. Leading to character names like ''Tsashi Chizuru'', ''Aeashi Tomeoko'' and ''Heashmi Concaro''. Because if it's got a lot of colliding vowels in it, it ''must'' be Japanese! Also, while "-san" is an actual Japanese term, there are rules for using it.

** Even when the names are made up of real kanji, they're often used wrong. Japanese names follow ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_name rules]'', and they're not actually hard to use.

* Many "Spanish" place names in the American Southwest were actually invented by English speakers who wanted them to ''sound'' Spanish. In some cases, because these folks didn't actually know Spanish well at all, they turn out to be gibberish. For example, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isla_Vista Isla Vista, California], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mar_Vista,_Los_Angeles Mar Vista, Los Angeles] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierra_Vista,_Arizona Sierra Vista, Arizona] are [[Blind Idiot Translation]]s of "Island View", "Sea View" and "Mountain View" respectively that [[As Long As It Sounds Foreign|sounded foreign enough]] to their English-speaking christeners. So for example, in Spanish "Isla Vista" literally means the little-sensical "Seen Island" (i.e., "island that somebody has seen at some point in history"). Same goes for basically any American placename with "Vista" in it; the idiomatic way of naming places like that in Spanish would be [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miramar ''Miramar''] for "Sea View" or [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miramonte ''Miramonte''] for "Mountain View."

** Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is guilty of this. Before marrying Corina Raigosa he was just Tony Villar. He added his name to his wife's name to come up with the far more ethnic-sounding (but utterly meaningless) "Villaraigosa" when he went into politics (and re-adopted his ethnic birthname "Antonio" rather than the anglicized diminutive "Tony"), to appeal to the large Hispanic population in Los Angeles.

[[Category:Truth in Television]]

[[Category:As Long As It Sounds Foreign]]