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OK, I’ll admit it – I cut my teeth on a channel selector, and the only tan I’ve ever gotten came from a cathode ray tube. I’m Kara, and I’m a TV addict. How suffocating is this monkey on my back? Well, whenever I travel, one of the first things I do upon checking into my room is to turn on the TV and search the available channels. Stateside, I suffer from withdrawal if TV Land is unavailable. While abroad, I’ll sit through any show if I recognize the theme song, despite the language barrier.
All of this got me to thinking about American shows and how they translate overseas. Some shows are simply dubbed into another language, like…
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Italian-style
The Italian rapper, with his uninhibited ‘whoos’ of delight and his ad-libbed chuckles, seems to be having far more fun with the premise than Will Smith ever did. I’m wondering, though, how do they handle the matter of Will’s colloquial speech versus Carlton’s prep school diction? Is there such a thing as “gangsta” Italian?
The Nanny, now in Spanish!
It’s interesting to see how true to the original theme song and opening credits Chile and Mexico stayed when broadcasting their own renditions of The Nanny. It’s also fascinating how different the cartoon nanny’s look in each version (particularly the way they walk). Animation aside, the story premise and characters are basically the same, but I’m sure they somehow have to give the recurring jokes a local flavor. What are the Chilean equivalents of Loehmann’s and Boca Raton?
South American nannies, a German Al Bundy and more all after the jump!
Married with Children goes German
Even if they don’t speak a word of German, true TV fans will recognize Hilfe, meine Familie spinnt as Germany’s version of Married with Children. The world-weary expression on the father’s face, the mother’s stretch pants, and the kids begging money all give it away. I don’t know whether the Bavarian Al Bundy works in a shoe store, or slips away to the nudie bar…
International Flossers need to fill me in! Tell me about both dubbed and foreign versions of I Love Lucy, Roseanne, Green Acres, The Odd Couple, Happy Days, Cheers, The Cosby Show, The Golden Girls and any other well-known sitcoms.
Comments (18)
Comment
I had an Italian friend who could sing the whole Fresh Prince song. My favorite is the “woo” at the end. He also was a big fan of Italian Simpsons, but with a few changes. Moe was changed to Bo, and groundskeeper Willie was given a Sardinian accent instead of a Scottish one.
posted by Lys on 10-24-2007 at 6:04 am
I’m pretty sure that “Hilfe meine Familie spinnt” just used translated MWC scripts. When I was in Germany in ‘94 they were advertising the showing of some movie featuring Ed O’Neill and advertised it as “mit Al Bundy”.
posted by shawn on 10-24-2007 at 7:02 am
I always got a kick out of the German-dubbed version of “A.L.F.”.
posted by Anthony on 10-24-2007 at 8:53 am
I lived in Italy for a year and Fresh Prince and The Nanny were well loved over there. However, growing up with the original versions of the shows made for interesting differences that my Italian friends had no idea about.
1. The Nanny is not Jewish or even American, but acually from a suburb of Rome, but the family is still American.
2. The Fresh Prince opening song in Italian is horribly dubbed with what I think is a much older man. I couldn’t watch it since it freaked me out a little…
Also, random FYI. Italians dub almost everything and have the same Italian voice actors play the same actor in every movie. When an actual interview was broadcasted without dubbing, the Italians would comment that is weird to hear them because “that’s not their real voice.”
posted by Francesca on 10-24-2007 at 8:56 am
I’m embarassed to admit how much time I spent watching German TV while staying at a hotel for a two week course. I was convinced I should be able to read their lips, kind of difficult while watching the Flinstones. One trend I noticed was that the Germans tried to use the word California as much as possible. Saved By the Bell was California Highschool, Knots Landing was something like Under the California Sun.
posted by Kate on 10-24-2007 at 11:30 am
When my husband and I (and our two best friends) went on our honeymoon to London in 2001, we neglected to pay attention to the fact that most pubs close at 11. We weren’t that far out of college, so we were just getting warmed up by then!
Instead, we ended up in our hotel room (there was a beer vending machine in the lobby!), watching “South Park” dubbed into German. It was hilarious. This is also how we stumbled across Dave Gorman for the first time, and that’s a good thing because he is the funniest man in the universe.
posted by Rachel on 10-24-2007 at 12:01 pm
I cut my Spanish-speaking teeth on ‘Bob Esponga’ while in Guatemala. I’d never heard of Sponge Bob before and still think that the whole ’square pants’ thing is bizarre! Interestingly enough, his voice was not squeaky or high pitched as it is in the American version. Wish the Spanish version was available here!
posted by Mary on 10-24-2007 at 1:02 pm
When I was in Spain I found out that Homer’s “D’oh” apparently translates to “ooh!” or some sort of odd moan.
posted by Kelly on 10-24-2007 at 1:10 pm
Back in the early 1990s I was in Amsterdam and happened to catch a rerun of “Green Acres” on TV. It was dubbed into Dutch, and was very strange - Oliver and Lisa’s voices were nothing like the originals! I don’t speak Dutch, so I wonder how or if they incorporated Eva Gabor’s Hungarian accent and her mangling of words in the translation?
posted by Jill on 10-24-2007 at 1:17 pm
As a student in St. Petersburg in ‘97, I managed to catch both “ALF” and the “Dungeons & Dragons” cartoon when I came home from classes. Russia also likes to use one ‘lektor’ for an entire program, but you could usually hear the original dialogue track underneath the dubbing. They did play some great movies though, like “Breaking the Waves,” “The Last Temptation of Christ,” and “Killer Crocodile II.”
posted by Mudi-B on 10-24-2007 at 1:29 pm
In Austria a few years ago, watching “The Simpsons” dubbed in German was amusing, but watching “Hogan’s Heroes” dubbed in German was surreal. Just mind bendingingly wrong on a couple of levels.
posted by Mac on 10-24-2007 at 2:44 pm
Is it just me, or does the Italian Fresh Prince rapper say something about Spike Lee in the middle of the basketball sequence?
I don’t remember his name coming up in the original…
posted by Ken on 10-24-2007 at 4:24 pm
I lived in Ireland for a while and a national channel had Muppets Tonight and Sponge Bob in Gaelic. One of the funniest things I have ever seen is Prince dubbed into Gaelic - everything but the songs at least…
posted by Erin on 10-24-2007 at 8:43 pm
“Hilfe, meine Familie spinnt” had in fact the same plot and even the same dialogs as “Married with children”. It was produced by RTL with only one season, because it no one wanted to see it. “Married with children” or “Eine schrecklich nette Familie” in Germany was aired at the same time. They did the same with “Who’s the Boss?” which was aired as the original “Wer ist hier der Boss?” and the german actor version “Ein Job fürs Leben.”. Horrible, but they never tried that again.
posted by Oli on 10-25-2007 at 3:12 pm
Ken,
yes, he does. He says “his days used to be filled with shooting hoops and Spike Lee films”.
We used to think it was a pretty odd adaptation choice, too, and the same goes for Fran The Nanny being from a provincial part of Central Italy. Luckily, it didn’t happen that often…
posted by Violetta on 11-30-2007 at 5:40 am
When i was in Paris I caught an episode of South Park and it was so funny to here the voices. They sounded nothing like the original. But it was great entertainment!
posted by amanda on 12-6-2007 at 10:22 am
Ditto on South Park around the world. That could be a post all on its own. I caught it in Mexico, and the voices were very close to the English version. It was the Dog the Bounty Hunter episode, and listening to Cartman rant en Espanol was as funny as the episode itself.
posted by Phelps on 12-13-2007 at 2:59 pm
On my many vacations to Portugal I never had a problem with television shows since the Portuguese dub none of the shows and have only subtitles in Portuguese while the show remains in its original language
posted by Filipe on 12-17-2007 at 3:49 pm