Lost in Translation

I came across an interesting question on the French Stack Exchange site today: What languages are perceived as classy or fancy to French speakers? (the original title was "What do the French do when they need a French word?" which I thought was funnier, but less clear what the meaning of the question was).

The gist of the question is that when English speakers want to sound fancy or posh, they will often throw in some French phrases, one of the examples is choosing to say au contraire rather than on the contrary, but what do French people do when they want to do the same? My initial assumption was that they'd simply do the opposite, and throw in some English phrases, but according to the answers, that doesn't seem to be the case. Some answers proposed German, Italian or Latin, but the general feeling is that they don't seem to do it. One answer proposes a historical reason why this might be the case: in the 17th - 19th centuries, French was often spoken by nobility, even in the Russian, German and Scandanavian courts, so it makes sense that being able to speak French was seen as a sign of power or wealth.

I actually feel pretty embarrassed speaking French to non-French speakers for that reason, because I feel like I sound a bit too tryhard. A few my former co-workers know that I'm learning French, and so when a French developer visited the team from London, they were trying to get me to speak with him. I really wanted to practice with him, but I didn't want to practice in front of everyone else, so I ended up hiding behind my monitors the entire time he was there.

Anyway, that's not the part I found most fascinating. One of the answers goes into some of the difficulties that translators can face when trying to translate things like movies. The example given is a movie where two people are escaping from a POW camp in Germany. One is able to speak French and German, and the other only English. They seem like they're able to make it past the German guard, but when the guard says, "Good luck" in English, and the Englishman replies, "Thanks", there's a bit of an uh-oh moment, because English wasn't commonly spoken in Germany at the time, so he is exposed as a foreigner. To do the reverse, and have the guard say "Bonne chance" and the person reply "merci" wouldn't have nearly the same effect.





SPOILERS FOR THE GAME OF THRONES TV SHOW COMING UP....









TURN BACK NOW.





LAST CHANCE.







EH.... I GUESS BY THIS POINT YOU DON'T CARE.







That reminded me of a post I saw on reddit, asking about how Hodor's name got translated in other languages, since season 6, episode 5 of the TV series revealed that the reason he always says "Hodor" is because Bran warged into him in the past and he could hear Meera saying, "Hold the door" in the future. The answer can be found on the Movies Stack Exchange site, but I'll paste it again here in case you're too lazy to visit it:

• German: "Halt das Tor!" whereas Tor is better translates to gate than to door. This actually works well for "Hodor".
• French: As pradyot commented "Qu'ils n'aillent pas au-dehors!" becomes "Pas au-dehors!" and then "Hodor".
• Russian: "затвори ход" ("close the passage") which transitions to "hodor" in quite a strange and unusual way. Word "ход" here closer to "hatchway" than "door".
• Spanish: "Aguanta el portón" (Not Ocluye el corredor) in Spain the word door "puerta" was replaced with main/front door "portón" in order for an easier transition to Hodor.
• Spanish (Latin America): "Déjalo cerrado". A strange way to say "keep it closed", also needs some imagination to make it work.
• Turkish: "Orada dur!" which means "Stand there!". It is not dubbed but subtitled. It evolves as: "Orada dur! -> Ordadur! -> Hordor! -> Hodor!". Our interpreter guy, esekherif, translated it that way and I think this is the closest that Turkish language can possibly get.
• Japanese: "ホーダー" [Ho-da-] which is a transliteration of "Hodor", coming from the English "Hold the Door". Interestingly in Japanese, door is pronounced ドア (doa) which if transliterated as such would make the name a lot closer to the English pronunciation. In Japanese, "hold the door" would be ドアを持って (doa wo motte) which would have more chance of making his name something like ドアモ (Doamo) in a purely Japanese version.
• Brazilian Portuguese: "Segure a porta" ("Hold the door") -> "a por-" -> "Hodor"
• Italian: First shown in English with italian subtitles (literal), then in Italian with integral translation after one week. Translators decided for a little addition to maintain the original meaning and then make the "Hodor" works: "Blocca la porta, trova un modo!" (Hold the door, find a way!) -> trova un modo -> rov...odo.. -> hodor
• Danish: "Hold døren!" (subtitles, literal translation, no attempt to preserve alliteration).
• Swedish: "Håll dörren!" (subtitles, literal translation, no attempt to preserve alliteration).
• Norwegian: "Hold døra!" (subtitles, literal translation, no attempt to preserve alliteration).
• Finnish: "Pitele ovea!" (subtitles, literal translation, no attempt to preserve alliteration).
• Serbian: "Hodi, dobro drži vrata!" ("Come on, hold the door tightly...")... then "Hodi... dobro..." ("Come on... tightly..."), then just "hodor...". Alliteration was preserved as much as possible, while it's obviously not the best way to say it.
• Czech: “Drž vrata! Honem!” (“Hold the gate! Quick!”), where the evolution to Hodor is quite a stretch…
• Greek:"Κράτα την πόρτα!". It sounds nothing like Hodor, so from one point on they used greek letters to write "Hold The Door" (Χολντ δε ντορ) which eventually became "Χόντορ". This is a common practice in Greek and it's called Greekglish.
• Hungarian: The meaning was changed "Holtodig óvd!" (Defend him till your death!), but the sound works more or less: Holt-óv > Ho-tó > Hodor

MrFodder asked his Chinese co-workers, who said that in the *cough* unofficial *cough* Chinese version they just had a subtitled version, with the English audio, so they got the gist of it from what the characters were saying.

(This post goes into more detail in how the name transformed in certain languages, and how it didn't really transform in others: http://www.livinglanguage.com/blog/2016/05/25/sosten-la-puerta-game-of-thrones-and-challenge-translation/)

I guess it's just one of those things you tend to take for granted unless you tend to watch foreign movies or read foreign books. One that I thought was particularly funny is in the English translation of the Erast Fandorin novel The Winter Queen (originally written in Russian), some characters are mentioned playing "American Roulette", which involves taking a revolver, putting a bullet in a random chamber, spinning it, pointing it at your head and pulling the trigger...

The Russian developer at work who originally put me onto his novels asked me whether there are other differences, so I guess I should start making a list. He speaks fluent English (though with a somewhat thick Russian accent), but he read all the books in Russian.