I don’t speak any other language fluently enough to catch such references, but any sort of reasonably-well made movie wouldn’t spoil major plot elements just because there happened to be a Korean/Hungarian/Russian/German speaker in the audience. My WAG: the lines of dialog would almost always be either innocuous or irrelevant or both.
In Gangs of New York there’s a scene where the politician approaches a burly young gent and asks him what’s going on. The young gent replies in Irish/Gaelic/the Irish language something along the lines of “Ní thuigim cad a duirt tú”, that is “I don’t understand what you said.” It only seems to be there as a wee joke for Irish speakers. If I recall correctly the guy saying the line has a strong Dublin accent which is slightly strange to hear Irish in, especially in what’s meant to be a period piece.
Right – if I recall, they took those actors lines and played them backwards (after a close-up on Jin’s ear), so that they came out gibberish. They also did backwards masking on ethereal Wet Walt’s lines, when Shannon saw him (maybe as a vision).
According to the Trivia section for SPR on IMDB:
I schpeak some German, and though I haven’t seen that film in years, I recall him saying “Hey! I know you, man!” And other sundry things. It’s been a while. Maybe I should rewatch it.
Also, Beerfest is a lot funnier in parts if you know German. For one, Mr. Schniedelwichsen, that one guy a bit after the beginning who leads the two Wolfhouses down the alleyway, his name made me and a friend of mine shit our collective pants in laughter.
His name means “piglet polisher”, or more literally, “penis wanker”.
Do mean “figuratively” rather than “literally”? Otherwise, that doesn’t really make sense.
I think that Pitt was, actually, speaking gibberish. I remember reading that his character didn’t have very many lines written out in the script, and in a lot of cases he was just reacting while making stuff up.
(apparently his character was originally going to be somewhat different, but they made him a Pikey as a joke after he proved to be really terrible at faking a British accent. Kind of like an anti-Hugh Laurie.)
Sometimes with English-language films in cinemas in Thailand, you get someone speaking a foreign language, and there’s supposed to be subtitles, and for some reason the English subtitles have been ditched. Only the Thai subtitles appear. This is enormously frustrating. I can read some Thai, but not that quickly!
This even extends to videos. I remember when we bought The Godfather, Part 2. The entire portion showing the young Don Corleone in Sicily and first in the slums of New York, when only Italian was being spoken, had only Thai subtitles. The English subtitles had all been removed! And this was a legitimate copy, not a fake.
The Suntory commercial from “Lost in Translation”
[spoiler]DIRECTOR (in Japanese to the interpreter): The translation is very important, O.K.? The translation.
INTERPRETER: Yes, of course. I understand.
DIRECTOR: Mr. Bob-san. You are sitting quietly in your study. And then there is a bottle of Suntory whiskey on top of the table. You understand, right? With wholehearted feeling, slowly, look at the camera, tenderly, and as if you are meeting old friends, say the words. As if you are Bogie in “Casablanca,” saying, “Cheers to you guys,” Suntory time![/spoiler]
INTERPRETER: He wants you to turn, look in camera. O.K.?
BOB: That’s all he said?
INTERPRETER: Yes, turn to camera.
BOB: Does he want me to, to turn from the right or turn from the left?
[spoiler]INTERPRETER (in very formal Japanese to the director): He has prepared and is ready. And he wants to know, when the camera rolls, would you prefer that he turn to the left, or would you prefer that he turn to the right? And that is the kind of thing he would like to know, if you don’t mind.
DIRECTOR (very brusquely, and in much more colloquial Japanese): Either way is fine. That kind of thing doesn’t matter. We don’t have time, Bob-san, O.K.? You need to hurry. Raise the tension. Look at the camera. Slowly, with passion. It’s passion that we want. Do you understand?[/spoiler]
INTERPRETER (In English, to Bob): Right side. And, uh, with intensity.
BOB: Is that everything? It seemed like he said quite a bit more than that.
DIRECTOR: What you are talking about is not just whiskey, you know. Do you understand? It’s like you are meeting old friends. Softly, tenderly. Gently. Let your feelings boil up. Tension is important! Don’t forget.
INTERPRETER (in English, to Bob): Like an old friend, and into the camera.
BOB: O.K.
DIRECTOR: You understand? You love whiskey. It’s Suntory time! O.K.?
BOB: O.K.
DIRECTOR: O.K.? O.K., let’s roll. Start.
BOB: For relaxing times, make it Suntory time.
DIRECTOR: Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut! (Then in a very male form of Japanese, like a father speaking to a wayward child) Don’t try to fool me. Don’t pretend you don’t understand. Do you even understand what we are trying to do? Suntory is very exclusive. The sound of the words is important. It’s an expensive drink. This is No. 1. Now do it again, and you have to feel that this is exclusive. O.K.? This is not an everyday whiskey you know.
INTERPRETER: Could you do it slower and ——
DIRECTOR: With more ecstatic emotion.
INTERPRETER: More intensity.
DIRECTOR (in English): Suntory time! Roll.
BOB: For relaxing times, make it Suntory time.
DIRECTOR: Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut! God, I’m begging you.
Vader means Father in Dutch.
or maybe it doesn’t. I can find about 100 cites supporting either position.
I watched the movie Chicago a good while back and was really confused during the Cell Block Tango. A lady dancing ballet starts talking in another language, telling her story, ending with “not guilty!” I gotta say, though, that it would not have been as touching if it had subtitles, it would have definitely taken away from the dance number.
Probably others have caught this, but in in the posters for “Blazing Saddles” there’s the one of the, ah, native american chief… who has a headband with Hebrew characters on it. Some time in the movie, the injun scouts sees a posse, and the Chief says something like - in Yiddish, presumably - “A black! I’ve never seen anything like it!”
That is, that’s what I picked up from the small amount of German I learned in high school. Might have been some more there. Anyone know?
Thought of another couple of good ones from “LA Story” with Steve Martin. There’s dialog in the movie about going to “do lunch” in some fancy-sounding French restaurant called “Lyddioes” or something. Anyone who speaks French must have bust a gut laughing when first hearing that. Later on we see the side of the building with the actual name of the place:
L’ Idiots
There’s one more, this one a pure sight gag, never explained. Steve Martin and his new sweetie stop at a resort motel along the coast, with another trendy-sounding name… it’s obvious enough that I’ll spoiler it as well:
El Pollo Del Mar
which means, for the Spanish-impaired
[spoiler]Chicken Of The Sea
…uh, the brand of tuna, you know?[/spoiler]
In case you were curious, and didn’t know, according to the IMDB, she says “What am I doing here? They say my famous tenant held down my husband and I chopped his head off. But it’s not true. I am innocent. I don’t know why Uncle Sam says I did it. I tried to explain at the police station but they didn’t understand.”
My uncle (not blood) is from…Austraingland (yea Austraingland, that’s the ticket) had no problem with it. From what my aunt told me he understood it just like you would have if it was normal (un-accented) english.
In an interview I saw, he said it was his boss’ name from his last day job. He always told the guy he was going to write a character with his name.
IMdB says:
In the interview, I think McQuarrie said the real guy was Turkish, though.
I just realized I made two/three factual errors in my statement. It wasn’t IMDB, but Wikipedia that I found the spelling of Keyser’s last name. And it’s not “Söse,” but “Söze,” which would be pronounced “SHÖ-ze” were it a Hungarian name.
For years I was trying to figure out what that hotel was (even with my limited Spanish, I know what that means). According to this site the hotel exterior was a house in Long Beach. No wonder I didn’t recognize it.
black rain with Michael Douglas has long parts in Japanese. It’s to show how lost he is in Japan, a real fish out of water. In taiwan, they translated all of those parts into the subtitles. It was real dialogue and not just fluff.
Similar to Siam Sam’s experience. I was watching Lord of the rings in a cinema in Belgium. I don’t speak french or flemish so the parts where they were speaking elvish were very confusing.