Lost in French Translation, Part 16: Conclusion
POSTED BY: fortinm
UPDATED: Saturday, April 5, 2008 12:01
VIEWED: 6167
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This review is part of a series of articles analysing the translation work for the French dubbed Firefly series and movie(s). It is intended for anyone who would like to know a little better how a French audience would perceive Joss’ wonderful creation.
Introduction to this series: http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.asp?b=4&t=31382
It is a sad day for me. As long as I was coming up with these reviews, I had the feeling of being part of the Browncoats 'Verse. To the risk of sounding pretentious, I had the feeling I was contributing something unique. Now that the end has come, I know I'll slowly but surely drift away from Firefly. It won't be part of my life the way it's been for the past four months. For me, Firefly has died a second time!
I'm aware that this opening is rather depressing, so I'll do my best to finish this article on a more positive note. I hope you'll enjoy this wrap-up of my little adventure into the French 'Verse.
Reviews Recap
I'll start with the episodes listing including their ratings. Here are the translation rating significations as I stated them in my first post.
1: The translation has no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
2: Not good. Too much mistakes or bad decisions have been made. It disfigures the original work.
3: Average. The spirit of the episode is, on the whole, kept. Contains nonetheless serious mistakes or inappropriate choices.
4: Good. Contains just a few mildly severe mistakes, but not enough to betray the original work.
5: Very good. Contains no major errors. Very faithful to the original work.
Rating -- Title -- Chinese Rating
3 -- Serenity -- 2/14
5 -- The Train Job -- 5/6
4 -- Bushwhacked -- 5/6
2 -- Shindig -- 1/11
3 -- Safe -- 2/16
4 -- Our Mrs. Reynolds -- 7/11
4 -- Jaynestown -- 0/6
3 -- Out of Gas -- 3/7
2 -- Ariel -- 0/4
2 -- War Stories -- 0/7
5 -- Trash -- 0/9
5 -- The Message -- 3/7
5 -- Heart of Gold -- 1/8
3 -- Objects in Space -- 0/3
4 -- Serenity Movie -- 7/7
The average translation rating is 3.6 out of 5.
The average Chinese score 29.5% (Chinese lines that were kept in French)
The best translation is, taking into account its length, the Serenity Movie.
The worst translations are "Shindig" and "War Stories", ex aequo.
A Subjective Review
I've done my best to make these reviews as objective as I could. My rating system was also based on objective criteria. Following these technical evaluations, allow me to give a more subjective, general, review.
As I already alluded to in a previous instalment, I almost always prefer subtitles to dubbing, when I don't understand the original language. Although I have much respect for the translating job, I find dubbing less commendable. The French Firefly only strengthened my opinion. Dubbing is, without a doubt, very hard to do well and I feel that the translation team (including the voice-over actors) didn't put the necessary efforts for a quality dubbing. I cringed on more than one occasion - per episode - and I missed the original voices and dialogs. In fact, this experience gave me the urge to watch the series all over again in its original version... to cleanse me from this French stain!
One problem very prevalent in dubbing is the variety of language accents. With Firefly, the Western/Multicultural/Science-Fiction lingo was, without a doubt, a difficult challenge. I'm afraid they didn't succeed in overcoming it. Science-Fiction in French is rarely done well. For instance, Star Trek's French techno-babble is horrible. Firefly had the advantage of being almost free of technical terms, but not entirely. A few mistakes were made on this front. At the other end of the spectrum, how do you convey in French the Far-West way of talking which is sprinkled all over this series? I don't think you can. And I won't even talk about Badger's cockney accent. In short, I think it's an impossible task to dub well a cinematographic piece containing various accents or languages. In French, I would say that it's like trying to resolve the square
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As I was downloading the latest Firefly Talk podcast, I noticed that Episode 7 of this show had a segment called "Lost in Translation". It was produced back in 2005 and since I'm only a one-year old browncoat, I missed that. Naturally, I downloaded the episode and was very pleased with the article. It addresses the Spanish Firefly and partially answers my conclusion's "call to arms".
The major similarities between the Spanish and the French dubbings are the Reavers naming confusion, the pronunciation of JaynEE and the lost Chinese lines. Apparently, the Spanish dubbing is no better than the French one.
The podcast episode can be downloaded here:
http://fireflytalk.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=37466
The article starts at about the 50th minute.
There's also a shorter forum article that preceded it here:
http://www.ericolsenphd.com/fireflytalk/viewtopic.php?t=24
Amongst the replies is an interesting point of view from a professional translator.
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