Pip has several meanings: 1. peep (the sound); 2. seed (as in orange or melon seed)
In the Sherlock Holmes story "The Five Orange Pips" people receive five (orange) pips/seeds as a warning. In "The Great Game" Sherlock knows that some societies used to send 5 pips. When he receives 5 (Greenwich) pips (the peeping sounds), he realizes that it is meant as a pun/reference to the 5 pips. This wouldn't work in translations because there is no connection between a peeping sound and orange seeds. The only connection is that both can be referred to as "pips" in English. At least this is how I understood the scene.

Last edited by Audrey Horne (August 11, 2012 12:10 pm)

Audrey Horne wrote:

Pip has several meanings: 1. peep (the sound); 2. seed (as in orange or melon seed)
In the Sherlock Holmes story "The Five Orange Pips" people receive five (orange) pips/seeds as a warning. In "The Great Game" Sherlock knows that some societies used to send 5 pips. When he receives 5 (Greenwich) pips (the peeping sounds), he realizes that it is meant as a pun/reference to the 5 pips. This wouldn't work in translations because there is no connection between a peeping sound and orange seeds. The only connection is that both can be referred to as "pips" in English. At least this is how I understood the scene.

Yes that is what the scene was about & it was a nod to the canon by changing the 'pips' from seeds to the modern day Greenwich pips.

In French it was:

Je suis
SIM_
locké

Only problem with that: There is no French word like "locké" (locked - for PCs etc. - is verouillé. The -é corresponds to -ed - past tense for many verbs). They must have bet on the fact that all French students are supposed to learn English at school...
 

Puns are one of my favorite part of the show.
The french translators made a good work with the "meat dagger" pun, by translating it by " dard".
"Dard" means "stinger" ( so a potential, but unlikely weapon), and also a colloquial word for penis.

Vhanja wrote:

ukaunz wrote:

I'm guessing "Meretricious" — "And a happy new year" wouldn't translate well?

As a Norwegian I always loved that scene, but never quite got it. It did sound like it was refering to something, but I don't know what.

Translating it to another language wouldn't help, since that's the kind of pun that's dependent on the sound of the words. Meretricious sounds a liittle like "Merry Christmas", to which one might respond, "And a happy new year."  Just translating that straight into any other language would remove the humor.
 

I wonder if somebody managed to translate that nice remark of "F...." "Cough" from TEH into another language. Our translators gave up on that one and didn´t even try.