Spanish NCOs have been forbidden from using any word officially defined as “dirty” (at risk of imprisonment and loss of rank) since the XVIth century. So while they wouldn’t say “desist in your lamentations,” they’d also use extremely colorful language without using, say, “bitch” or any derivation thereof. This isn’t just “in theory,” it’s amazing how good they are at calling your mother a whore too dumb to know what hole you popped from without mentioning either your mother or the word whore.
Sage Rat, plaza is Spanish. The Italian word is piazza.
This is why the producers of Deadwood had the characters swear using modern-day swear words. Back in the days when that show took place, people didn’t say “cocksucker” and “motherfucker,” most of the swearing was religious-based (as it still is, in most European countries.) But the creators of the show correctly figured that modern audiences wouldn’t consider those terms to be very vulgar, even if they were to the people of the 1800s. They needed to replicate the emotional effect of the words, and the best way to do that was to use their modern analogs. It was very successful.
Yes, but as I understand it the order was “Have a care !”, which doubled as an warning to every friendly around to be on the lookout for a very fast lump of rock coming their way… or a wall of shrapnel from what used to be a bombard 5 seconds ago ;). A medieval equivalent of “fire in the hole !”, if you will.
The report I read said that they were worried that people wouldn’t take a show serious where everyone sounded like Yosemite Sam, not because they wanted to make sure people understood that it was all vulgar. The latter as well I am sure, but that’s not the primary issue.
I’m not really that bothered by “Fire” instead of “loose”. Particulary since one could argue that fire arrows makes if somewhat plausible.
The only time it really sticks out is when words get popped in that really shouldn’t be part of the characters universe/vocabulary. Battlestar Galatica(the new one) did this a couple times, specifically with ships called “Valkyrie”(a very German word) and “Inchon Valley”(Which is in Korea) due to it being a Roman/Greek centered culture.
My other pet peeve are times when they use foreign qoutes…from the same language they are supposed to be speaking. King Arthur got me on this because at one point they encounter a priest who starts speaking Latin. Considering they are supposed to be “Roman” soldiers, we’re meant to assume that they’re supposed to be speaking Latin anyway and it’s in English for the convenience of the Viewer. So including passages in Latin is rather jarring.
The edition of Les Miserables I have did something similar, being in English and occasionally having passages in French. I understand, they’re French people and are really speaking French, so why not just translate the damn passage for us, just like you’ve been doing all along?
It’s funny you should mention that. It’s always bothered me in the movie Gladiator when the guy was standing outside the arena shouting “Veni! Vidi! Vici!”
“You Cocksucker” and “fuck you” etc. were almost certainly used by some in Deadwood at that time. They were just so taboo that they didn’t get written down the way other curses were. Examples exist. And, they certainly weren’t as common as the 20th Century. But they existed.
I can’t stand that either and I see it all the time in poorly written books. If it’s set in Spain and all the characters are speaking Spanish then suddenly jumping into Spanish for one line of dialog and then repeating it for the reader in English is about as bad as you can get.
As for the linguistic debate, that stuff only bothers me when the source of the word directly relates to something. So archers being told to fire bothers me since the command “fire” comes out of the transition away from archery. An author can pick another word and be just as easily understood without breaking immersion.
After one episode, we looked up “blowjob,” finding that it was almost certainly a 20th-century word. They definitely go for the anachronistic swearing.
And the thing is, in the 19th century, profanity was a lot more worrisome than obscenity (this IIRC according to Stephen Pinker’s The Stuff of Thought). Saying “god damn it to hell” was risking your immortal soul; calling someone a limberdick cocksucker was just being rude.
As for Miller’s point, I am always pleased when Roman Centurions and the like are translated colloquially. IMO that captures much more of the flavor than does a stilted formalistic translation.
