Found in Translation

Ge org e Lucas’s Backstroke of the We st
Revenge of the Sith was one of the most anxiously awaited installments of the Star Wars films. As
such, a copy of the movie was soon leaked onto the Internet and quickly released in Shanghai as a
bootleg DVD with subtitles in Chinese. For some unknown reason, the producer of the DVD also
translated the subtitles back into English instead of using the original text, leading to numerous
hilarious mistranslations. The title of the film was rendered as the Backstroke of the West. Several
times in the film, the phrase it seems (
) was mistakenly translated back into English as “good
elephant.” The term Jedi Council was transformed into “Presbyterian church,” and Jedi on its own
was translated as “hopeless situation.” Darth Vader’s emotional cry of Noooooooo (
) appeared
again in English as “Do not want.”

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Springfield via Helsinki
The well-known theme song plays, and the familiar characters—Homer,
Marge, Bart, and Lisa, among others—appear on the screen. The title of the
episode flashes: “Kanuunanruokaa.” In English, it was called “Homerpalooza,”
and was translated into Finnish by Sari Luhtanen for the animated TV comedy
The Simpsons. (She’s also the translator behind the Finnish subtitles for 30
Rock, Frasier, and various other sitcoms.)
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As the coauthor of a well-known Finnish comic strip (Maisa & Kaarina),
Luhtanen has plenty of experience in comedy. In fact, perhaps no one in
Finland is more qualified to translate The Simpsons. Not only did she study
drama, scriptwriting, and English philology in school, but she translated some
of Groening’s earliest work, his Life in Hell comic books, into Finnish. She
has been translating funny content for more than twenty-five years.
But even for a veteran comedy writer with a talent for comedy like
Luhtanen, translating The Simpsons isn’t easy. As she points out, “When you
translate a book, you can replace one joke with another and nobody will be the
wiser. On television, the jokes are connected with the visual. There is no
escape!” It isn’t just the visual elements that make translating The Simpsons a
challenge. The show is filled with allusions—jokes that refer to other people
and places, often ones that require knowledge of American pop culture. That
single episode, “Homerpalooza,” includes at least forty-four separate
allusions.
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Even the episode’s title is an allusion that makes reference to the
Lollapalooza tour, giving you an idea of how challenging Sari’s job really is.
Here’s another example of an allusion from The Simpsons, as spoken by the
newscaster character Kent Brockman: “Residents are advised to stay inside
unless you wear sunscreen or are very, very hairy. Experts recommend a class
nine, or Robin Williams, level of hair coverage.” The teller of the joke
assumes that the audience has certain knowledge of pop culture. In this case,
not only is the viewer expected to know who Robin Williams is but they need
to know details about what he looks like. Most Finnish viewers would be likely
to know who a major film star like Robin Williams is, but they may not
necessarily know that he is known for also having a lot of body hair. For this
reason, allusions are some of the most difficult items to translate.
When faced with a pop-culture reference, Luhtanen has only a few options—
translate the term directly, try to come up with a similar humorous reference in

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Finnish, or omit it entirely from the translation. If she merely translates an
allusion, it might be lost on the viewer unless it has sufficient explanation. But
it isn’t always possible to provide explanations to help people get the joke.
There’s limited space available on the screen, and we all know that too much
explanation can kill a joke. In spite of these challenges, Luhtanen manages to
retain the vast majority of jokes that depend on allusion. For example, in one
episode, Homer refers to the American candy M&M’s. Luhtanen replaces this
with a similar candy that is available in Finland.
Another allusion refers to the NBC TGIF lineup, a popular set of sitcoms in
the 1980s with its own play on TGIF, defining it as “thank goodness it’s funny”
instead of the more widely used “thank goodness it’s Friday.” Rather than try to
explain all this to Finnish viewers, Luhtanen transformed that difficult-to-
convey concept into the Tähtikavalkadin lineup, which roughly means “stars
on parade.”
To complicate matters further, the animated show is notoriously full of
wordplay. When Sari is faced with the daunting tasks of translating the phone
calls that Bart makes to Moe’s Tavern, asking to speak with people who have
names like Mike Rotch or Hugh Jass, she has to come up with names like Anu
Saukko. Anu is a woman’s name, and Saukko is a last name, but when spoken
together they sound like the Finnish word for “anus.” While Bart would likely
approve of Luhtanen’s translation, she quips, “And for this I went to
university!”
All joking aside, Luhtanen feels that her job is to make sure the Finnish
viewers enjoy the show without even realizing that the subtitles are there. She
occasionally gets feedback that makes her believe she is succeeding. Recently,
one Simpsons fan contacted her after he had traveled to the United States. He
had been anticipating watching new episodes of the show that had not yet been
shown in Finland. To his dismay, he could hardly understand the show, in spite
of speaking fluent English, because he did not understand the cultural
references without the assistance from the translations. He contacted Luhtanen
to let her know that he hadn’t realized how critical the subtitles were to his
enjoyment of the show until he didn’t have them available.
The example of this Finnish fan goes to show that, many times, translation
involves transferring much more than just words. Work of the kind that
Luhtanen does involves translating humor, culture, and making sure that all of
these are synchronized perfectly with the animation that viewers see on the
screen.

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