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Find a Linguist!

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Clarissa

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The producers of “Homeland,” a TV spy drama, were filming a scene (shot in Berlin) in which one of the show’s main characters walks through a refugee camp run by Hezbollah, and they employed a group of Arabic-speaking graffiti artists to daub the walls with authentic slogans saying “Muhammed is the greatest.” But they forgot to hire a trusted Arabic-competent linguist to proofread. They had no idea what the artists had written on the set walls. It turned out to be slogans like “Homeland is not a series,” “Homeland is racist,” and “Homeland is rubbish.”

And it’s true, a show that is too cheap to find a translator is, indeed, rubbish.

4 responses to “Find a Linguist!”

  1. Bob Basil Avatar
    Bob Basil

    From the Language Log link:

    The producers of “Homeland” put a brave face on it, declaring that “as Homeland always strives to be subversive in its own right and a stimulus for conversation, we can’t help but admire this act of artistic sabotage.”

    Pretty good try!

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    1. Dreidel Avatar
      Dreidel

      As long as the Arabic words aren’t something like racial slurs that the Showtime network (which airs Homeland” on U.S. cable) would definitely have to apologize for, why should the producers care? “Embarrassed” is a word that Showtime’s producers don’t understand in any language — you want proof, take a look at the channel’s endless series of made-for-TV nudie movies.

      “No publicity is bad publicity” when you’re trying to sell something, so the widespread chatter may actually increase the show’s ratings temporarily.

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  2. Jones Avatar
    Jones

    Once upon a time, there was a movie made with Navajo actors who decided that since the movie production company didn’t care what they said on film, just as long as it sounded “Indian”, they could say whatever they wanted …

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheyenne_Autumn

    “Ford used Native American Navajo to portray the Cheyenne. This meant the dialogue that was supposed to be the ‘Cheyenne language’ was actually Navajo. This made little difference to White audiences, but for Navajo communities the film became very popular. This was because the Navajo actors were openly using ribald and crude language that had nothing to do with the film. …

    Academics now consider this an important moment in the development of Native Americans’ identity because [Native Americans were] able to mock Hollywood’s (i.e., mainstream White society’s) historical interpretation of the American West.”

    [couldn’t resist minor quotation copy-edits for obvious reasons, I’m sure Wikipedia did not see my Grammar Nazi coming] 🙂

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      And still silly film makers can’t learn their lesson. 🙂

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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