THX 1138 "preservations" + the 'THX 1138 Italian Cut' project (Released) — Page 44

I left it as DTO even in Italian, sounds ok still.

SilverWook said:

Someone ankle deep in dendrites because they can't dispose of them, while still dutifully buying more would have been really funny. ;)

Haha indeed. I think I'll raise plenty of speculations in the next weeks. When you go to translate every single word you start wondering stuff you never even thought about before... like what's the Department of Biological Flow (why not just Dept. of Biology?). I studied biology and I don't remember such thing as a department of Biological Flow, must be one of those things that Lucas thought they sounded cool. Like the word "wookie".

I'll list a few doubts here:

Could you guys check the scene after the first explosion (around 7 minutes). They do a loss count but the sum doesn't add up: 63+195 does not equal 242, unless I'm misunderstanding what they're saying.

Then, just at the end of thx's shift, they say that a libido-leveller has been lost near the pulse-buffering gate. What could a pulse-buffering gate be?

In the mall there are also "visual binaries" which can "previse" and improve your reading. What the hell is that?

When he says to OMM that he "slipped on a thermal transfer this morning" does it mean he made a mistake during one of the robot building procedures? That's how I always understood it.

"units of detuned escalatories have not, however, prevented virus and ordnance from invading our centers." Any thoughts on this? What image you picture in your mind when you hear of detuned escalatories not preventing virus and ordnance from invading our centers?

I know a lot of this stuff means nothing but I would like to render the same mental image. Afterall, adapting is part of the translation process. I'm also using my Italian version of THX novelization as reference for some words (like birthborns) so that there will be actually a connection between film and novelization. Sorry if I bother you with details that I perfectly understand if for most of the English-speaking people will be uninteresting. The same care was however given to the Italian-to-English subtitles.

How does the official translation treat these lines? You could just make things easy and take the existing official Italian translation on the DVD for the lines that appear in the original film, which is about 95%. Or were those subs made from the Italian dub?

Muhahah, if it only was that easy! That's what I thought at first before I realized that the DVD subtitles are not very well made. I use those as a base to work on but plenty of stuff has been altered because clearly the subtitler had no idea what the movie was about.

Wookie has been changed to expressway operator. Birthborns are translated as first-borns. The "dendrites" are called "dendrex" for some reason (direct translation would be "dendriti"). The "slipping on the thermal transfer" was dubbed as if he actually fell while walking. That's why I asked confirmation about that, just in case. Some parts are actually mute, they left them undubbed, especially during the factory operations. That's just the stuff off the top of my head... there was more. I think there is some sort of bad omen around the dubbing of this movie since they messed up twice!

I'm doing a mix sourcing from subtitles translation (which is a direct translation from English subs, not entirely matching the Italian dub), old and new dubbing. I take the best translation from each of these and I translate myself the rest of the stuff that didn't please me. If I'm asking your opinions about some weird dialogues it's because neither the two dubs nor the subtitles really made an effort in translating them correctly (or translating them at all).

Still, this will be much faster than translating Italian to English and it won't take as long as the other subtitles.

I know. Luckly the book is translated properly so I'm currently keeping it on the desk to use as main reference for weird words.

Again on the visual binaries, could the "visual binaries" be referring to those wall signals made of numbers where we see confused people staring at them?

It would be ironic if the speaker voice is telling people that new numerical indications would improve their reading, while on the contrary they just get people confused.

Msycamore, I've got this line which is a bit cryptic...

00:25:30,862 --> 00:25:33,888
-The android, the hung-over writing.

Aside from this line, the voices over the radio seem to have reception problems but I don't know how android and hung-over writing fit into that. Any idea? Could you check the scene for me?

The pic was a screengrab from a scene where a bald man is staring confused at numers on a wall... which is what I though "visual binaries" could be.

Once again the official translation doesn't help at all here, they just went for another option. I guess I'll stick to a direct translation. I'm just wondering what the hell they were talking about lol. I mean, can anyone in the THX world get a hang-over? I didn't get that impression. Imagine getting intoxicated with alcohol while you're on a regular drugs intake, not to mention that a hang-over is counter-productive.

The BT-16 dialogue still had a meaning that could easily be guessed. But two disconnected things like "The android. The hang-over writing".. sounds more like someone had a hang-over when they were recording.
I'm tempted to leave those two unsubtitled. One thing is over-hearing weird stuff, another is to actually read it, it will just confuse Italians. Its absence won't be missed.
In any case, I'll check with Leo the whole adaptation once I'm done with it.

Well, Brave New World is a classic that is often read in school and it was the inspiration for Orwell's "1984" (although this is not entirely true). Any reinterpretation of 1984 is therefore also a reinterpretation of Brave New World in a way. However in Brave New World sex was completely "free" and sexuality was actually imposed on kids who had to start from a very young age :/

I've never seen the 70's adaptation but I'll check it out. However, although I'm usually a fan of dystopian stories, I did not like the novel too much. My favourite dystopian novel is "We" by Zamyatin which is the very first of its kind and is actually the real inspiration for both Huxley and Orwell.

SilverWook said:

Another bit of THX esoterica on Ebay...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/MOTION-PICTURE-HERALD-Magazine-PLANET-APES-WILLARD-THX-1138-Wonka-Phibes-/390390611642?pt=Magazines&hash=item5ae517feba

Wish they had scanned the actual photo in question so I could decide if it's worth getting or not.

You could ask the seller if he could email you a scan of that photo. Sounds very interesting.

@msycamore: good things come to those who can wait ;)