Les chien de Baskerville

[awanderingbard]

Continuing with my geekiness and watching Sherlock in French. This week: Les chiens de Baskerville. There was some trouble getting it to load, so I also watched a bit of Le Grand Jeu (The Great Game) while I was waiting, which was taken down last year before I had a chance to watch it but has been reuploaded.

Last week, I mentioned in the comments to donutsweeper about the use of 'vous' vs. 'tu' on the show. Basically, the use of a formal or informal 'you'. John and Sherlock start off using the more formal 'vous' with each other, then switch to the friendlier 'tu' one they get to know each other better. Sherlock continues to use 'vous' with pretty much everyone else, though, implying he doesn't feel he's close enough to them to be informal. I took note of that this time and the only other person he uses 'tu' with is Mycroft. Mrs Hudson, Lestrade and Molly are all 'vous'. Interestingly, Molly uses 'vous' with him as well, which is a great touch to show how nervous she is around him.

Translation notes:
- I learned a new word! 'Molosse', meaning 'huge dog'. A very cool thing was done with the whole HOUND thing. The acronym for the H.O.U.N.D project is changed to M.O.L.O.S (Mann, O'Mara, Lanski, Oster, Stewart). I think this is sort of clever, because 'molosse' becomes even more a twist of Henry's child's mind. He saw 'M.O.L.O.S' and the logo on the shirt, likened it to 'molosse' and created the hound to explain it.
- Mrs Hudson says 'coucou!' whenever she comes up to the flat. Which is sort of a friendly, 'hey there!' that I find very cute. It's also what you say to babies when you play peekaboo in French.
- They had to add another syllable to the 'I don't have friends' line to make it work, so Sherlock says 'I don't have friends, John'. Which is even more insulting, because he's not only saying he doesn't have friends, but that John most certainly isn't one of them.
- Another translation I liked: instead of John's 'IT'S NOT OKAY!', Sherlock says 'it's over now' and John says "NO, IT'S NOT OVER!'. Like 'we will be discussing this further, Sherlock!'.
- Also, re: The Great Game. According to French!Sherlock, the solar system does round and round a carousel like wooden horses, as opposed to round and round the garden like a teddy bear.

Rewatching notes:
Watching this again knowing that Sherlock is attempting to drug John's coffee made me notice all the little things Cumberbatch is doing in the background. Sherlock is all 'hey John, do you want coffee? You should drink this coffee. This is awesome coffee. Look, I made you some coffee. Oh no, I am so sad you won't drink this coffee. Have you drunk your coffee?' and then when John walks out, he checks the cup to see if he's drunk enough of it. I also love the face that Sherlock makes when he's spooning the coffee out at Henry's. It's this 'oh, what you have to say is very interesting. I am totally listening to it. This is what people look like when they are listening and interested.'

Comments

[joonscribble.livejournal.com]

I am totally listening to it. This is what people look like when they are listening and interested.'

Hahaha! Oh, Sherlock you little sociopath.

The bit with the 'vous' versus 'tu' is really cool. Such a neat way to show through language how close you feel toward someone.

[awanderingbard.livejournal.com]

I find the tu vs vous thing really interesting. There's also a respect aspect to it as well, which words for Mrs Hudson. Sherlock is obviously very affectionate towards her, but vous is what you use for your elders.

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

They had to add another syllable to the 'I don't have friends' line to make it work, so Sherlock says 'I don't have friends, John'.

Why did they have to add something to make it work?

[awanderingbard.livejournal.com]

Sometimes when a phrase gets translated it takes a longer or shorter amount of time to say in the other language so you have to add to it or truncate it. Otherwise the mouth moves onscreen but there's no voice or there's a voice but the mouth isn't moving. Sometimes they switch things up to try and have the word being said sound similar to the original so that the phonemes look the same, too. I can't imagine the amount of work Sherlock's doubles have to do get their timing right with his rants in each language.

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

Oh, that makes sense. That's always the thing people are making fun of the badly dubbed Japanese monster movies- the fact the mouths are moving entirely differently than what people are saying.

[awanderingbard.livejournal.com]

Yes, exactly. There's a great moment on the Howl's Moving Castle special feature where they showed how they dubbed it into English and they basically had to edit as they recorded it. You can see Christian Bale desperately trying to get all the words in in time and then going, yep, I think we need to reword this.


Btw, happy belated Birthday and Happy Mother's Day! *huggles*

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much! *hugsies*

[shadowfireflame.livejournal.com]

Watching this again knowing that Sherlock is attempting to drug John's coffee made me notice all the little things Cumberbatch is doing in the background.

This! And it makes their conversation about John not taking sugar even more amusing, because I assume Sherlock does actually know that John doesn't take sugar, but John assumes Sherlock doesn't know/deleted it and made a mistake while Sherlock has to pretend that he doesn't know. And then John drinks the forgiveness coffee anyway.