Dentro de un platano.

Papas "Pringles" hechas de cocaina!

Hola papa

Estamos aquí en amsterdam. Hace un poco frio, como puedas ver, pero la gente son muy amable. mientras pasabamos por aduana podriamos oir muchas risas y vítores de los trabajadores locales. Hoy vamos a ver las chicas desnudas en el barrio rojo y la casa de anne frank

nos gustaría si estuvieras aqui, hasta pronto

los perigos

no la he visto esta pelicula y, mientras no dudo que es excelente, no la veré porque seguramente me hará llorar. No me gustan las peliculas de gángsters. Me deprime que hay gente como esto y sólo me gusta verlos cuando el bueno esta matandolos con un escopeta grande. entonces me voy a ver kick ass

Es verdad, es un poco triste, pero es una pelicula fantastica.

Yo la he visto muchas veces,me encanta,cuando me gusta una película ,la vuelvo a ver y siempre le descubro algún detalle interesante del cual no me dí cuenta la vez anterior.

Even if the translator is a native spanish speaker they are converting rather than creating and, it may be easier to take the path of least resistance and translate literally then give it a polish rather than try to recreate from the original concept. It might even provide a better match for lipsync and help with comic timing when you start with a word for word translation.

I remember reading that spies were often betrayed by their gait. if something as universal as walking has obvious regional characteristics its not surpising that we can still hear the beat of a different drum when listening to a translation.

You cant make a ford into a ferrari you can paint it red, soup up the components stick a ferrari badge on the hood but even if it were to perform as well it would still look wrong, the dimensions would be off. the lines less elegant etc. if you refine the conversion to a point where they are truly indistinguishable you will have actually built a ferrari, there will be no ford left. (i.e. it wont be a translation )

Watch something in English dubbed into Spanish and you'll feel sorry for the guys watching it that don't understand English, they are only getting half of it without all of the slang, idioms, regional stuff, etc.

Donperigo: Spot on. That last analogy with the Ferrari and the Ford is awesome.

Certainly my investigations into translated humour have revealed disappointingly lazy translations although perhaps the translator did not even understand that there was a joke to preserve. e.g. Pyramids by Terry Pratchett is set in the mythical desert kingdom of Djelibeibi which the english reader understands as an ethnic respelling of "jelly baby". its unchanged in the spanish translation but do they even sell jelly babies outside the uk? given spains long exposure to arabic i would have expected a clever play on a more well known international brand of sweet (Jumibiera?). On the other hand, as spanish is pretty phonetic, does the very concept of "a spelling joke" translate.

and where do you stop? If the rookie fbi agent in your summer blockbuster has a penchent for quoting shakespere do you try and find suitable spanish dichos because it is important to preserve this character trait? or do you just leave it as is and hope that the audience get the gist via context and reaction?

I suspect that there is not a lot of time available to refine spanish language dubs so as to faithfully preserve the all subtleties of the original. However, as steve points out, the unexpected side effect of this is that we students of spanish get to see "spanish light" versions of our favourite films. if I only had hardcore spanish language films available to me I wouldnt bother because I wouldnt understand them linguistically or culturally.

I for one prefer my spanish "in the right order". :-)

Thank you for your interesting comments. If I had the natural aptitude for language, I might prefer the native Spanish programming, but I have such a hard time learning vocabulary, I generally try to learn words which will be as usefully and universal as possible. I remember watching a Mexican movie with my girlfriend who is from Colombia, the movie had so much slang, not just Mexican slang but slang used by young people, that she was reading the English subtitles. I think the movie was Y Tu Mamá También

You make a very good point. It’s not just that they are using a more universal Spanish but since they are translating English, they may be using a sentence structure closer to that used by English speakers, I never thought of that.

If you start with "now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party" you might re-render it as

"ahora mismo es la hora que todos los buenos deban venir al ayuda del partido" which we would still recognise as the english phrase wheras the spanish speaker might just say ¡socorro!

(although that would make a lousy typing exercise)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0245574/

Films are not always dialogue-driven and sound tracks aren't laid down that carefully. Sometimes lines are mumbled or overlapped. I know I miss snatches of dialogue in English in certain films just for that reason.

The thing is, dubbed lines are never mumbled and no one ever steps on anyone else's lines. I think that helps a lot with comprehension.