Re-visiting a childhood classic

[kjn]

Some childhood classics can be re-visited. I remember avidly watching l était une fois… l'Espace when it was first shown on Swedish television in 1983.

So, naturally I bought it on DVD for Hulda, who has watched it a lot. Yesterday evening I watched the first episode myself (using the original French sound, and Swedish subtitles), and today Hulda and I watched the second one (with Swedish sound and subtitles).

It does hold up pretty well. The different types of animations can be a little jarring, and the plot develops quite slowly (but that's probably good in a children's show). No, the real thing that made it hard to watch was that the translation to Swedish—the subtitles and the dubbing—had clearly been done by different people, and maybe even from different source languages.

Differences are to be expected, but there were major differences—sometimes with changes in meaning—in word choices, style and grammar. If I hazard a guess, one was done from the original French, and one from the English version of the show (the intro music in the Swedish-sound version is in English, giving credence to this).

Comments

[awahlbom.livejournal.com]

I've also watched it in French wih Swedish subtitles, and I can say that the French dialog and Swedish subs don't match up either. Ghu knows what source they've used, but I've seen fansubs with a higher quality.

Somewhere I also have two or three episodes (French sound and subtitles, of course) recorded off the telly in the mid-80s, which generally had pretty good subtitles, but with some oddities -- like the translation of "hyperespace" to "outer space"...

[kjn]

The subs and the dialog were first translated to English by different people who didn't talk with each other by the British equivalent to Broadcasttext, and then those were used as the basis for the Swedish DVD release?