Ehermm...

Vocational Guidance Counsellor,Vocational Guidance Councelloor, Vocational Guidance Councellooooor !!!!!!!!!


School, teachers, parents, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. All those whose task it supposedly is to help you find your preordained profession: forget about them! Once more in my life I feel that the only authority up for the job is good old television. And it has been teaching me ugly lessons lately. Not only about the state of the world in general in one of those countless Ned-TV shows such as "Frauentausch" aka "Ahsis Home Alone", but more technically about the deficiancies of the German Media Industry. One question arises more vehemently and more frequently than any other:

If we cannot abolish dubbing, why can't at least the people doing it be any bloody good at it?

Classic example:
Dialogue between Han Solo and Princess Leia in Episode IV:
Leia: "They're tracking us!"
Han. "Tracking us? Not THIS ship, sister!"
or in the German version:
Leia: blah di blah "oder haben Sie eine andere Erklärung, warum wir so leicht entkommen sind?" Han: "Leicht? Das nennes Sie leicht? Nicht mit diesem Schiff, Schwester!"

Close enough, but basically means something entirely different. And so the poor Millenium Falcon is degraded from a dashing Star Racer Deluxe to a heap of junk unable to shake off some stupid old Tie-Fighters.

More recent example:
Homer sells Apu some rubber foam gloves to cover the arms and fingers of his eight-armed goddess statue so the kids don't accidentally poke their eyes out with it. In the German version he says something along the lines of "Problem: gepunktete Gottheit" ("dotted goddess").
Whuat?? Gepunktete Gottheit?? Somewhat like this maybe?
Then it dawned on me ('cause, after all, a century of English Studies can't have been in vain): What Homer had really said was "pointy Goddess". Aaahhh! Alright, eight arms, hands, fingers! Pointy! Kids can poke their eyes out with it!
Again: close, but not close enough.

The List would go on if only somebody could be bothered writing down that crap!
I know I know I know I'm being a horrible clever Dick but
a) I cannae fuckin' help it and
b) sometimes smartassing is a good thing because it leads us to two conclusions:
1) These dubbers must be on drugs or just plain rubbish at their job and
2) Somebody must please do something about it.

Now if that's not a quest for the future I don't know what is! Glory time in the olden days when dubbing was an art form rendering the German versions of The Holy Grail just as funny as the original exactly by not sticking to close to the English but by preserving the sense rather than the actual words. And who says it cannot be like that again? I somehow feel I have the duty to go there and swing the idiomatic hammer. If not for my country then just for me. I can still be a teacher afterwards, for now my vocation lies elsewhere: Kicking some dotted goddess' ass or hitting some guys with a two volume dictionary. Or maybe both, just to be on the safe side.

Also that way I could make a living by working from home and watching TV all day. 'S gonna be epic. Brain numbingly epic.