Best/Worst episodes to translate

I thought this might be interesting. I thought it was really funny, but really frustrating to sub the Master Chu and the Drunkard Hu episode, because of Shitpickle. Halfway of typing 'Kutaugurk) (shitpickle) I just started laughing my ass off because it's so silly and dumb. Have any of you have such a memory of translating AVGN episodes?

In episode 2 AVGN says "Goat Shit". In swedish Goat = get and shit = skit but shit can also be translated to bajs.

getskit or getbajs where my two options and although it probably where the worse choise I went with getbajs.

Getskit written together have the risk of people reading it as gets-kit and it's so rare to see the conjunctioned word getskit together I where afraid people where going to read it wrong. Bajs though is more like poop then shit so I never really felt any of the choises where good.

I also have this problem with a game being 'hard'. The AVGN says 'hard as shit', but in Dutch, 'hard' just means something solid, something that is hard (not difficult). Hard, as in difficulty, is in Dutch 'moeilijk'. You can say 'solid as shit' (hard als stront), but the AVGN doesn't mean hard as in solid, but as in difficult. I choose to just completely change the sentence, because it would just look ugly if I would translate it literally.

metalcommand wrote:I also have this problem with a game being 'hard'. The AVGN says 'hard as shit', but in Dutch, 'hard' just means something solid, something that is hard (not difficult). Hard, as in difficulty, is in Dutch 'moeilijk'. You can say 'solid as shit' (hard als stront), but the AVGN doesn't mean hard as in solid, but as in difficult. I choose to just completely change the sentence, because it would just look ugly if I would translate it literally.

I've stumbled upon several times where the swear or phrase doesn't work to translate literally. I try to come up with the nearest phrase that fits. Wouldn't: "Difficult as shit" or "Difficult as fuck" work or something like that?

Like I would have the same problem as you with that prase, literally it would be: "Hård som skit" in Swedish, but that's just a stupid phrase making no sense in swedish. I would probably go with "Hårt som fan" sinse that's a common phrase quite fitting. Our swear "fan" however doesn't translate to shit, it rather translates to "damn". I guess different swear phrases fits in different languages, you'll have to be creative.

Admin wrote:

metalcommand wrote:I also have this problem with a game being 'hard'. The AVGN says 'hard as shit', but in Dutch, 'hard' just means something solid, something that is hard (not difficult). Hard, as in difficulty, is in Dutch 'moeilijk'. You can say 'solid as shit' (hard als stront), but the AVGN doesn't mean hard as in solid, but as in difficult. I choose to just completely change the sentence, because it would just look ugly if I would translate it literally.

I've stumbled upon several times where the swear or phrase doesn't work to translate literally. I try to come up with the nearest phrase that fits. Wouldn't: "Difficult as shit" or "Difficult as fuck" work or something like that?

Like I would have the same problem as you with that prase, literally it would be: "Hård som skit" in Swedish, but that's just a stupid phrase making no sense in swedish. I would probably go with "Hårt som fan" sinse that's a common phrase quite fitting. Our swear "fan" however doesn't translate to shit, it rather translates to "damn". I guess different swear phrases fits in different languages, you'll have to be creative.

Alas, it will not. It just reads very awkwardly. The Dutch language is very, very creative with swearing though. I have the most fun making up swearwords if the literal translation doesn't have the right ring. 'Fuckballs' is just a strange word (neukballen). I just use another swear word in Dutch that fits the mood.

My favourite so far was today when I translated the Roger Rabbit episode and AVGN calls Jessica rabbit on the phone. I laughed so hard i almost shat myself, all different kinds of swedish swears was flying through my head ^^ You'll see it soon Tomas XD

So far, I had to be creative with swearing. The problem in the Polish language seems to be that the strongest words are very vulgar and make a much bigger impression than a simple 'fuck'; using them creates the impression that the Nerd lacks sophistication and intelligence and this would be out of his character. On the other hand, lighter phrases are hardly profane and sound more like 'TV swearing'. So there's not much middle ground here.

It first started in Karate Kid, with the intro, which was "full of fuck" Since the Nerd was shouting, I went for the stronger "kurwa", the only other choice really being "cholera", which is usually translated as "damn". Also, we seem to lack the equivalent of 'shit', which I also translate to 'damn'. So I end up with parts with considerably more profanity than others and the main challenge is to smoothen everything out, perhaps by manipulating the words which appear next to swearing.

If I wouldn't care, I would just go for the maximum swearing, which I'm sure certain demographic groups would like, but it just dumbs the Nerd down and I feel like I'm not doing his writing justice. I believe that the Angry Video Game Nerd is not about the swearing, but about an interesting character to identify with.

One of the words for which I had to make up a translation and it really made people laugh was "assness".

To describe's this game's assness...

I made up the word "culosidad". I have friends who admit to using it now in their lives on a regular basis.

I translated "assness" to "skitfaktor" which translates to "shitfactor"

@moto200

I think that in Polish swearing is slightly different than in English. In our language however we have many ways of creating new swear words In my opinion the hardest will be 'F-Bombs' from CDI/Zelda episode.

In the Roger Rabbit episode, I changed the pun joke the two weasels make. (what animal cheats? A CHEETAH). I changed it to: Which animal is always lazy(lui)? A leopard(LUIpaard).

Yeah, about that cheetah joke, I changed the question:
- What animal can you never count on?
The answer was: "a ferret", because in Polish it's "tchórz", which also means "coward".

Also, about dropping F-bombs, I might simply go with a phrase like "bombarding with fucks".

Hi All

I did first "plumbers don't wear tie": very long episode (20 minutes), with lots of text, pretty complex -at least for a noob.

I am now on "Pitfall" and it's way easier (to my point of view, it's also shorter).

cheers

Vincent

EDIT @ METALCOMMAND: I translated "hard shit" to something like "to shit bricks" (but that might be too much frenchy...)

I guess F-bombs can be nicely translated, though I don't really know how. Kurwibomby?

Personally, I go with creative maximum swearing, because why the hell not. You can either do that, or go with TV swearing (which would make the Nerd way less Angry). Also, we don't want to make it into a Kiepscy episode with "kurde bele" and such

Translating the swears is fun, but I personally find it hardest to translate wordplays and rhymes. Spiderman was hard - it had both the song, which had to rhyme and have a good rhythm, and some weird wordplays ("Here's the game, here's the boy, so we have Gameboy"). Also, in some places I'm still not 100% certain what Spidey says.

Anyway, in English "fuck" and derivatives are used way more often than any Polish swear, so you sometimes have to get creative instead of mindlessly translating every "fuck" as "kurwa", every "shit" as "gówno" and every "ass" as "dupa".

So, to translators of all countries - don't be afraid to go creative. The most important thing is fluency, not fidelity - if the line is funny, coherent and grasps the general meaning of the original, it doesn't really matter that it's not word to word exact.

(Also, with the cheetah joke - it's a bit less funny in your version, but I think that's the best you can get out of it unless you explain it literally).