Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/08/04/star-wars-back-in-theaters-in-ojibwe.html
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“The word for hyperdrive in English has two parts, the hyper which is super, super crazy. And then there’s the drive part. So we, we basically just broke it down the same way,” said Aandeg Muldrew, a translator on the project and the voice of Luke Skywalker.
I get where they are getting that, “hyper” is the colloquial sense “my kid is acting hyper”, but that’s not what the prefix means in “hyperdrive” – the idea is ships using hyperdrive are entering another dimension akin to the real concept of hyperdimensional physics, where “hyper” means “over or beyond”.
Not that this is the first example of technical terms being mistranslated in movies. Apparently several translations of Blade Runner garble Deckard’s request to “Give me a hard copy right there” when he is looking for clues by enhancing photographs because “hard copy” meaning “printout” wasn’t that well known in 1982.
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Yup. “Gib mir eine harte Kopie.” Always good for a laugh.
But we must be grateful they didn’t turn the title into Klingenrenner.
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How did “the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs” turn out?
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Keeping in mind that “super” also means “above, over, or beyond”, quite like your interpretation of “hyper”. Perhaps no accounting for “crazy” other than it being inconceivably ‘hyper-super’ as in ‘going plaid’…
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This is not the first indigenous language dub of A New Hope. A Navajo dub was added as an extra to Disney+ in 2021
Perhaps someday they’ll release a version of Return of the Jedi in the Miwok languages to honor the people whose ancestral home stood in for Endor (and whose tribal name may or may not have been the inspiration for the name of the little furry guys).
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These projects seem to be good for building up indigenous talent pools and studios.
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Eh, but “superdrive” still conveys the meaning of having some sci-fi engine that travels in space.
I have noted in what little foreign languages I know, this is fairly common, including in American sign language. They will make a up a new word where the literal translation is a bit clunky, but one understands what the new word means. For example in German glove is handschuh - which is literally hand shoe. It’s not a literal shoe so that’s not a accurate word to use - but we understand when used together. Still sometimes when there is a new word, they just use the new world from another country.
I remember my Polish ex-MiL and her sister talking and there would be English words like “blue jeans” sprinkled in.
And with Native languages, there are so many new modern words and concepts IRL, much less in a sci-fi world where there is magical tech - they have to figure out words for. Like in your example,yes “hyper” means a “hyper dimension” - but then they would have to figure out a word for the whole concept of hyper dimensional physics. Which they make just settle on “super” as well.
Anyway, is is cool to hear it in Ojibwe. I know they share a lot of words with Potawatomi, I wonder if my cousin Justin could understand most of it.
I wonder if they use English and French for the alien languages, like Star Wars used snippets of other languages for the alien ones.
Also, re: bad translation. I had a pen pal in Singapore and he sent me a copy of the Star Wars on VCD, which is a subpar video format that was common in Asia. It was dubbed in English, but with Mandarin subtitles. He said the translation was pretty good, but some times defaulted to phonetics. I recall on example where Vader says “What is thy bidding, my Master.” and “thy bidding” was just translated “tie bing ding” phonetics.
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Ooh, this is an opportunity to drop one of my favorite etymology facts:
“Hyper” and “Super” both come from exactly the same Greek root, υπερ. But the words entered English via different routes – once through Latin, where the Proto-Greek word entered Latin (or probably more correctly, proto-Italic) before the debuccalization of an initial /s/ and the conversion of upsilon’s /u/ sound to /y/ (giving “super”), then again directly into English from the later classical Greek after these changes had occurred – debuccalization had modified word-initial /s/ into /h/ (yielding “hyper”).
(You actually see this pattern all over Greek and Latin roots: hex- and sex- for six, hemi- and semi- for half, herpet- and serpens- for snake… Anyway, debuccalization between proto-Greek and classical Greek is the culprit.)
(Disclaimer, I am at best a hobby etymologist and NOT a classicist so I probably have some of the details a bit rough around the edges here.)
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That’s really interesting to a tried-hard-generally-failed language student like me – thankee! (related: gratutious promotion of RobWords youtube series)
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I wonder if these non-translatable words can be borrowed (and adapted) instead of bending over backwards to make up a new word.
Japanese does this: “pasokon” == personal computer, “arubaito” == part time job (from German arbeit).
French, on the other hand, does not allow borrowed words. They want to keep their language pure.
For a language like Ojibwe that is facing extinction, I’m not sure which is a better approach.
About as well as Joseph Campbell did (his works influencing George Lucas’ storytelling) who has been roundly criticized by archeologist, mythologists, folklorists, and other academicians for his oversimplifications, his tendencies to portray himself as an expert when (per the aforementioned) he was not, and his many inaccuracies including translations. In other words, he was seen by experts and being full of shit… which brings us back to Lucas’ employment of distance as a unit of time.
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I’ve got a DVD of the Diné (Navajo) version. My mother in law could understand it a little.
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you have not experienced the kessel run until you have flown it in the original klingon
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Eny! Oxford’s actually kind of half-doing quantum teleportation for now, not being the Exeter ‘knock down a wall and ease the apparatus to scale’ University AFAICT, so I think it can’t be expected to track any better, and I still don’t know what’s wrong with “hard copy” (in English.)
Hey, wanna drive a truck through caring about magic? Here’s some keywords, crack open your Kabbalah study extra notes:
Anomalous: With no magnetic field
Special: Far from gravity wells
There’s…oh you’ve started leafing through Apple TV offerings and palming random gummies, that’s only rational.
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