In Praise of my Chosen Profession
Monday, January 31st, 2005I don’t talk about what I actually do for a living very much, mainly because it’s not generally that relevant to the workings of my brain, or to Man-Man, or to the curious intersection between the two.
But sometimes, I find something so well done that I feel compelled to comment on it. And today, it’s the translation work of the unknown parties who did the subtitles for a recent release of Duck Soup, which is one of the movies I Never Get Tired Of and one I honestly think is among the funniest — if not THE funniest — movies of all time.
Tonight, though, I was watching it on DVD and decided on a whim to switch on the subtitles and see how the hell they deal with Groucho Marx in French. There’s so much wordplay involved, and at such a pace, that I figured it would just be lost in translation.
It’s not. Whoever translated the subtitles for Duck Soup into French did a great job and is a master of the craft.
Just as a f’rinstance, early in the film Groucho says to Mrs. Teasdale “You can leave in a taxi. If you can’t leave in a taxi, you can leave in a huff. If you can’t leave in a huff, you can leave in a minute and a huff. ”
I was honestly baffled by what the hell could be done with that in French. “Huff” doesn’t translate. So the “minute and a huff” gag doesn’t work at all. How the heck can they turn that into French?
Quite eloquently, as it turns out.
She can leave in a taxi, as the joke goes in English. If she can’t take a taxi, she can “partir en semi.” (’semi’ being a common word for truck in French). If that’s too soon, she can leave in une minute et semi — “semi” being close enough to “demi,” or half, to spin the “minute et semi” as equally witty as “minute and a huff” zings off in English.
A few minutes later, Mrs. Teasdale tells Rufus “this is a gala day for us,” and Rufus replies “a gal a day is enough, I don’t think I could handle any more.” Ha ha ha. It’s a pretty obvious play in English, but again in French, “gala” works but “gal” just doesn’t scan. So how the hell do you handle it?
Again, elegantly. It’s “une journée merveilleuse,” according to Mrs. Teasdale, which Rufus (’Antoine,’ incidentally, which confused the hell out of me until the later line where Firefly says he can provide a Rufus over her head, which then becomes an ‘An-toit-ne’, toît meaning ‘roof’) responds to by saying “je préfère une femme dormeuse qu’une mère veilleuse,” which means roughly he’d rather have a sleeping woman before him than a watchful mother — and okay, that sounds a little creepy, but damn it’s clever.
Translation — at its best — requires far more creativity and passion for the craft than writing itself. Because you’re not just writing a gag, you’re taking an existing gag and, incredibly shackled by language, you’re trying to make it work while still retaining all the sense of the original work. It’s a hell of a thing, and something I’m not nearly as good at as I’d like to be. Whoever translated this movie — and they’re tragically undercredited — has my very deserved awe.