Monthly Archives: Mai 2015

The Weekend Guess #60

I present to you the sixtieth instalment of the Weekend Guess.

Eine Gedankenblase mit dem Schriftzug "The Weekend Guess" auf blauem Grund und in einem braunen Rahmen

What is the Weekend Guess?

Up to three riddles formulated by me that are puns and wordplays on the answer itself I put on here for my readers to answer.

Why am I doing this?

For no apparent reason, just because I consider the idea to be funny.

What are the questions about?

Everything I can think of I guess, so far the things you had to figure out were song titles and bands and movies, now it’s books.

What is your part in this?

You can try to figure out my riddles and see if you can manage to get behind them and understand what I am describing.

What is in it for you?

So far: Nothing, but the knowledge that you managed to unlock one of my silly riddles.

Let’s start with the sixtieth set of questions

I am looking for the title of this book:

The seeing organ of the planet*.

Leave your guesses in the comments below and I can see if my questions are too easy or to hard to figure out. I will give the correct answer with the next instalment.
Have fun figuring it out! 🙂

Solution for last weeks Weekend Guess:

Pride and Prejudice

No one tried guessing, so I can’t congratulate anyone.

PoiSonPaiNter

* I’m not entirely satisfied with this word, as it doesn’t really describe the thing I was looking for, but I hope someone can still figure it out…

The Weekend Guess #59

I present to you the fifty ninth instalment of the Weekend Guess.

Eine Gedankenblase mit dem Schriftzug "The Weekend Guess" auf blauem Grund und in einem braunen Rahmen

What is the Weekend Guess?

Up to three riddles formulated by me that are puns and wordplays on the answer itself I put on here for my readers to answer.

Why am I doing this?

For no apparent reason, just because I consider the idea to be funny.

What are the questions about?

Everything I can think of I guess, so far the things you had to figure out were song titles and bands and movies, now it’s books.

What is your part in this?

You can try to figure out my riddles and see if you can manage to get behind them and understand what I am describing.

What is in it for you?

So far: Nothing, but the knowledge that you managed to unlock one of my silly riddles.

Let’s start with the fifty ninth set of questions

I am looking for the title of this book:

A biased ego.

Leave your guesses in the comments below and I can see if my questions are too easy or to hard to figure out. I will give the correct answer with the next instalment.
Have fun figuring it out! 🙂

Solution for last weeks Weekend Guess:

Shogun

No one tried guessing, so I can’t congratulate anyone.

PoiSonPaiNter

On the Road: Travelling with a Heavy Heart

For the first time since it happened my Dad and I will be driving to Mum’s/our relatives for our more or less regular Pentecost visit.
It will be very strange to be there without her.

The missing Navigator

Whenever we went to see our relatives, since I got my licence, Mum would sit in the back seat giving us directions and telling us when to switch the motorway and we would tell her that we know and that we can read the signs.
Whenever she saw me struggling to keep concentrated she would give me snack or something to drink, as we kept a basket with food and drinks on the back seat beside her.
Now both those task will have to be done by my Dad and it will be really weird.
We will find our way, but she wont be there with us.
Though the hardest thing will be that down there, where Mum grew up, will also be all those people that knew her and now have the chance to express their condolences in person.
It will be a difficult weekend full of tears, even though I’m tired of crying, but my heart doesn’t care about that.

Small steps

These past few (nearly three…) months I’ve been trying to get some kind of normalcy back into my life and as my Dad supports me in pursuing my own adventures this even included minor trips.
The first time meeting people that know what happened is hard, but at some point you have told them what you need to tell and you can commence to different topics, which takes your mind off off things.
My first visit was to Janzy in Hamburg where we participated in the Lange Nacht der Mussen (Long nights of museums). It was an interesting, educative and really nice trip, but the whole time there was this aching in my heart when I thought of my Mum.
Whene I was travelling in the past I would call her or at least text her to give her an update, but this time I had to inform my Dad about all the things happening.
It felt really weird and it still does.
Another way of me to get used to texting my Dad and enjoying stuff without having the chance to tell her about it was for me to participate in the meetings of the local Animexx group in Greifswald. I discovered the HGWAnime last year and one of their meetings was my last trip I could still tell her about. I felt the need to go there again, to be able to continue going there without thinking of that last time and so far it worked and I could enjoy my time there without thinking too much about her.
Two weeks ago Breagit and I also made another trip to Berlin for Germany’s version of the Free Comicbook Day. We were so busy throughout those hours that I barely thought about her, but still managed to give my Dad some updates.
Another thing I have last done when she got out of the hospital in January was the Sabaton concert I attended with Anice. I was so occupied by my fear of losing her that I only could really enjoy the concert when the main band started.
Next week for the first time I will attend a concert again. It will be in the same hall, but a different band and a different person to accompany me. I’m not sure how that will turn out, but I made the decision to see this band last year and I really wanted to see Blind Guardian in a standalone concert for quite some time now. I really hope I can enjoy it.

What is ahead

Last year I talked about my Fernweh and slowly but surely it keeps sipping in again. With all the sadness and memories surrounding the places I know here my urge to just drive/fly away, abroad if possible, is becoming stronger and stronger. But so far I don’t have any set plans for actual journeys, like the ones I did the past few years. But I want to continue to explore stuff and I’m certain my Fernweh will find a way. Probably even more so when I start typing up my travel logs from last year…
PoiSonPaiNter
P.S.  On a completely different note and in a different tone: My Post about Fernweh is now also available in an E-Book for ferngeweht’s Blog-Parade: 49 Gedanken zu Fernweh (49 thoughts on Fernweh), you can check it out if you like, some entries, including mine, are even in English.

Lost in Translation: The Wesen of Grimm

It’s been a while since I started watching NBC’s Grimm, and as you can see from the lack of comments for it in the What’cha Watching Wednesday do I still have a lot of catching up to do regarding the last few episodes. Still, the more I watched, the more I was inclined to ramble about their usage of German terms and names for all the supernatural going ons in the series. (And as I am currently a bit stuck when it comes to write new stuff I felt like finally finishing this draft from last year.) As I mentioned in my Grimm-Review do they use quite weird and often grammatically incorrect names for their Wesen and I’d like to talk a bit about what the names really mean and what they should have been called to turn the names/terms into proper/actual German.

This is of course not meant to offend anyone involved in the show, but as a German native that really likes the German language, this just bugs me whenever I watch the show and they use it.

In my review I already talked about the fact that if the actual Brother’s Grimm had anything to do with the naming of the Wesen, their works would not have become literary classics. In fact I do even believe they would turn over in their graves, if they knew about some of them; especially Jacob who worked on the first German dictionary until his death. I know hearing/reading some of them made my skin crawl …

But let’s have a look at the different words, so you can form your own opinion.

Wesen

While this most used term is grammatically correct it is totally mispronounced.

No German-native would understand it. It took me a while to do so at least and I had to read it at some point before it made sense to me.
The way the cast pronounces it, the word means “whose” not “creature”.
They add an extra “s” to it and make it a (possessive) question [wessen], rather than a noun …

[From the Review]

The word sounds quite different in German as the focus is on the E and not the S and the S in turn is one of those buzzing S’s instead of the sharp ones (In German we learn the different pronunciation of them by comparing them to bees – summen/buzzing and snakes – zischeln/hissing).
So, in a way it is actually pronounced more like you would start to pronounce WEst and SENse, just with a much shorter and less melodic first E and a buzzing S.

And if you are now totally confused by this explanation: Feel free to check Leo.org for a computer reading or contact me to personally tell you the difference. 🙂

By the way: The German term not only means creature, but also refers to the nature of things, like if you say someone is kind/nice/lovely (in nature), you could say that s/he has a liebenswürdiges Wesen. So regardless of the verbal usage does the term fit perfectly for creatures whose true nature can only be seen by certain people.

Now that we cleared that one up, let’s have a look at the actual Wesen used in the pilot.

Blutbad

The name of the most prominent Wesen makes little sense, especially in regards to the plural.

Blutbad is the German term for bloodbath.
Blutbaden however doesn’t really exist …
The Blut would still be blood but the baden … well it does suggest that it is the action of bathing in blood, making the translation bathing, but that does not really make sense.
So basically [for them] the plural of a bloodbath is the action of bathing in [blood].

[From the Review]

Well, the actual plural of Blutbad is Blutbäder, but they don’t really like those silly dots above the A either, but I will get to that in a later guide.
But the German version doesn’t really make more sense either – they changed most of the names to turn them into proper German, but it doesn’t work all the time:

[Blutbad and its plural] Blutbaden became [both] Blutbader (Which would more or less translate to Bloodbather – someone who is bathing in blood. Trying to find a translation for bader I discovered that there was a medieval profession by that name, someone that had some kind of medic role for the poor people[, but it is highly likely that they did not mean this]. Look for “Barber Surgeon” for more information.)

[From the Review]

So we now have these three version – I skip the other languages, as I’m not the right person to cover them – that all have to do with blood and bathing, but even though they cause bloodbaths and they need blood as nutrition, I still think there would be a more fitting name, probably something with wolf (Wolf) …

Hexenbiest/Zauberbiest

While the name for this second (or third?) most used Wesen in the show is technically correct it does sound a bit weird.
Hexe (Witch) itself is already occasionally used as an insult beside the obvious usage to describe magical women, but Biest (Beast) also refers to something ferocious (when used for humans it usually refers to females, where Biest means something like a minx – if I’m not mistaken) and/or monstrous, so it is a bit doppelt gemoppelt (the same thing said through different words – you might remember a case of this from the famous „Assbutt“ used in Supernatural).

Zauberbiest on the other hand doesn’t make sense. It’s one of those halfway through names that seem to lack some letters. Zauber can refer to a (certain) spell or enchantment, while Zauberer means Sorcerer. To make this one the male counterpart for Hexenbiest it therefore should have been Zaubererbiest. Well, actually Hexerbiest would be the male version as Hexer is the version of Wizard/Warlock that has as negative a connotation as Hexe. The original name also sounds more like a magic creature than a magic user, even more so in English: Spellbeast.

Either way are their official plurals wrong, as the plural of Biest is Biester not Biests and using the English plural (beasts) doesn’t really fit – even though Hexenbiester sounds pretty fun and like a really mean clique of girls …

Well, both sound ridiculous and they probably would have fared better to simply call them Tote Hexe (Dead Witch)/Toter Hexer (Dead Wizard/Warlock) because of their looks …

Hässlich

This is another thing that bugs me: They aren’t consistent in naming the creatures.
While the majority derives from nouns some get a more or less descriptive adjective as a name.
In case of the Hässlich its name literally translates to ugly – which they are, but well who would want to call themselves that? (It is by the way interesting to see that the Wesen accepted and use the names given to them by the Grimms – maybe some of them told the Grimm the name they came up with for themselves, but we haven’t really heard about the creation of the names – at least not to my knowledge)

As hässlich is an adjective creating a plural is difficult, so how do we call more than one Hässlich?
We call them Hässlichen.
You know as in: Die Geschichte vom hässlichen Entlein (The Fairy Tale of the ugly duckling).
It’s a declination, yet without a noun it doesn’t make sense to a German native. Technically, hässlich doesn’t either, but you can point at something and say it’s ugly without saying the things name, but usually we use hässlich in combination with Viech (critter) or other derogatory terms (hässliches Viech – again declined).

In German they are, by the way, called Rattentroll, a combination of rat(s) and troll. Technically this is a specification of what kind of troll it is, as in Gebirgstroll would be the mountain troll, making the rat(s) (Ratten is the plural of Ratte, but it is also used to say things are rat-like – rattenhaft) the descriptive element of the name. Though while this sounds a bit nicer I don’t think they have a lot in common with rats or are otherwise affiliated with them. It also implies that there are other races of trolls, but that does not seem to be the case.
So: Nice try, but still not really fitting.

Depending on when this thing was named – in-universe – they might have just called it a Troll.

Skalengeck

Like Wesen the pronunciation of this name gets an additional letter, here it is an L, at least that’s what it sounds like to me. Other than that is this name a mistranslation.

A Skale is in English a scale, yet not the one you can see on the Skalengecks skin – or on other reptiles for that matter – but the one used for measuring things. The word one would be looking for in German would be Schuppe.

Geck on the other hand is a bit more difficult. On the one hand it is an old word used for fashion-interested people (fop/dandy), on the other hand it might be a shortened version of Gecko the name of the little reptiles/lizards. The latter makes more sense, as Skalengecks don’t seem to be that fashionable.

So correctly translated they might have been called: Schuppengecko(s).

In German they call them Natterngecko(s) that refers to their reptilian like appearance by combining the German names for Colubrids (Nattern) and Geckos. It does fit quite well, though I’m not entirely sure that they are capable of clinging onto walls like their little reptilian namesakes and their snake-like features end with the tongue …

References and Notes

Well, that’s it already.
I hope you enjoyed this little excursion into the usage of my native language in this particular television show.

My major source for names and appearances of the different Wesen is this  Grimm Wikipedia and obviously my experience with the show itself. (Did I ever mention that I really like Wikipedias? Oh, yes, I did.)

As you can see from the title is this post part of the Lost in Translation-series. If you’re interested check out what other shows toy with the German language or culture. If you watch/ed a series or movie where German was/is involved, let me know and I will check out if they have done it justice.

Do you have a Wesen or phrase you want covered? Let me know and I’ll make sure to add them in one of the next parts.
Otherwise I’ll just keep going through the episodes adding the new Wesen (Wesen is by the way both the singular and the plural for creature) to the list.

PoiSonPaiNter

Part 2

The Weekend Guess #58

I present to you the fifty eighth instalment of the Weekend Guess.

Eine Gedankenblase mit dem Schriftzug "The Weekend Guess" auf blauem Grund und in einem braunen Rahmen

What is the Weekend Guess?

Up to three riddles formulated by me that are puns and wordplays on the answer itself I put on here for my readers to answer.

Why am I doing this?

For no apparent reason, just because I consider the idea to be funny.

What are the questions about?

Everything I can think of I guess, so far the things you had to figure out were song titles and bands and movies, now it’s books.

What is your part in this?

You can try to figure out my riddles and see if you can manage to get behind them and understand what I am describing.

What is in it for you?

So far: Nothing, but the knowledge that you managed to unlock one of my silly riddles.

Let’s start with the fifty eighth set of questions

I am looking for the title of this book:

An English sailor dealing with the doings of old/ancient Japanese military and becoming a part of it.*

Leave your guesses in the comments below and I can see if my questions are too easy or to hard to figure out. I will give the correct answer with the next instalment.
Have fun figuring it out! 🙂

Solution for last weeks Weekend Guess:

Stardust

No one tried guessing, so I can’t congratulate anyone.

PoiSonPaiNter

*Hint: Think titles for the title.

What'cha Watching Wednesday #5

Without warning I skipped two weeks of this thing, but not because I didn’t watch anything, but because of my Dad’s and, well, my Mum’s birthday. I just didn’t feel like writing this. So, with some delay I present to you the fifth instalment of the What’cha Watching Wednesday which again covers more than one week.

WWWWhat is this about?

Each Wednesday evening I will publish a post in which I collected the thoughts I had throughout the week while watching the latest or any episode of a series or maybe even a movie.
Depending on how my time allows it, the comment will also be for those that I watched that day.
You’re warned: There will be Spoilers.

Let’s start

Supernatural – Season 10, Episodes 19-21 (Watch Date: 23.04./01./07.05.)

The Werther Project was a strange episode. On the one hand did it give us another look at the Men of Letters and of course the return of Benny, but on the other hand did it just re-iterate things we already knew. We know Dean has pretty much given up on getting rid of the Mark and Sam shows more and more ruthlessness in his pursuit to still try. Still, nice to see Benny again – even though he wasn’t the real Benny – and his discussion with Dean was well handled and interestingly put back in Purgatory.
When I read the title for Angel Heart I expected something different. In a way did it concern Castiel’s heart, but not like I thought it would. Just some episodes ago in The Hunter’s Game we saw the return of Claire Novak, the daughter of his vessel and now she is back and searching for her mother. Well, they find her, but it’s not a happy re-union… Just let me say that it was nice to get some closure on this part of Castiel’s background, even though I’m not entirely sure it was necessary to get rid of Claire’s Mum like that, but I’m probably just a bid touchy right now when it comes to Mum’s.
Additionally, it again showed that not all angels are alike and that there are bad kinds that would rather harm humans than help them.
As for Dark Dynasty, apart from the ridiculous fact that they turned the already useless addition of the Styne family into the FRANKENstein family and that it was already obvious that keeping stuff from Dean would turn out bad – because it always does, is there only one thing I have to say about this episode and especially about its end:

NOPE.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D – Season Two, Episode 14-22 (Watch Date: April/May)

As I expected last time did I catch up with this show to be prepared for Avengers: Age of Ultron, though as the release in Germany was before the one in the States (again) the last piece of the puzzle was still missing when I went to the cinema.
Anyway, the episodes were again a roller-coaster. We finally found out, why May is called the Cavalry, we learned more about Skye and the Inhumans and many more.
Skye’s story was interestingly handled and even though there was a different kind of Mum-problem as in Supernatural, I really enjoyed Skye’s last interaction with her dad.
They also finally made good on the relationship between Fitz and Simmons, but in a weird way. While they finally interacted and talked again, was there still not the same spark that made them special in Season One. I really liked them back then, but now that Simmons has changed to a more cold-hearted and calculating person this is all really strange. It’s not like I want them to be together – that would ruin the beauty of their relationship, though that is already ruined – but I just want them to be normal around each other again and the little nods with the sandwich in Afterlife or their general interaction these last few episodes. Though, seemingly the love-bug has latched on Simmons from seeing Hunter nearly lose Bobbi and she seemingly had a change of heart regarding Fitz’s confession from the last Season finale and though I’m inclined to refer to my earlier assessment of Dark Dynasty to how they coped with it in this finale…
Apart from that do I still not get why anyone would even want to be around Ward. I just can’t stand that guy and his misguided, manipulative ways… It’s also beyond me why they kill off interesting characters and keep the awful ones… He is just such a shallow and boring character… [Edit: Forgot to add, that I already discussed this character in length over at Pop goes the Culture and I just don’t feel like adding more to it right now…]
And why does everybody have an agenda? This is just getting ridiculous…
Well, I guess we’ll see how the next Season will turn out, as it just has been renewed. (Like Agent Carter, YAY! :D)

Daredevil – Season One (Watch Date: 25./26.04.)

So, apparently I couldn’t help myself but to sign in on Netflix and watch the entire Season in two days…
I never really cared about Daredevil as a character, I’ve seen some stuff, watched that movie back in the day, but barely knew anything about him and I probably confused him with other heroes more than once. But with all the good Marvel did in their movies and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Agent Carter and all the stuff I’ve seen over at tumblr I got more and more curious.

And I wasn’t disappointed.
It’s a really great and interesting show and very different from all that Marvel has offered us so far. Where usually there is black and white the characters here are ambiguous to say the least, everyone could be seen as hero or villain, depending on the point of view. They have interesting characters on either side. Fisk and his right hand man were just as interesting as Matt and Foggy. Though I was surprised at how likeable the supposed bad guy was, how utterly annoying a wannabe journalist (Karen) and how fascinating a mere nurse (Claire) can be.

Most incredible is, however, the acting. It’s always hard for an actor to get into a role of a disabled person, but pretending to be a blind character that can see through his other senses, but pretends to see nothing, sounds like a pretty difficult job to me. And it was well done by Charlie Cox, whom I only knew through his role in Stardust.
The only thing I found strange was his American-English accent, it sounded so weird and when I re-watched Stardust – for the first time in English – the difference to his more British-English accent was clearly, well, visible would be a very bad pun, but I can’t think of any better word.
Though pretty much everyone did a great job.
I’m really looking forward to seeing more of this show, though I’m also curious what they will deal with story-wise as they already killed off one major character and interesting side characters and put the main villain in jail – though Marvel villains rarely stay in prison for long…
(P.S. In my first part of the post I accidentally wrote Datedevil, which sounds like a weird comedy show about dating…)

Undateable – Season Two, Episode 04-06 (Watch Date: End of April)

Speaking of really weird dating show: Some time during my break I discovered this show.
It’s weird, not always funny, weird and has a bunch of ridiculous characters and did I say weird?
They play a lot with stereotypes and prejudices, but there are also moments of utter ridiculousness. It’s fun to watch and you don’t really have to think much while doing so.
It’s a nice alternative to the other shows.

Elementary – Season Three, Episode 18-23 (Watch Date 04.05./11.05.)

Two shows about Sherlock Holmes pop up close to each other: One keeps close to the books, the other only takes the names and some basics. Well, and one has way more episodes than the other. But I won’t go into more detail as I want to make a comparison post between the two series one day.
Anyway, Elementary is an interesting crime show, with eccentric characters and weird puzzles. But this show falls in the footsteps of many other crime shows and repeats the same pattern over and over again. There is little development in the overall storyline and character development, there is just the crime solving. The only things that happened were the change in relationship between Holmes and his sober companion and the possible promotion for the police captain.
It’s just getting a tad bit boring.

Escape Artist- Season One, Episode 1 (Watch Date 30.04.)

In a recent rush of buying some DVDs I got my hands on this one. Unmei and I watched the first episode in German, but we didn’t get around to continue. British crime shows are very different to what we are used to here in Germany, but it is always interesting to watch.
The bad guy in this one seems utterly creepy and there was again a mother who didn’t make it to the end of the episode. The story deals with some quite interesting aspects of the works in court, so I’m curious how this will turn out.

The Pretender – Season One, Episode 13/14: Bazooka Jarod/Ranger Jarod (Watch Date: 23./27. 04.)

We also didn’t manage to continue with (re-)watching this one in German.
But we discussed that it would be highly unlikely that what Jarod does in the series in general wouldn’t be possible in a current day setting and it would also be quite hard to replace the actor. Michael T. Weiss just does a really great job at portraying the childish genius of this character.

Doctor Who – Season Three, Episode 11: Utopia (Watch Date 03.05.)

As I already got the Netflix account for Daredevil I used the chance to find out how they translated the phrase uttered by The Face of Boe to The Doctor that played a role again in this episode:

„You Are Not Alone“

Turns out they didn’t, at least not completely. They used the English phrase and gave the translation afterwards, but you still could make the connection to Professor Yana (aka The Master). I think this is a good choice as renaming the character would have been silly…
Translated the phrase reads: Du bist nicht allein, Therefore the name would be: DBNA and I doubt anyone would go by such a name… (The formal version Sie sind nicht allein would make even less sense: SSNA).
Anyway, please don’t ask me, why I started thinking about this, things like that just happen.

What were you watching?

What episodes (or movies) did you enjoy/dislike throughout the week?
Anything you’d recommend checking out?
Let me know in the comments below!

Final Words

As you can see did I catch up with with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, as I went to see Avengers: Age of Ultron on the 26th of April. The cinema here actually played the original version once, beside the German dub. Thanks to them sending me into the wrong room when I wanted to watch Guardians of the Galaxy in English I now got to see AoU for free. 🙂
PoiSonPaiNter

Lost in Translation

For a couple of years now I watch series primarily in English. At first it was Anime with English subtitles, later there were many different shows that I wanted to check out.
Though I do believe I decided that I should watch more in English because I utterly failed at understanding Sherlock in A Study in Pink. He just talked way too fast for me.
Now several series later, I can understand him quite well and my next goal is Vicky Pollard from Little Britain. >_<
Anyway, what I discovered is that some shows like to include German elements into their plots – be it names, characters or other things – and as a German native that really likes the German language I consider these moments to be quite interesting.
Though in most cases they are also quite frustrating.

Let’s add some German things!

We Germans are fully aware of our past and as I mentioned in the post linked above, is it often still shoved into our faces, even though we are three or four generations after those who fought in the war. So it is not surprising that the most characters with German backgrounds that are included in shows and movies are Nazis or somehow involved with them.

Personally I think this is really annoying and whenever a show had this plot point I considered turning it off and lost a little respect for it. I mean in shows that cover historic elements it is good – and necessary – that they also deal with that part of the worlds history as it should not be forgotten, but in shows that focus more on entertainment than on, well, teaching, it just subtracts from its credibility if they have to use Nazis to fill episodes.

If that wasn’t enough are the actors portraying the supposed German people rarely even native speakers.
Whenever I notice that the language spoken isn’t English and sounds remotely like German, I listen again to understand it better. On the one hand is it difficult to switch between the languages, on the other hand is the pronunciation often really weird and hard to understand. Especially if they simply choose native English speaking actors, give them some German words to learn and let them play a German character.

So far – if I remember correctly – I only came across three (!) German native speakers that portrayed characters with German background (all Nazis, but, well, I can’t be that picky …): Thomas Kretschmann  in Dracula (the series) and Avengers: Age of Ultron and Ludger Pistor and Wilfried Hochholdinger in X-Men: First Class. With Daniel Brühl there will be a forth when Captain America: Civil War airs (Basically: Marvel does a good job at casting the right people).

Still, not all English native speakers are bad at portraying a German accent.
Reed Diamond’s German accent as Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Daniel Whitehall, for example, was so well done that I had to look him up, to check if he was German and I’m still highly impressed by it – and I don’t give this complement often.
But even if they do it well, what is said does not always need to be correct …

They don’t talk like we do?

Apparently, beside not wanting to cast actual German native speakers are those responsible for the dialogues fans of literal translations and don’t really care about using actual German grammar for the things the characters have to say.
Though you don’t really hear complains about this from the actors or people involved.
But after having to order someone to

Schieß dem Fenster! (grammatically totally wrong: Shoot the window)

in Die Hard and being informed about its wrongness afterwards, Alan Rickman, for example, decided to never again take up a role of someone speaking German.

It is way easier to translate things word by word and not use the actual meaning of it – and we German’s aren’t spared from that as most people’s English is not the yellow from the egg – but I believe that in a show/movie viewed by thousands of people there would be time and effort put into properly translating phrases in a different language.

Besides German; Spanish and Russian – just as Japanese and Chinese – are used as foreign languages, but my Russian has become too bad for me to notice mistakes and my Japanese was never that good to begin with and I never learned the other two, so I can not say how well/bad they are doing with those languages.

(If anyone is interested: Mr. Rickman should have ordered the other guy to „Schieß auf’s Fenster“ to make it understandable)

It is also interesting how English native speakers seem to think German’s talk. I for one can’t watch a certain scene in Sherlock’s The Blind Banker without getting utterly annoyed and being really disappointed in the show …

Still, this gives me stuff to rant about.

Lost in Translation

For a long time I have contemplated how and if I should do this, but I have decided that I just want to get this out of my mind. I really like the German language, so it pains me if it is used poorly.
Starting with this one I will publish posts about the portrayal of the German language or culture in series and movies. I’m not sure how entertaining this will be for English native speakers, but I do believe those of you that want to learn a bit German (culture) might find it an interesting view on what writers actually throw at their audiences.

Definitely covered in this post-series will be:

  • The Wesen of Grimm and other words that are barely German
  • The infuriating tourist from The Blind Banker
  • The court scene from Sherlock’s Many Happy Returns
  • The repeated appearance of a certain historic figure (e.g. Doctor Who – Let’s kill Hitler; Grimm – The Three Coins)
  • The polite Daleks in Doctor Who’s Stolen Earth (thanks to hexenadia for reminding me of this one!)

If you watch/ed a series or movie where German was/is involved, let me know and I will check out if they have done it justice.

PoiSonPaiNter

The Weekend Guess #57

I present to you the fifty seventh instalment of the Weekend Guess.

Eine Gedankenblase mit dem Schriftzug "The Weekend Guess" auf blauem Grund und in einem braunen Rahmen

What is the Weekend Guess?

Up to three riddles formulated by me that are puns and wordplays on the answer itself I put on here for my readers to answer.

Why am I doing this?

For no apparent reason, just because I consider the idea to be funny.

What are the questions about?

Everything I can think of I guess, so far the things you had to figure out were song titles and bands and movies, now it’s books.

What is your part in this?

You can try to figure out my riddles and see if you can manage to get behind them and understand what I am describing.

What is in it for you?

So far: Nothing, but the knowledge that you managed to unlock one of my silly riddles.

Let’s start with the fifty seventh set of questions

I am looking for the title of this book:

A fallen star is not always a piece of space-rock and the quest to find it can turn your life upside down.

Leave your guesses in the comments below and I can see if my questions are too easy or to hard to figure out. I will give the correct answer with the next instalment.
Have fun figuring it out! 🙂

Solution for last weeks Weekend Guess:

Maleus Maleficarum/Hammer of (the) Witches/Hexenhammer

nazgul solved it in a side remark and 21stcenturysisyphus did so with a little help. Congratulations to you both!

PoiSonPaiNter

The Weekend Guess #56

In light of recent celebrations, I present to you the fifty sixth instalment of the Weekend Guess.

Eine Gedankenblase mit dem Schriftzug "The Weekend Guess" auf blauem Grund und in einem braunen Rahmen

What is the Weekend Guess?

Up to three riddles formulated by me that are puns and wordplays on the answer itself I put on here for my readers to answer.

Why am I doing this?

For no apparent reason, just because I consider the idea to be funny.

What are the questions about?

Everything I can think of I guess, so far the things you had to figure out were song titles and bands and movies, now it’s books.

What is your part in this?

You can try to figure out my riddles and see if you can manage to get behind them and understand what I am describing.

What is in it for you?

So far: Nothing, but the knowledge that you managed to unlock one of my silly riddles.

Let’s start with the fifty sixth set of questions

I am looking for the title of this book:

The inquisitions favourite manual for their trials.*

Leave your guesses in the comments below and I can see if my questions are too easy or to hard to figure out. I will give the correct answer with the next instalment.
Have fun figuring it out! 🙂

Solution for last weeks Weekend Guess:

The Hunger Games

Technically nazgul guessed it correctly, though he started out with the name of the entire series. So congratulations!

PoiSonPaiNter

*Three Hints:

  1. It’s not a novel.
  2. It’s an old book (15th century).
  3. I mean the celebration on the 30th of April in the introduction.