D'oh
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Beginning in 2006, "meh" studies were a staple of Intellectual inquiry at Language Log. For a virtuoso variorum, see Ben Zimmer's "Three scenes in the life of 'meh'" (2/26/12). Herewith, relying on "d'oh", another (in)famous Simpsonsism, I will partially resurrect meh studies.
Frases Famosas de Los Simpson en Diferentes Doblajes
David Crotty, in "Translating D'oh!", The Scholarly Kitchen (8/1/25), observes:
Some things are universal. Or so you might think, but it turns out that Homer Simpson’s catchphrase of regret, “D’oh!” (which has its own Wikipedia page, by the way) is expressed differently in the Simpsons broadcasts in different countries. While one would think that Bart’s “Ay caramba!” would shift depending on where the broadcast was taking place (apparently it remains unaltered in Mexico, but not in Spain), D’oh! seems like it would translate fairly well. Apparently not, and this falls into the same category we learned about back in 2019 when looking at the remarkable variation in the words for animal sounds around the globe.
Not to be confused with "duh".
Selected readings
- "Three scenes in the life of 'meh'" (2/26/12)
- "The 'meh' wars" (11/21/08) — includes an energetic discussion about the possible Singlish creole origin of this interjection of indifference precipitated by john riemann soong's first comment in the thread
- "Words for 'meh'" (12/22/11) — with reference to Geoff Pullum's "Snowclones: lexicographical dating to the second" (1/16/04), which includes an extraordinarily long list of Language Log posts on Snowclones made between 10/21/03 and 7/28/06, as updated by Mark Liberman
- "Simpsons" (10/11/12)
- "Nonnegation" (2/19/22)
- "The multivalence of interjections" (4/19/25)
[h.t. Ted McClure]
pfb said,
August 5, 2025 @ 11:02 am
Some of this is just gratuitous tampering. The translator's equivalent of a dog pissing on the neighbor's tree.
The Germans seem to be particularly prone to this. The German translator of "The Hobbit" felt it necessary to change the name of the main character (to "Beutlin", I guess to make one sentence late in the book slightly more intelligible to a semi-literate reader?). "Airplane!" came out while I was in a study-abroad program in Germany, and I watched it for the first time in Göttingen as "Die unglaubliche Reise in einem verrückten Flugzeug", completely ruining the first and best joke of the movie before the curtain even went up.
David Marjanović said,
August 5, 2025 @ 11:34 am
German versions of movie titles are usually unrelated to the originals. They do often take care of the problem that the original titles make allusions nobody would understand or contain untranslatable puns, but they're often completely incompetently done nonetheless. Die unglaubliche Reise in einem verrückten Flugzeug – "the incredible voyage in a crazy plane" – signals "this is brainless comedy, be ashamed of even thinking of watching this if you're adult".
J.M.G.N said,
August 5, 2025 @ 12:06 pm
That Japanese 'hmph' reminds me of their characteristic high-pitched moaning in porn movies.
Any linguistic info. about it?
Kenny Easwaran said,
August 5, 2025 @ 12:44 pm
My favorite German translated title is "Groundhog Day", translated as "Und täglich grüßt das Murmeltier", meaning "And the marmot says hi every day". It makes sense that a movie named after a weird American regional festivity has to get a more literal title when moved into another cultural context, but it's interesting that in German the title just explicitly tells you the weird conceit of the movie, while in American English the name of the regional festivity has, through this movie, become transmuted into a term about the weird conceit of something repeating over and over.
Kenny Easwaran said,
August 5, 2025 @ 12:47 pm
Actually, looking a bit closer, it seems that the American regional festivity was actually imported from Germany, where it had been done with a badger on the same date! So maybe they could have done a translation that kept the holiday, rather than just literally describing the movie.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundhog_Day
Victor Mair said,
August 5, 2025 @ 2:04 pm
The Jules Verne novel, Les Tribulations d'un chinois en Chine, was made into a film starring Jean Paul Belmondo and Ursula Andress, with the feeble American title of "Up to His Ears".
Roscoe said,
August 5, 2025 @ 9:40 pm
"Mean Girls" was inexplicably released in France under the title "Lolita malgré moi" ("Lolita in spite of myself).
David Marjanović said,
August 6, 2025 @ 7:30 am
I had no idea. This must be a hyper-local thing that isn't widely known.
(And a badger really isn't terribly similar to what is, by European standards, a Rodent of Unusual Size.)
Coby said,
August 6, 2025 @ 10:03 am
One of the first movies I ever saw, in Hamburg ca. 1948, was Cecil DeMille's Union Pacific. The German title? Die Frau gehört mir.
cameron said,
August 6, 2025 @ 10:21 am
in his book The Bear: History of a Fallen King, Michel Pastoureau claims that Groundhog Day and Valentine's Day are both variations of the same pagan holiday, which was originally connected to the date when bears were expected to emerge from hibernation. the difference in dates is due to the fact that bears in different parts of Europe emerged from their hibernation at different times.
it should also be noted that Groundhog Day is only one day off of the Celtic festival of Imbolc, which was Christianized as St. Brigid's Day, and which is the halfway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. (Beltane is midway between the spring equinox and the summer solstice; Lughnasadh is midway between the summer solstice and the autumn equinox; Samhain is midway between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice.)
Sabiola said,
August 6, 2025 @ 10:32 am
@pfb In the Dutch version of The Hobbit the name Baggins is translated as well. It *has* to be, because "Baggins" is unpronounceable in Dutch. Writing it "Bekkins" is the closest you'd come, and then it already looks like a completely different name anyway, so you might as well translate it so as to preserve the meaning. (You don't want to know what "Baggins" sounds like when you pronounce it the Dutch way.) I imagine something similar is going on in German.
pfb said,
August 6, 2025 @ 12:43 pm
I'll take your word about Dutch. Baggins is certainly pronounceable in German.
"… [T]o preserve the meaning" – this is the heart of the problem I had with this. "Baggins" doesn't _have_ a meaning in the Common Speech of the West. Tolkien's hobbits have retained a smattering of words, personal names, and place names from an otherwise-lost earlier language. There are plenty of other fun bits of fictional linguistics, like the relationship between "Baranduin" and "Anduin", and the mutation of "Baranduin" into "Brandywine".
In his encounter with Smaug, Bilbo is just making a pun, which to my mind is a pretty thin basis for changing the name of the principal character of an entire book. (The more careful translator of the Lord of the Rings seems to have decided she was stuck with it.)
Of course English translators do plenty of this also. My translation of "I am a Cat" doesn't simply change the names of all the characters, but renders them pointlessly exotic, as if "Mutiny on the Bounty" were to feature a "Mr. Arrow Maker". And as a student I was baffled by the rendering of "Hizakurige" as "Shank's Mare", since I have literally never encountered the latter expression at any other time in my entire 65 years on earth. I'm sure anyone here can provide examples of such mutilations of favorite works in their own languages at the hands of enthusiastic but amateur translators.