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Yeah, I guess that works as kind of a hand-wave. Weird, but I can live with it. The mispronunciation of его stood out more, for sure! I wonder if they were going for Найти, because sometimes the infinitive can use used as an imperative, but to me it sounded like a d sound, not a t sound.

I only watched the film the first time today (I actually stumbled across this thread because I was trying to confirm what he'd actually said, as I was seriously thrown by that translation - I was like, did they really just...??), but I found the clip and watched again. What he actually says is (the clip is refusing to reload for me to double check, so this is from memory) "Она у меня. Найди его", which more properly would translate, I think, to "I have her/it (because it could be referring to an object which was feminine gender). Find him."

I would have to go find a native, but to me it's a bit of a weird way of saying it. I don't think it really works to literally translate the English. I can see what they were going for, I'm just not convinced. I think that construction feels more like he's saying he already has her in his grasp, which clearly wasn't the case. Again, I am not a native, but it sounded off to me.

Personally, I should've liked them to say instead "Она моя", which would be a better translation of "She's mine" and wouldn't have the weird too-literal translation thing going on.

ayrt

"I have her" for "I'm going to [do the thing] to her" is very idiomatic and translating it literally was a bad plan. Similarly "I'm on her" would have sucked. They should have stuck with "She's mine", since it's right after she shoots his goggles (good thing he was wearing those or it would have been a shorter movie...) and the implication is that he's pissed about it. :)

When I need Russian or German, which are the big ones for this fandom, I *start* with Google Translate but then I check grammar resources to avoid exactly this kind of issue. :)

Bwahahahaha I'm imagining if they'd had him literally say he was on her in Russian, that would have been highly unfortunate but really rather funny....

If baffles me why these, let's be fair, really lucrative franchises can't go and find someone who actually speaks the language to check the translation. It really can't be that hard, surely? They could afford to play big bucks, but even just finding a Russian grad who had some grasp would be a start, y'know? Hell, I haven't spoken Russian on a regular basis for 15 years, and I could do a better job than they usually do when using Russian in movies and on TV shows. *sigh*

I've long since stopped being surprised when this stuff gets messed up, and I'm sure they work on the principle most of their audience won't know if they make huge, glaring errors, but it would just be so easy to do a much better job :-/ and when you consider how much cash these movies make, you'd think they could find someone who had a better grasp of Russian/German/whatever than bloody Google translate. *facepalm*

They could afford to play big bucks, but even just finding a Russian grad who had some grasp would be a start, y'know?

Honestly? Give me some good basic grammar books and *I* could do better! At least I understand that idioms are a bad idea.

when you consider how much cash these movies make, you'd think they could find someone who had a better grasp of Russian/German/whatever than bloody Google translate.

I mean really. Can you imagine the number of language students who'd basically blow people to have their names in the credits as "Russian language translator", much less actually be *paid* for it?

Right?? I wouldn't be surprised if people would *pay* for the privilege. But apparently it hasn't occurred to Marvel et al that maybe, just maybe, relying on a free internet translation service isn't the best idea.

(And I have to assume that's more or less what they are doing. I can't fathom how else they make such bizarre mistakes, because mostf the time, they don't make the kind of mistakes that an actual human would make, they make weird, nonsensical errors. Though "yeho" for его reads like someone who speaks Russian with a Ukrainian accent, rather than a computer error. Maybe they put it through a translation program and then asked a Ukrainian how to say it...? I don't know. I suspect trying to make sense of it is a fool's errand...)

(Additionally: I have noticed that people have this tendency to put something very colloquial (or sometimes downright wrong) into Google translate in English and then accept whatever it spits out. I noticed that in a story I read recently, where somebody had some Russian that literally made no sense, and it turned out they'd just written something in English and made the assumption Google translate would understood what they *meant* to say. To me it seems fairly obvious that if you give Google translate something in shaky English, then you're liable to come out win a result that may not be what you intended, but people assume it's a mindreader 8-o)

Do you remember what it was? (I ask because I desperately hope it wasn't me and I want to go back and edit if it was. :)

Haha, no, don't worry - it was in a different fandom and I know the perpetrator. (Also, you write better English than she does - native speaker, but borderline incomprehensible a lot of the time.)

:wipes forehead:

I mean, I can't imagine even Google translate can get a simple declarative sentence *too* wrong, but you never know. :)

DA

I think much of the Google Translate trouble people get into involves things that they don't even notice are idiomatic/metaphorical statements--like, I wouldn't normally think of "I have her" meaning "I am about to get possession of a person (to do bad things to them)" as idiomatic. It's very easy not to notice that stuff about your own language until you realize it doesn't translate into another one.

ayrt

Yeah, it's really easy for that kind of thing to slip past a native speaker.

And with English>a lot of other I-E langs there's the case problem, since we basically don't have it except in (some) pronouns.

Yes, that's true. I think this is one reason I'm grateful I did languages to a high level, because you basically can't learn any language to any degree of fluency without, sooner or later, bumping up against stuff like this sooner or later, and it's just good training for being forced to think about things analytically/not making assumptions. Because when you do make assumptions, you end up making a complete berk of yourself by saying things you really didn't mean to say... ;)

I'd say that Google translate works surprisingly well at times, and surprisingly poorly in others, but if you are starting with a healthy scepticism and you're aware of the limitations, you are probably on the right path. Hell, you're probably doing better than, y'know, Marvel lmao ;)

Well, we're stuck with черная вдова and зимний солдат since that's what Marvel uses whether that's what an actual Russian would use or not... :)

I hadn't got around to looking up either, but if someone had asked me to guess, I'd have gone with зимний солдат for winter soldier, and apparently the actual spider is called чёрная вдова in Russian (I just looked at the wiki page on Russian wiki), so for once I think you're golden with those two! (If you look at Russian wiki it'll have it as a plural, чёрные вдовы, but that's when it's a species name.)

I imagine any page in Russian will use the title Marvel gave to TWS, but зимний солдат seems logical to me. зимний is the adjectival form of winter, and I know Russians do use that metaphorically, similarly to how we sometimes use it in English (ie it doesn't have to literally pertain to the winter season), so I think however you take its meaning in English, that's a pretty good Russian rendering - with the I am not a native disclaimer firmly in place ;)

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