BBC Sherlock Fan Forum - Serving Sherlockians since February 2012.
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- Mycroft's Contact
Offline - From: sydney
- Registered: September 3, 2012
- Posts: 528
Faux languages in films & TV shows
Have you guys noticed a tendency in films for them to approximate? eg: they might hire a Dutch person, get them to speak Dutch and then claim that they're Germans or something coz main body of show is still in English.
Happens a lot with Chinese characters. The story will be set in China and not one of the actors hired will speak Mandarin at all, usually the dialogue is delivered in Cantonese (you can get away with it if it's set in Hong Kong but not for mainland China). The worst version of this was when the "Chinese" character actually spoke Korean, the film makers were like "no one in the audience will notice".
Just wondering if they do it to other languages as well. It can't just be faux Chinese that shows up in English shows.
Last edited by saturnR (November 18, 2014 11:10 am)
- This Is The Phantom Lady
- Threatened Knighthood
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- From: Home of Hamlet (Denmark)
- Registered: February 6, 2014
- Posts: 10,183
Re: Faux languages in films & TV shows
I have seen a few 'Danish' characters speak perfect Swedish... other times it has been complete gibberish when someone pretended to speak a nordic language
In the Whistleblower the 'Dutch' man is played by a Danish actor but at least the character doesn't speak his native tongue.
It always bothers me to be honest... I really like languages
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- Zatoichi
- Official Blogger
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- Registered: January 28, 2014
- Posts: 1,355
Re: Faux languages in films & TV shows
Well, they used some pretty strange German in Sherlock.. but at least it wasn´t Dutch 
.
It´s a pet peeve of mine when movies are overly sloppy with Asian languages or symbols - ah, who cares, Chinese, Korean or Japanese, it´s all the same Asian stuff, right? Erm.. nope! And of course a part of the audience will notice, it´s not as if there weren´t millions of native speakers around.
More Sherlock-quotes that come to mind: "Do your research!" and "Show some respect!" 
- Davina
- Moderator
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- From: The Only Way is Essex UK
- Registered: February 9, 2012
- Posts: 9,714
Re: Faux languages in films & TV shows
And on the other hand, in Game of Thrones, they have actually gone to the trouble of actually correctly formulating (not sure if that's how to describe it) languages such as Dothraki. It does seem a bit odd, in this day and age, not to be able to get actors of the correct nationality (or at least people who can speak 'it' faultlessly).
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- JP
- Mycroft's Contact
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- From: Germany
- Registered: January 24, 2015
- Posts: 405
Re: Faux languages in films & TV shows
Ohhh... my favorite rant! The languages. Russian seems to be abused A LOT.
I can understand that an actor playing a main character won't learn a foreign language so he would sound like a native speaker, but it sends me up the walls when extras speak something that sounds like a tortured owl. That applies to Sherlock too. The weird Germans in TBB, and even worse, the German court in the Many Happy Returns. I also read someone on IMDB tearing apart the Serbian scene.
Yes I see it as disrespectful. Plus it's as bad as cellphones in theatres. You get kicked out of the show's universe. At least it's how I react. Nowadays the public is generally international and people show the movies with the original sound. And can't be sooooo hard to find native speakers, not even as extras or actors, but to do the final voice dubbing. One tweet and BBC could find not only Germans but people speaking Klingon or Quenya with Mirkwood accent, who would do the job for free.
BTW, the same applies to BCs Little Favor. The Logan character has somehow acceptable Eastern European accent (as far as I can say not being an English ns), but he definitely should stay there and not trying Russian.
BTW2: I complained about it to the Big Trinity (Mark, Stephen, Sue) at the Con. Let's hope my little voice can make a little difference. ;)
