Language dependent scenes in other languages

How did foreign language versions of Spongebob handle this scene?

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voot.com/kids/characters/spongebob-squarepants-h-/359117/mermaidman-and-barnacleboy-4/451657
youtube.com/watch?v=xHg-H69Ttb0
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Russian dub did not handle it well, IIRC. It just became "mini - mega". Then again, it has its fair share of failings, like Crabby Patty being Crabsburger in earlier seasons but then switching to Crab Pate in later.

Thinking about it for a bit, the "M" for "Mini" part really shouldn't be too hard to translate as "micro" is used worldwide thanks to the metric system (Only possible exception I can think of is Mandarian and Cantonese due to their lack of phonetic characters, and a quick internet search seems to confirm that they don't use the normal names for prefixes.). "Wumbo", as a non-word made up just for this joke could be left unchanged beyond altering Patrick's explanation a bit to fit local grammar and word forms. Not sure all translators would use that approach though.


Interesting.

I remember this was a big thread that lasted a while during the early days of full/co/. A Spanish and Russian user joined up and documented a bunch of jokes that were poorly translated.

Other anons joined in with different countries, and there were eventually a bunch of different examples of both English>Non-English and the other way around. As it turns out, lots of translators would just ignore the joke and make their own one up that works visually or would just play the scene seriously.

That sounds interesting. Do you have it archived or can you recall at least some of those mistanslations?

I've been watching through SpongeBob again recently and I've noticed just how much of the humor is language-based. I wonder if the increasing reliance on non-sequitur humor in cartoons in recent years has been motivated by a desire to make localization easier.

I haven't seen the Spanish translation, but I could imagine a grammar joke. Like after Spongebob says wumbo isn't a word, Patrick would argue that Wumbo is a verb because it has an 'o' at the end. He would go "C'mon Spongebob, yo wumbo? (I wumbo) Yo lo wumbo? (I wumbo it in present tense) Wumbo a Squidward? (I wumbo Squidward) Voy a lo wumbo? (I'm going to wumbo it.) Voy a wumbole? (I'm going to wumbo him.)"

BR here.
The wumbo scene basically stayed exactly the same in Portuguese, there wasn't anything in it that didn't translate well.
The biggest translation fuck up I can think of is the Radioactive Man episode in the Simpsons. The translators obviously had no idea what "fallout" meant so they translated Fallout Boy's name thinking it had something to do with the verb "to fall." The end result is so fucking stupid that it's actually funny, but even when I was a kid I could tell there was something weird with his name.
Another thing, not from cartoons but I guess it's relevant to this thread, in Kenan & Kel there's an episode where a bank robber says "hostage" almost rhymes with "sausage," they translated the sentence literally, and those words don't sound anything alike in Portuguese. I'm actually curious if any country handled this scene well or if everyone just said "fuck it," didn't worry about rhyming, and just played it as a stupid nonsense joke.
And another thing from Kenan & Kel, there's this one episode where they have a map, and Kenan says "Safe" is written in the map, but Kel says it's "Sofa." Again, both words look nothing alike in Portuguese but they left it as it was, because at the end of the episode they really do find a sofa inside a safe.
It took me like 10 years to realize both of those jokes actually made sense in English and weren't just weird lol so randumb jokes.

I don't see why the words "Mumbo" and "Wumbo" wouldn't work in other languages. It's not like they're English, they're total nonsense words that should transition over to any language.

The Hindi version did not use different words for mini and womba.
In casual spoken Hindi, it is kind of common to use English words for things which either don't have a Hindi/Sanskrit analogue or the Hindi/Sanskrit analogue is very "technical" or "pure" or simply not in popular use. For example, the word "computer" may be translated to "संगणकयन्त्रम्" (sanganakayantram) in Sanskrit, which is almost never used.

A video is available here:
voot.com/kids/characters/spongebob-squarepants-h-/359117/mermaidman-and-barnacleboy-4/451657

That's a case for most foreign dubs and its too distracting to have little footnotes explaining the joke.

How about this one?

It's literally translated on the latam dub. They used "Wrande" (based on "Grande") on it, and I think it works fairly well.
youtube.com/watch?v=xHg-H69Ttb0

You know you can embed Youtube videos, right?

They really did not make a single attempt to lipsync.

American (and moreso, British) humor is very dependent on language manipulation and context clues. This is because English, as well as many European languages, has plenty of abstract words to describe the eccentrics of life. This makes it hard to learn, but it's one reason why English is so universal nowadays, you can explain anything in it so long as you have the knowledge. Sarcasm, "lying", and onomatopoeia are what make the humor we consider "witty", because it plays with our expectations, but in a way you wouldn't never consider otherwise, so you appreciate it positively. Bad "witty" humor lives up to expectations, or cheaply subverts expectation in a way that doesn't make sense, contextually. Contextually, in this case, meaning body language, tone, or other physical actions.

Other countries, however, rely on less language dependent forms of humor because their language does not have the same support for abstract concepts. Japan, for example, would initially make rock songs in English because the bands believed their language didn't have the words capable for the emotions needed in rock. We Americans and brits generally don't appreciate slapstick as much, comparably, as even things like "The Three Stooges" had wordplay to back it up.

So yeah, you may be right. Because Americans consume less television, they very well may be a push towards less American humored programs in order to port those programs to other languages cleanly, at a loss of American ratings.

It was fairly mundane in the german dub, but the "he, she, me" emphasis on the "me" part was lost.
But they did properly adapt the part after that.

All in all I personally really liked the german dub.
They did a good job.

Ikr

In one of the episodes Andy has to talk in rhymes, because of a bet with his sisters. Towards the end of the day(when he would win) his sister tricks him into saying the word "orange" which has no rhyme. Andy has to figure out a word that rhymes with "orange" and we see a thought bubble of him leaning on a door, the door then opening, and him playing with the door, and an arrow pointing towards the hinges of the door, as he figured out the word that rhymes with "orange" and namely "hinge". In the Romanian dub, it was still the word "oranj" for orange, but they used the word "deranj" which roughly means an annoying noise or a loud noise that creates discomfort(think of nails on a chalkboard), while still having the thought bubble and the arrow pointing towards the hinges, only that now they were creaking and creating the "deranj".
I think this was a good adaptation/translation of the whole scene.

They kinda cheated in Russian by saying "papaya" which has plenty of Rhymes in Russian, but indeed does rhyme with Door Hinge.

Mini is a pretty universal word and Wambo isn't really a word anyway so it still worked here without changing anything.

The original is perfectly sync'd, the video is just shit with audio delay.

In Germany exactly the same, however, Wambo isn't a word here. On the other hand, several jokes were added in the dub which on the other hand don't work in other languages, like one time Mr. Krabs says "I'm not Mr Krabs! I'm *insert name*" and says the name of another famous pop culture character because same voice actor.

Ich bin errrrrr… Benjamin Blumchen!

Richtig.

mr bean completely shatters your "We Americans and brits generally don't appreciate slapstick" theory and is beloved from ages 3and up in any language

I'd say that Charlie Chaplin proved that slapstick can be appreciated by Americans almost a century ago.