Fairly Odd Translations
Fatal flaw or a simple language barrier?
Walking the line between two languages can be both fascinating and frustrating, especially when your chosen career has everything to do with linguistics and literature. I can only imagine the mental confusion with three languages or more.
To me, being bilingual feels like a light switch: there’s a Spanish option, and an English one. I can flit between both easily but depending on my daily circumstances, the places I’ve lived in, or even my academic trajectory, the switch will default to either one or the other as a sort of mental baseline.
For example: the switch was stuck on English for most of my life but after starting university, all that deep dive into Hispanic literature pushed the switch onto the Spanish option. However, one semester abroad and the switch flicked back.
And so on and so forth.
Nowadays, working as a writer as well as a translator comes with its fair share of linguistic adventures, most often a deep impotence at how difficult the job market is while “language professionals” are out there, working in the media, making the most mind-numbing mistakes.
Some can be chalked up to tough choices or misunderstandings:
- A lot of people have pointed out how the Latin-American title for Lost in Translation was, literally, lost in translation. Called Perdidos in Tokio (meaning: lost in Tokyo), there’s no Spanish equivalent for this particular turn of phrase.
- In the series Ashes to Ashes, our leading lady, Alex Drake, is called several nicknames by her boss and love interest, Gene Hunt. One of his nicknames for her is “Bolly,” after Bollinger Champagne, because he sees her as a very posh woman. This is more of a cultural reference, which clearly went over the translation team’s head because in the subtitles they put senos as her nickname, which means “breasts”. Yes, Gene Hunt is incredibly demeaning and sexist but not that much.
Other are just plain idiotic, full offense:
- There’s an episode in The Big Bang Theory where Sheldon banishes Penny from their apartment after incurring a number of strikes against his rules. The subtitles state that she’s been desaparecida, probably due to the fact the translators confused “banished” for “vanished”.
- A Haunting in Venice was infuriatingly called Cacería in Venecia in Latin-America because, once again, the translators must’ve confused “haunting” for “hunting”. Fair enough, “haunting” is a difficult word to translate into Spanish: it can mean different things, but they don’t quite capture that vague sense of dread and persecution. At least Spain was more reasonable, and the film was called Misterio en Venecia (meaning: Mystery in Venice).
However, there’s one example that takes the cake, mostly due to the accidental implication the translating choices cause.
An episode of The Fairly OddParents, called “Most Wanted Wish”, sees Timmy constantly picked last at recess, during a lab project, and even in his own home. After feeling so unwanted by everyone, he wishes to be the most wanted kid in the world.
Shenanigans ensue: Timmy is now desired by everyone, including the police and the FBI (playing on the other kind of meaning for “wanted”). Since now all the fairy godparents of the world want him as a godchild, they’re forced to compete in a Texas cage match for the privilege of being Timmy’s godparent. There’s a moment during the match where Timmy distracts the other fairies with his innate popularity, but Cosmo and Wanda remained unaffected. When asked why they aren’t blindingly distracted like the rest, Wanda responds:
“Timmy, we’re already your fairy godparents! We couldn’t want you any more if we tried.”
Watching this episode in Spanish, however, Wanda’s words can be viewed in a very different light, if we read too much into it.
And reader, I did.
The term “wanted” — as in, being searched for/desired by a governing force — can be initially translated as buscado (literally meaning: sought after). However, unless the criminal is the “most wanted” (el más buscado), posters with mugshots would use the expression as a verb rather than an adjective: se busca (roughly meaning: is being looked for).
Being caught between a rock and a hard place, the translation team for The Fairly OddParents when with the term querido.
In Timmy’s words:
“Quisiera ser el niño más querido del mundo.”
meaning: “I want to be the most wanted/loved boy in the world.” Because querer can both mean “to want”, but also “to love”. You would say “te quiero” to family members, close friends, even your significant other. It has less of a punch than “te amo” but the overall feeling is the same. Personally, I’ve only said “te amo” to my pets.
You can tell they thought about this conundrum: the episode’s title, “Most Wanted Wish” becomes El deseo de ser el más buscado.
However, when Wanda tells Timmy they couldn’t “want” him more if they tried, in Spanish she seems to be telling him they couldn’t “love” him more. To me, this came across as a bittersweet moment, considering that Timmy’s parents are the first people he encounters after making his wish, and they both spend the morning fighting over him, wanting to sit beside him at breakfast and drive him to school.
If the wish affects them and radically changes their behavior, then his mother and father could love and want him more.
The only creatures in this lonely universe who love Timmy unconditionally are Cosmo and Wanda, and they’re here for a limited time only.
Translating is hard, period.
I don’t consider the above a mistake; rather, it’s a fascinating exercise in finding out what the source material said, how it was translated, and whether it makes sense for a different audience.
But this goes to show the level of expertise a translator needs, making me wonder just how many subtitles I can actually trust when I don’t speak the language.
There are so many context clues to consider, play on words, cultural references, dialects and regional expressions. Even Spanish translators have their work cut out for them in trying to convey a message in the most neutral Spanish possible, enough to be understood throughout the entire continent even if some terms aren’t used in your specific kind of Spanish.
As my mother would say: here and in China, *insert term or societal affair* means the same thing.
But does it?
Mika is a Mexican writer and translator, pretender, pet-lover, and a mess at 1 in the morning.
