Skip to main content

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.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize Missy right away?

So after it was established that Missy is actually both the Master, and the "woman in the shop" who gave Clara the TARDIS number... ...why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize her right away? I remember the Tenth Doctor in The Sound of Drums stating that Timelords had a way of recognizing other Timelords no matter if they had regenerated. And Clara should have recognized her as well... I'm hoping for a better explanation than "Moffat screwed up", and that I actually missed something after two watchthroughs of the episode. Answer There seems to be a lot of in-canon uncertainty as to the extent to which Time Lords can recognise one another which far pre-dates Moffat's tenure. From the Time Lords page on Wikipedia : Whether or not Time Lords can recognise each other across regenerations is not made entirely clear: In The War Games, the War Chief recognises the Second Doctor despite his regeneration and it is implied that the Doctor knows him when they fir

Did the gatekeeper and the keymaster get intimate in Ghostbusters?

According to TVTropes ( usual warning, don't follow the link or you'll waste half your life in a twisty maze of content ): In Ghostbusters, it's strongly implied that Dana Barret, while possessed by Zuul the Gatekeeper, had sex with Louis Tully, who was possessed by Vinz Clortho the Keymaster (key, gate, get it?), in order to free Big Bad Gozer. In fact, a deleted scene from the movie has Venkman explicitly asking Dana if she and Louis "did it". I turned the quote into a spoiler since it contains really poor-taste joke, but the gist of it is that it's implied that as part of freeing Gozer , the two characters possessed by the Keymaster and the Gatekeeper had sex. Is there any canon confirmation or denial of this theory (canon meaning something from creators' interviews, DVD commentary, script, delete scenes etc...)? Answer The Richard Mueller novelisation and both versions of the script strongly suggest that they didn't have sex (or at the very l

the lord of the rings - Why is Gimli allowed to travel to Valinor?

Gimli was allowed to go to Valinor despite not being a ring bearer. Is this explained in detail or just with the one line "for his love for Galadriel"? Answer There's not much detail about this aside from what's said in Appendix A to Return of the King: We have heard tell that Legolas took Gimli Glóin's son with him because of their great friendship, greater than any that has been between Elf and Dwarf. If this is true, then it is strange indeed: that a Dwarf should be willing to leave Middle-earth for any love, or that the Eldar should receive him, or that the Lords of the West should permit it. But it is said that Gimli went also out of desire to see again the beauty of Galadriel; and it may be that she, being mighty among the Eldar, obtained this grace for him. More cannot be said of this matter. And Appendix B: Then Legolas built a grey ship in Ithilien, and sailed down Anduin and so over Sea; and with him, it is said, went Gimli the Dwarf . And when that sh

fan fiction - Does the Interdict of Merlin appear in original Harry Potter canon?

In Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky a concept called the ' Interdict of Merlin ' appears: (all emphasis added) Chapter 23: His hand on the doorknob, Harry Potter already inside and waiting, wearing his cowled cloak. "The ancient first-year spells," Harry Potter said. "What did you find?" "They're no more powerful than the spells we use now." Harry Potter's fist struck a desk, hard. "Damn it. All right. My own experiment was a failure, Draco. There's something called the Interdict of Merlin -" Draco hit himself on the forehead, realizing. "- which stops anyone from getting knowledge of powerful spells out of books, even if you find and read a powerful wizard's notes they won't make sense to you, it has to go from one living mind to another. I couldn't find any powerful spells that we had the instructions for but couldn't cast. But if you can't get them out of old books,