Your most pointless TV/movie/book nitpicks

[Paul Farquhar]

I'm playing it also and enjoying the voices - Darktide, which is also WH40K has some fantastic regional and class voices too, including Yorkshire, Estuary, Wales, and so on.

I was disappointed there where no equally good options for female PCs/mercs. The companions are good though. The accent for the companion from the planet "Efreet" is perhaps a bit dubious.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

The point is, there is no "correct" way to translate/dub accents. South Italy, North Italy, Liverpool, New York, all are equally valid, in that all are equally wrong.

From this conversation, I get that some/many/most(?) American films, where people are speaking English for the sake of the audience -- which is perfectly legitimate -- are speaking English with the fake accent from the place where it's filmed? Like if it's supposed to take place in Manchester, they'll have a Mancunian accent (great! realistic! because they do speak English) and if it's set in France or a character is French, they'll be having a fake-French accent eyeroll: the use of English is just an artistic convention)? I thought it was a joke in Holy Grail...

I mostly watch dubbed films when the original is in English, and I probably can't discern accents, but wow. I'm flabbergasted I never noticed that.

 

[briggart]

According to Shakespeare, writing about that time, everyone in Venice spoke English, mostly with a 16th Century London accent, apart from Shylock who had a Midlands accent.

The point is, there is no "correct" way to translate/dub accents. South Italy, North Italy, Liverpool, New York, all are equally valid, in that all are equally wrong.

Sure, we can’t be 100% sure how language was pronounced back then, but we can get reasonable estimates, and we can assess which of several options are closer to the mark.

If two planes are supposed to land in Boston, but one actually lands in New York and the other in Honolulu, neither went to the correct place, but one is definitely closer to the target.

As I said, I understand why they did it: they picked the accent that their target audience expected. And given that the game came with Italian dub, most other Italian players would never notice, making all of this a pointless nitpicking!

But if you know how we tend to be very attached to our place of origin (there’s even a term for this “campanilismo”, from “campanile”: bell tower), you also know how Venice people reaction would fall somewhere between “dumb Americans!” and borderline offended.

 

[Dioltach]

As long as we're nitpicking about languages and accents: when a foreign person speaks English, they'll be able to hold a deep, meaningful conversation in English, or explain the workings of gravity and space-time and world lines, or whatever. But they'll still say the simplest things like "hello", "yes", "no" and "thank you" in their own language.

 

[pete284]

For me it's war films that use the wrong kit The biggest one was The Battle of the Bulge where the used M48 Patton's (a US Korean war tank) as German Tigers and M24 Chaffee (at least used in WW2) as Shermans

 

[payn]

Modern TV shows in general with firefights. In the past, the characters would go for cover before returning fire. Now they just run straight into the fray time and time again and never get hit.

 

[Riley]

For me it's war films that use the wrong kit The biggest one was The Battle of the Bulge where the used M48 Patton's (a US Korean war tank) as German Tigers and M24 Chaffee (at least used in WW2) as Shermans

Assuming you're referring to the 1965 film...

Today I learned: "Eisenhower came out of retirement and held a press conference to denounce the film for what he considered its gross historical inaccuracy."

Battle of the Bulge (1965 film) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Paul Farquhar]

From this conversation, I get that some/many/most(?) American films, where people are speaking English for the sake of the audience -- which is perfectly legitimate -- are speaking English with the fake accent from the place where it's filmed? Like if it's supposed to take place in Manchester, they'll have a Mancunian accent (great! realistic! because they do speak English) and if it's set in France or a character is French, they'll be having a fake-French accent eyeroll: the use of English is just an artistic convention)? I thought it was a joke in Holy Grail...

I mostly watch dubbed films when the original is in English, and I probably can't discern accents, but wow. I'm flabbergasted I never noticed that.

The old British sitcom 'Allo 'Allo got most of it's jokes from mocking this trope.

I tend to prefer subtitles to dubbing when watching shows in languages I don't know. Accents can really change the original sense of what is going on.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Modern TV shows in general with firefights. In the past, the characters would go for cover before returning fire. Now they just run straight into the fray time and time again and never get hit.

True, if you watch old Westerns the protagonists are always diving for cover. And that was when the handguns didn't shoot straight anyway!

 

[MGibster]

True, if you watch old Westerns the protagonists are always diving for cover. And that was when the handguns didn't shoot straight anyway!

The Colt Model 1851 Navy Revolver was capable of 3 inch groupings at 25 yards. The effective range of a Sharps rifle was measured in hundreds of yards and it was introduced in 1848. If firearms weren't accurate in the Old West, it's because people didn't maintain them properly or it's similar to modern firefights were adrenalin gets in the way of accuracy.