"Hidden humorous German Dialogue in WWII Films?" Topic

OK, so here's what I'm wondering…

These German extras from all these WWII films, are usually talking in German and aren't subtitled or anything. It's sort of incidental dialogue to add some atmosphere. While sometimes I understand what they're saying:

"Dang, it's cold out tonight"
"Have you seen anything"
"Got a cigarette?"

And the usual stuff two guards might chat about, I figure that at some point, someone has to try and slip in something that is a double-entendre, slang, silly, dirty, etc. Anyone know of such incidents when they got away with this and it's still in the film?

I was watching Kelly's Heroes and the two guards chatting at the railroad station just before Oddball's tanks attack out of the tunnel got me thinking about this…

I've heard about some western movie that they used real Navaho's for the Indian parts and although they gave the Navahos scripted lines, no one in the production spoke Navaho, so the Indians just made up their own lines…

Heard it was supposed to be a favorite movie for the Theaters on the reservations these days.

I caught the "I'm glad I ordered the four-legged chicken!" line in Watchmen, and I do understand a fair amount of the German dialog in war films. I wonder the same thing about the utterances in some of the FPS computer games. I'd swear one of the guys in CoD 5 yells "Canada!" at various times. :)

- Bob

Supposedly, many years ago in some now long-forgotten Hollywood epic taking place in Africa, a scene was scripted where a native was to run into the scene and say something Terribly Urgent in his native tongue. The scene went off without a hitch, but when the movie was shown in the area where it was shot, the native audience burst out laughing at that scene. It turns out that the gentleman had shouted "I'm not being paid enough to do this!"

Not WWII but I remeber when I was about 8-10 yers old we went to the cinema to see Ron Ely´s picture "Doc Savage"; in a part were the evil native chief orders his minions to open a cave entrance he shouts "Arranca Nalga!" which in spanish means something like "Reap his Butt!" we had a very good laught that day!!

At the beginning of the movie "Zulu Dawn", there are two young Zulu boys herding cattle. It is reliably reported that one looks at the other and asks in his native tongue why they are doing this. The other replies " The big fat man told us to". Not German, just humorous.

Sometimes if you know the language you can tell the translators aren't translating the language properly.

Slightly different, but in the UK comedy series "Coupling" one of the characters is conversing with a young woman who only speaks Hebrew.

When he talks to her at first he talks in English and she in Hebrew, which, when the series was shown in Israel, confused the hell out of everyone as to why this was supposed to be confusing.

The scene is shown again with him talking in a pseudo-italian and her in English, the confusion is made clear.

bobstro: I'd swear one of the guys in CoD 5 yells "Canada!" at various times. :)

I'm pretty sure that's either "grenada" which is Spanish for "grenade", or "grenata" which is Russian for "grenade".

Google Translate links:
- "grenade", English to Spanish: link .
- "grenade", English to Russian: link .

could be grenaten – German

Pat, actually it would be "Granaten" in German. Sorry for being a nitpicker :)

There is a German joke that goes "Why is Canada called Canada? Because there is no-one there", apparently there is a German Homophone for Canada meaning 'empty' or 'deserted', which is why the German guard may say it.

Aragon speaks anglo-saxon to his Rohirrim horse in the 2nd movie.

Some translators are baffled by the use of colloquial English and slang. I remember a movie where they translated "Custer's last stand" in "Custer's newest position" which had a lot of innuendo …

I always wonder what the German soldier is saying to Fish in Saving Private Ryan when he stabs him…..I have tried with subtitles but all it says is "Speaks German"…..

archstanton73, there was a discussion here on TMP where someone translated it. Couple years back possibly. Try searching.

bobstro, sorry, my bad. You said "COD5", I was thinking of COD:MW2 (= COD4 v2 = COD6). In COD5 (= COD:WAW), it still means "grenade". Per Google's Language tool:

- German, "granate": link .
- Russian, "granata": link .

Terrement- I believe the episode you speak of was from "Return of the Jedi" and the character Nyung Numb(?) was speaking a Nigerian or Namibian dialect (I can't remember) that left the Nigerian/Namibian theater audiences in stitches. At one point Nyung Numb was saying "come here! I want to hit you!" in the language…

Don--Tried searching but couldn't find it!!--Anyone out there know??

Archstanton72:
According to IMDB:
As the German soldier stabs Mellish to death, he says: "Gib' auf, du hast keine Chance! Lass' es uns beenden! Es ist einfacher für dich, viel einfacher. Du wirst sehen, es ist gleich vorbei." [Translation: "Give up, you don't stand a chance! Let's end this here! It will be easier for you, much easier. You'll see it will be over quickly."]

archstanton73, I just spend about a half hour searching and also using Google. No luck either. Sorry about that. Thanks to Acharnement for finding an alternate source.

The translations in sub-titles often different to the original text, but I guess there is only so much space to use and readers need to keep up with the plot.

wrt German guards chit-chat there are enough people who understand the language to point out any obvious bloopers, although it depends on how big budget the thing is.

The sub-titles for Das Boot are fairly entertaining, and I've seen three different versions of sub-titles for Diva, only one of which actually translates the rather unflattering French term for someone of mediterranean extraction rather than skirting around it.

Someone once told me that a lot of WW2 movies made during the war featured Asian actors who where born and raised speaking English. Since they couldn't speak Japanese, their dialog was filled with variations of "You tie my tie, I tie you shoe".

Probably apocryphal, however, as I've never seen this myself (and I've seen a LOT of contemporary WW2 fliks).

In the golden days of silent movies, deaf patrons who could read lips complained about the obscene dialogue.

Acoording to Barry at work if you sing 'Shaggy Dog' to any tune you look like you are singing the correct words