Monday, October 26, 2009

Lost in Translation

When the Things were younger, we set the TVs in our house to display the closed captioning under the belief that this might help the runts learn to recognize words and spell while somewhat countering Zack and Cody's best efforts to turn their brains to mush.

closed captioning failI cannot verify this method actually works, given Thing 1's struggles with reading and what happened this past weekend with Thing 2.

My Love sat in the living room watching a movie and Thing 2, taking a break from his ambitious early compiling of his Christmas list (top item: "Everything Pokemon"), joined her. In one scene in the movie, the brother tries to teach his sister's boyfriend to how to say "thank you" in a foreign language.

"Oréa viziá," says the boyfriend to the brother's mom.

In a subtitle, up pops the English translation: "Nice boobs."

Thing 2 giggles.

Curious, My Love asked him what the words onscreen said.

"It said, 'Nice bobs."

Since the movie was My Big Fat Greek Wedding, I can only assume Thing 2 took this to be a joke about shish kabobs.

25 comments:

  1. Whoa, whoa, whoa...you mean to tell me that Pokemon is still popular??

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  2. Or that you've already fallen behind the slang and bobs means something else entirely.

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  3. You can always tell the professional close caption typers vs. the hacks. Looks like you got an amateur - good thing!

    PS: Big Fat Greek Wedding is a huge favorite at our house. My 12 year can do most of the movie verbatim. Except for the Greek. Must be the close captioning.

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  4. Ah, he was just being coy for his parent's sake. Maybe. Maybe he was trying to fake you out.

    Also, we have the Pokemon Master Trainer and my kids still like to play it!

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  5. do you think those closed caption folks get bored....meh, no one's reading let's just slip this in...

    there must be some funny stories at those closed captioning conventions.

    Do you think they imagine text running underneath the person they are talking with at all times?

    Thoughts to ponder :)

    Peace~Rene

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  6. It took me minutes to stop laughing so my mouse would not stop jumping up and down so I could make a comment.
    Welcome to the world we live in!

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  7. Now I'm imagining a hairy greek guy named Bob. He probably has man-bobs. [shudder]

    Thanks for the image, Thing 2.

    ;D

    - Julia

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  8. Awesome post. Anything with boobs is hilarious most of the time.

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  9. The close-captioning drives me nuts. Some restaurants usually have it on the tvs & half the time I can't figure out what they're saying.

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  10. I always thought I might be able to do that closed captioned job. But english to english only could you imagine having to type that fast AND translate at the same time? I'd be completely flummoxed!

    But also ... hehe ... 'bobs'

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  11. This may be the funniest post I've read all week! Thanks for the laugh.

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  12. reading a both a gift and a curse.

    so is telling time, and learning how to use the remote...

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  13. It's about the boobs. It's ALWAYS about the boobs...

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  14. You sure it wasn't actually My Big Fat Greek Weiner?

    (good lord...I just said 'weiner.' I'm so 12)

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  15. not only did I say it, but I spelled it wrong. I think that has to be closely tied into all the housecleaning I've been doing lately.

    ;)

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  16. I loved the translation screw ups in Big Fat Greek Wedding....:)

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  17. Next rental: "What about Bobs?"

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  18. My son, at that age, could give himself whiplash checking out anything to do with the word boobs, let alone seeing any! Man in training I say.

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  19. How come I never catch any cool professional screw ups like that? :-) funny.

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  20. Funny, that's what my Christmas list says too!

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  21. Not all boobs are worthy of the second "o" ... take mine for example, when they are referenced it is usually booob. Yeah, I'm that worthy.

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  22. Nice bobs. Right.

    Did he know what a Bundt was at least?

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  23. If I ran the English language bob would be the singular form and boob the plural.

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  24. Ok, I almost choked when I saw the caption fail!! Hilarious!

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