Hi Tumblr!
I’m Shirley, someone who’s lucky enough to be making and translating subtitles for Shoot From The Hip.
While I’m having fun translating, I’ve met so many challenges. As expected, translating comedy is never easy. Word plays are among the hardest parts, that’s for sure, but aside from that, humour is a very cultural thing. Some jokes are very specific to Western cultures, for example, the yo mama joke, or the “That’s what she said” joke, or even bald jokes. Why? Vietnamese men don’t go bald that early or that often, so we just don’t see young bald people on a daily basis, and we just don’t have that type of joke, at least not as much as Westerners.
Real footage of me with SFTH’s contents, restored, colourised.
There has been fun, there have been tears, there have been sleepless nights trying to figure out how to translate Tom’s word plays and AJ’s mistakes. That’s an exaggeration for sure, but there’s some truth to it. I’m starting this blog to share my experience in translating comedy, specifically SFTH’s improv. Each language has its own quirks, so it’s hardly transferable to another language, but I’m sharing regardless, maybe it’ll spark some interest in Vietnamese? 😄Worst case scenario, we’ll be having interesting conversations, so that’s a win.
Let’s get started. First episode coming up soon: Translating Letters.
