star wars - How is Yoda's speech translated to non-English languages?

Yoda infamously speaks using the OSV (object, subject, verb) word ordering

Much to learn, you still have.

rather the SVO ordering used in English

You still have much to learn.

How is this dealt with in translations to other languages, particularly languages which don't use SVO word order, for example Japanese or Albanian? Do they just switch the words to OSV order? Does that even make sense in most other languages?

Answer

There's an interesting extract from The Open University's OpenLearn website on precisely this:

This is easily replicated in other languages that also have follow the SVO order, but others have to be more creative. In the German translation, instead of positioning the finite verb in second place in the sentences, it moves to the end, as in Eure Sinne nutzen ihr müsst (Your senses to use you have).

For reference, German is typically considered to use V2 constituent order¹ word ordering, so ordinarily, the finite verb should be second. Instead, as stated in the source, the finite verb moves to the end of the sentence, which would likely sound unnatural to a native German speaker.

According to The Atlantic:

In Czech translations, rather than speaking in his general object-subject-verb manner, Yoda apparently speaks in subject-object-verb (like in Japanese).

Clearly, translators have simply adapted Yoda's word order to sound 'most foreign' (Czech is pretty flexible with word order).

I found a rather complete list of languages and Yoda's word orders on Reddit:

Czech: Free word order. Yoda speaks consistently in SOV. Interestingly enough, putting an object before a verb does sound unusual to most speakers of Czech.

Estonian: Free word order language. Yoda retains the English OSV order. Note: This is grammatical in Estonian, but does make it seem as though Yoda is constantly stressing the object phrase as the main point of his statements. This gives his speech an unusual quality.

French: An SVO language. Yoda speaks in OSV.

German: A SVO or SOV language. Yoda brings the Object to the front (OSV), like in English.

Hungarian: A free word order language. There is nothing unusual about Yoda's speech.

Italian: An SVO language. Yoda speaks in OSV. Note: OSV is also the syntax used in the Italian of the less-proficient speakers of Italian from the region of Sardinia.

Japanese: An SOV language. Yoda seems to use a more or less correct syntax, with a more archaic vocabulary.

Korean: An SOV language. Nothing is unusual about Yoda's grammar.

Norwegian: An SVO language. Yoda speaks in OSV.

Romanian: An SVO language. Yoda speaks in OSV. He also places adjectives before the noun instead of after the noun, and uses an archaic form of the future tense.

Spanish: An SVO language. Yoda speaks in OSV.

Turkish: An SOV language. Yoda speaks in OSV. Note: This order is also used in classical Ottoman poetry, so the syntax may have been chosen in order to emphasize Yoda's wisdom or age.

Generally, OSV is a safe bet for translators, because practically no natural language uses it—Wikipedia rounds the value to 0%, and the original source of that data quotes 0.00%. I can't imagine many of the languages (if any) that Star Wars has been translated into use OSV naturally; the only example Wikipedia lists of a common OSV language is Warao, which only has around 28,000 speakers (and no Star Wars translation that I could find).

So, in short, yes, translators try to pick a word order which is 'foreign' to the language, and don't rigidly stick to OSV.

¹ I had originally stated SOV, but as noted in the comments, this wasn't a particularly accurate characterisation, and more misleading than helpful.

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