# Back to the Future - How is "Great Scott!" dubbed in other languages? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 23, 2024, 8:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/back-to-the-future-how-is-great-scott-dubbed-in-other-languages/1010658 "2024-11-23T08:57:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![X.L.Lent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/a5b964/32.png) [@X.L.Lent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/X.L.Lent)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2024, 8:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/back-to-the-future-how-is-great-scott-dubbed-in-other-languages/1010658/1 "2024-11-23T08:57:59Z")
How is Doc Brown’s catchphrase “Great Scott!” rendered in other languages? And if the foreign langauge version was translated literally word for word back into English what would it become? For example, if the Spanish version of the film translates “Great Scott!” into “¡Caramba!” then translating the Spanish word back to English would give us something like “Wow!” or “Gee!” ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2024, 9:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/back-to-the-future-how-is-great-scott-dubbed-in-other-languages/1010658/2 "2024-11-23T09:26:10Z")
I’m pretty sure the Hebrew subtitles (we don’t dub) said “Elohim Adirim”, which is a standard exclamation, translating to “Great God!” ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2024, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/back-to-the-future-how-is-great-scott-dubbed-in-other-languages/1010658/3 "2024-11-23T13:40:15Z")
Googling, I see that the French version is “nom de Zeus”, which is really disappointing. I really wanted Toubib Marron to run around yelling “Zut alors!”. ---
**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2024, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/back-to-the-future-how-is-great-scott-dubbed-in-other-languages/1010658/4 "2024-11-23T15:10:13Z")
It’s more difficult when the specific idiom is a key part of the dialogue. For example, I was listening to an interview with someone who translated movie dialogue. He translated ‘Good Will Hunting’ into French. There’s a line where Matt Damon’s character says to a romantic rival “do you like apples?” “Uhh…yeah.” “Well, I got her phone number. How ya like them apples?” He said he could not come up with any turn of phrase in French that would work in the same way, and had to settle for something that didn’t really fit. ---
**Author:** ![Chelonaut](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e9a140/32.png) [@Chelonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chelonaut)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2024, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/back-to-the-future-how-is-great-scott-dubbed-in-other-languages/1010658/5 "2024-11-23T16:10:42Z")
Danish subtitles on amazon prime: “Du store kineser!” (great firecracker (or chinese)) Norwegian: milde himmel (gentle heaven) Swedish: herrejösses (minced oath for lord jesus) German dub: mein gott, but subtitles: grosser Schott French dub: mon dieu, but subtitles: nom de Zeus Spanish: something christo, but subtitles: cielo santo (holy heaven) ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2024, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/back-to-the-future-how-is-great-scott-dubbed-in-other-languages/1010658/6 "2024-11-23T16:47:55Z")
> [@Chelonaut](#): > > German dub: mein gott That’s what I remembered, but I wasn’t sure. Anyway a very lame and lazy transcription. ---
**Author:** ![hogarth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hogarth/32/1773_2.png) [@hogarth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hogarth)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2024, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/back-to-the-future-how-is-great-scott-dubbed-in-other-languages/1010658/7 "2024-11-23T22:12:50Z")
> [@solost](#): > > It’s more difficult when the specific idiom is a key part of the dialogue. For example, I was listening to an interview with someone who translated movie dialogue. He translated ‘Good Will Hunting’ into French. There’s a line where Matt Damon’s character says to a romantic rival “do you like apples?” “Uhh…yeah.” “Well, I got her phone number. How ya like them apples?” He said he could not come up with any turn of phrase in French that would work in the same way, and had to settle for something that didn’t really fit. I watched _Spaceballs_ in French (La folle histoire de l’espace) and the gag about Lone Star jamming the radar/giving them the raspberry (with a jar of raspberry jam) was impossible to translate. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2024, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/back-to-the-future-how-is-great-scott-dubbed-in-other-languages/1010658/8 "2024-11-25T14:00:25Z")
Yippee-ki-yay motherfucker must be interesting to translate. ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2024, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/back-to-the-future-how-is-great-scott-dubbed-in-other-languages/1010658/9 "2024-11-25T14:14:40Z")
Ha, that’s a funny one in the German dub: they translated it as “Yippie-ya-yay, du Schweinebacke”, which means “Yippie-ya-yay, you pig cheek”. Nobody knows why… ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2024, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/back-to-the-future-how-is-great-scott-dubbed-in-other-languages/1010658/10 "2024-11-25T17:21:37Z")
As a consumer of the to English captioning and dubs I think I’d often prefer certain idioms just be translated literally or not at all, rather than trying to find an equivalent English idiom. The idiom sounds odd to me? So what? So why not just a Hebrew version of “Scott Gadol” instead of something completely different? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2024, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/back-to-the-future-how-is-great-scott-dubbed-in-other-languages/1010658/11 "2024-11-25T17:30:35Z")
_“Sacred Blue!”_ ---
**Author:** ![Hypno-Toad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b2d939/32.png) [@Hypno-Toad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypno-Toad)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2024, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/back-to-the-future-how-is-great-scott-dubbed-in-other-languages/1010658/12 "2024-11-25T17:45:33Z")
Does that refer to heaven? ---
**Author:** ![jnglmassiv](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f07891/32.png) [@jnglmassiv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jnglmassiv)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2024, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/back-to-the-future-how-is-great-scott-dubbed-in-other-languages/1010658/13 "2024-11-25T18:09:38Z")
> [@X.L.Lent](#): > > translates “Great Scott!” > into “¡Caramba!” Funny you mention, in 1990 or so, we took Spanish in Junior High. At the time, a certain television show was launching and the plucky bad boy character had a Spanish catchphrase: ¡Hay Caramba! We dutifully looked it up in the Span-Eng dictionaries we’d been issued and found it translated to, I’ll never forget this, “Great Guns!” A year later, “Hasta la vista … Baby.” was the new Spanish catchphrase on the schoolyard.