this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2023
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Entertainment

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(Mis)representation of language in Hollywood movies (beehaw.org)
submitted 1 year ago by Pantoffel@beehaw.org to c/entertainment@beehaw.org
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Through the years I've noticed that quite a few Hollywood films play fast and loose with any other language than English.

I was watching Oppenheimer yesterday and the titular character was supposed to be speaking Dutch fluently, but the actual lines spoken were mostly jibberish, and more like German than Dutch. As a native speaker, I found this quite jarring and sloppy. Though I can imagine that to non-native speakers this would probably fly under the radar.

This got me thinking if there were more examples of shoddy translation, weird pronunciation, mishandling of language or dialect that you as a native speakers have noticed when watching movies?

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[โ€“] aka_oscar@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A very clear example for me is Gustavo Fring from Breaking Bad. The character is supposed to be chilean and lived in Chile for a good portion of his life, yet his spanish is atrocious. Huge contrast with Lalo, whose actor is actually bilingual in spanish and english, and therefore speaks both languages fluently.

I also remember watching a yt clip of Jim Cearrey speaking Korean. I think it was from the Yes movie. My K-drama fanboy self thought he did a good job from the shows ive seen, but actual koreans in the comments were clarifying his accent was kinda weird.

[โ€“] hardware26@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 year ago

Jim Cearrey in Yes movie isn't Korean, didn't live in Korea and learnt it at a rather old age. It makes sense for him to speak with a weird accent in the movie universe.