this post was submitted on 24 Dec 2025
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[–] Winter_Oven@piefed.social 349 points 2 days ago (10 children)
[–] frog@feddit.uk 53 points 2 days ago (5 children)

Thank you for this. I am such redneck I need subtitles for british shows. I can't fucking understand them a lot of times.

This probably helps with users where English isn't their first language.

[–] Stefan_S_from_H@piefed.zip 28 points 2 days ago

I need subtitles for british shows

Bullet Tooth Tony: A bookie's got blagged last night. Avi: Blagged? Speak English to me, Tony. I thought this country spawned the fucking language, and so far nobody seems to speak it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGuGzH3Ne5w

[–] janus2@lemmy.zip 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Derry Girls is one of my favorite shows of all time but feck me I can't understand shite without the subtitles

(am northeastern US yank)

[–] toynbee@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago (3 children)

... Are you my wife?

I hope not, since she doesn't seem two faced to me.

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[–] wieson@feddit.org 8 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Now this is just a feeling, not a fact.

When I watch British talk shows, I have way less of a problem understanding i. e. Scottish accents than the American guests.
I think, foreign language learners of English might be better at understanding different accents, because they're not locked into one. Or maybe I'm a special little boy idk

[–] JohnSmith@feddit.uk 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Perhaps you should seek a Geordie shipbuilder and see how that goes.

[–] Digit@lemmy.wtf 2 points 1 day ago

(Really wanted to write an example of Geordie here for the funs, but I can't do it justice in text. Would have been fun. But really gotta hear it.).

And that kinda works for almost any strong/broad regional accent... Brummie and Sheltie spring to my mind the most. Or for an example from across the pond, I love a thick Boston ("Southie") accent. "Bastin". Hehehe. Brummie's almost like the Boston accent of Britain. Sheltie's like Elvin or something fantastical.

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[–] sem@piefed.blahaj.zone 15 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Too much work too much thinking needed lol.

Merry xmas

[–] Aussiemandeus@aussie.zone 13 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Can you give me a lift

My cars got a flat

All my paints chipped

[–] sem@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 day ago

Oh I got them all eventually before I opened the comments. My point is unchanged. ;p

[–] mPony@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

one treacle pie comin' right up!

[–] Entertainmeonly@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I got the first one. I assumed the second was making an unhoused joke. Tbe third had me completely scratching my head. So thanks.

[–] Digit@lemmy.wtf 2 points 1 day ago

Heh. I imagine [nearly all[?]] Brits will all get it, being somewhat "bilingual" across both versions of English, and many Americans will be left baffled.

[–] AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space 20 points 2 days ago (2 children)

It really bugs me whenever I see a US film that has been dubbed into Canadian or Australian English and the characters say things like “you’ll be back on your metres in no time”

[–] SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

Like the Australian version of that Kelis song “My milkshake brings all the boys to the meter”

[–] Etterra@discuss.online 7 points 2 days ago

It's good to see that the special-ed AIs are getting work too.

[–] taiyang@lemmy.world 51 points 2 days ago

Auto-translators in a nutshell. Lol

[–] brsrklf@jlai.lu 73 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (8 children)

Long ago, I watched a youtube video of a girl singing a song from an anime that I'm assuming she'd translated herself in French. A bit bold because she didn't speak French. It was a nice try, but overall quite funny.

The part that really got me was a line about "a beautiful blooming spring" that she translated as "un beau ressort qui fleurit".

"Ressort" is the mecanical part that goes "boing". The season is "printemps".

[–] Dojan@pawb.social 46 points 2 days ago (1 children)

This reminds me of a translation I saw for a spring themed song. Not the mechanical spring, the flowering one.

Japanese has three writing systems 漢字 which are essentially Chinese characters, the traditional kind rather than the simplified ones, ひらがな and カタカナ. They each complement one another and offer context, but sometimes you can also use different sets as a stylistic choice, which can deviate from general practise.

So there is this one line in the song

人ゴミを掻き分けては

Typically you’d write that first word with hiragana, 人ごみ, meaning crowd. ゴミ is a different word meaning rubbish, garbage, trash, litter, etc.

Whoever translated the song must’ve been decently new to the language, and did a valiant attempt, but they separated words out too much, and read 人ゴミ as two words, and 掻き分け again as two words.

  • 人 person/people
  • ゴミ garbage
  • 掻き arm stroke (like in swimming)
  • 分 part/portion

And thus translated it to something like “the people rummaged through the trash.”

  • 人ごみ crowd
  • 掻き分ける push aside/push through

So the actual meaning was roughly “I made my way through the crowd”

[–] Wildmimic@anarchist.nexus 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

depending on the composition of the crowd the translation might hold up, e.g. trying to get through a crowd of tech CEO millionaires lol

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[–] rob_t_firefly@lemmy.world 23 points 2 days ago (2 children)

There was a story going around some time ago of someone who got a tattoo in Hebrew writing and asked for the word "butterfly" (🦋) but it instead read "butter fly" (🧈 🪰).

[–] WanderingThoughts@europe.pub 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] rob_t_firefly@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

Haha, thanks for posting that! Great to see it again, and the others are also entertaining.

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[–] toynbee@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

There's a YouTube channel whose entire schtick is that they take songs, translate them to one language, translate them to another, translate them back to the original, etc. then sing the resultant output.

I have my doubts about the honesty behind it, but the results are often entertaining.

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[–] FatVegan@leminal.space 45 points 2 days ago (2 children)

That doesn't make sense, no words are censored

[–] boonhet@sopuli.xyz 11 points 2 days ago (3 children)

It said American not Epstein-Trump so it must be meant for the pre-2025 dialect

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[–] dwt@feddit.org 18 points 2 days ago (5 children)

Took me some time to figure this out as a non native speaker:

  • lift, easy
  • flat, that took a while
  • Chipped, didn’t even know that idiom…
[–] Lumidaub@feddit.org 13 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Long potato sticks are called chips in the UK and fre~~edom~~nch fries in the US :)

US chips are UK crisps, btw.

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[–] ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Now I imagine the dub would be in a thick Boston accent.

AhPAHtmin.

[–] Digit@lemmy.wtf 2 points 1 day ago

Love it.

One of my fave accents.

[–] whyNotSquirrel@sh.itjust.works 11 points 2 days ago (4 children)

I don't get the last one, the paint can be chips?

[–] J92@lemmy.world 24 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] Ediacarium@feddit.org 8 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)
[–] WanderingThoughts@europe.pub 6 points 2 days ago

Johnny Silverhand approves

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[–] Hupf@feddit.org 7 points 2 days ago

Freedom fried

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