This question just popped into my mind after a long absence: I was once in France not long after Wayne’s World was released there, and I’ve always been mystified by some of the word choices used in subtitles, especially for slang terms. So how was “schwing!” translated into French, and why? (For any Eurodopers not familiar with U.S. slang – not that I’ve ever heard that term anywhere else; I think it was invented for the movie – but it’s the exclamation that Wayne and Garth use in describing their, umm, pelvic reactions to attractive women.)
(Feel free to share how it was translated into other languages as well, if you should happen to know such a thing.)
They did have a bit of a problem dealing with the " … NOT" routine in the French version, since French syntax doesn’t allow for the negation of verbs in that manner.
I thought that in slangy speech, French speakers can use pas by itself, without the ne before the verb? So maybe the sarcastic " … NOT!" could be translated as “…PAS!”.
In the Finnish version, they haven’t translated it for the subtitles. The characters just say ‘schwing’ on screen and when they do the subtitles aren’t present (as a rule of thumb, only children’s movies are dubbed in Finland, so they speak English).
