I’m a simple person and I like it when translators make interesting decisions about formality levels in second person pronouns. Much has been said about the way different translators have preserved Murderbot’s it/its pronouns, and those posts are really cool, but I think the German dub of the TV show also does really cool things with du (informal) and Sie (formal) that underscore key dynamics between characters, and I’m going to talk about them. @noandnooneelse helped me develop my thoughts on this! Also if I got anything wrong about du/Sie conventions, please let me know, I’m not a native German speaker.
The PresAux people, first of all, are all naturally per du with each other, because they’re all friends, but I would also wager that PresAux in general is a duzing culture. They’re space hippies who put great stock in treating everyone equally. There isn’t much opportunity to observe this in the show, admittedly; they duz Leebeebee right away, but siez all the Corporation Rim and GrayCris people. That still makes sense to me, though, as culture outside PresAux is different, and to some extent they need to “play the game” when dealing with outsiders. I see this as similar to Mensah demanding to be called Madame President in episode 10: in PresAux, respect is assumed to be a given even when informal forms of address are used. No such respect can be assumed on Corporation Rim, so they have to demand that what CR culture deems to be proper standards of respect be shown to them, and Mensah has to assert her authority, because if they don’t then they would be allowing the CR people to treat them as lesser. And of course, when you’re in a different place than your home, you’re also supposed to observe the etiquette of that place.
SecUnits are duzed by default by everyone, including each other. This also makes sense, given how constructs are perceived in society; you don’t siez a piece of equipment. Most of the PresAux people duz Murderbot, which I interpret as probably being a combination of “hey, buddy, welcome to the team!” and the subconscious prejudice they have re: the personhood of SecUnits (the balance between those two things might be different for each character).
Mensah siezes Murderbot. This is a GREAT choice, imo. Mensah is the one who’s the most consistently respectful of Murderbot and its personhood, and the one who has enough emotional intelligence to see how deeply uncomfortable it is with any efforts to be friendly toward it or include it in the group. It’s technically of and from the Company, which, as mentioned, observes different standards of respect. She’s addressing Murderbot the way I imagine she would address any contractor from outside PresAux that they’re working with temporarily, and trying to avoid overwhelming it by keeping a respectful distance and not assuming too much familiarity.
Murderbot siezes everybody when it speaks to them, but duzes them in its internal monologue, up until they find out about the hacked governor module, at which point it switches to du. This feels like absolutely the right call. SecUnits are supposed to speak respectfully to their clients, the formality is probably hardwired in. But in the privacy of their own minds there would be no reason to practice extending a courtesy that isn’t extended to them.
The only person Murderbot continues to siez after the truth is revealed is Mensah. This also makes sense on multiple levels. First, obviously, it’s repaying respect with respect; it would be rude not to, given that Mensah addresses it as Sie, and it has no desire to be rude to its favorite human. But also, to pivot to an entirely different character, the show really wanted to emphasize the similarities Murderbot shares with Gurathin, and this highlights one of those. Namely the reverence they both have for Mensah. Gurathin is per du with her, mind you, but we had that scene of him telling her that while he loves the others as if they were his children, he loves her as an equal or a better. A similar sort of thing, I’d say! Holding her up on a higher level than everyone else.
Mensah actually switches to duzing Murderbot right after it saves her life at the end of episode 9. That’s where she crossed the threshold of no longer being able to see it as an outsider she’s required to work with, and also the point where it was truly accepted into the group in general. Murderbot, however, never switches. It addresses her as Sie until the end, because it’s not READY to be part of the group, and using du with Mensah would cost it one of the few bits of distance it has left. I like this! I think it does really well in conveying the same sort of tone as Murderbot’s final message to her, which boils down to “I have all the respect in the world for you, but having a closer relationship with you would mean giving up the opportunity to discover what I want for myself independently.”
An unusually good translation! I am still, however, a little annoyed that they didn’t consistently translate “perimeter” as the same word, thus undermining “checking the perimeter” becoming code for “Murderbot needs some space.”
