Lecture at Glasgow University Open Day

(This is more of a blog than a review)
Yesterday I went to an open day at Glasgow University and I went to a French lecture, the professor was a quirky guy and spend the whole lecture debating English subtitles on French films and how they showed the difference between “Tu” and “Voux” (two words for “you” but with different connotations and politeness, like “you” and “thou” even though thou is almost never used these days, it is sort of like voux as it shows that you’re respecting somebody) the words for using tu and voux are tutoyer and vouvoyer, accordingly.

We were shown some cleverly translated clips to do with the translation of “tu.” The sentence was “qui la baise sont tu” (or something similar, my french is so bad) which means “who the fuck are you?” but to show that the person was speaking down in the phrase with the word “tu”, the translators used “who do you think you are, pal?” they bypassed the taboo language (often all of the taboo words are taken out of the translation if there is a lot being said as there’s a certain number of characters that can be on screen at once and a certain amount of time that it’s on screen for so the translator will try and get the point across and may have to sacrifice the variety of language being used) but got the informality there.

My problem is that I have some French films in my pile of unwatched films and also some on my list of films that I’d like to buy but now I just know that instead of taking in the story or beauty of the films, I’ll be listening out for “tu” and “voux” and using my crappy knowledge of French to see which words have been lost in translation.

I don’t know, I just thought it was interesting.