Quixotic Evil

Monster indeed has a double meaning in Dutch. First meaning is as you mentionned allready a sample or specimen. It can however also plainly mean a monster.

Nice to see you're learning dutch.

I'm wondering though in regards to your DVD player, can't you just switch the subtitles to english? It might be a bit less annoying for you.

It's not that I'm learning Dutch, per se. Well clearly I am, but I wasn't trying to.

The English subtitles are just as annoying. The fact that I don't really understand the Dutch does at least allow me to follow the audio dialogue still.

Might buy a new DVD player eventually.

I guess I'm so used to subtitles that they don't even bother me anymore (we often even get subtitles here with dutch tv shows even though it's the same language).

Sometimes however they do make me smile especially when they try to translate a play on words (which is virtually impossible to translate unless you put a completely different meaning into them).

I generally try to ignore them however as some films or shows are very poorly translated. On dvd's i either switch them off completely or put them in english (as my hearing isn't really good - don't mock me for that one :p )

You said one time you wouldn't go to Paris until you had a basic knowledge of french, this might be the opportunity for you. Just switch the subtitles to french and you'll pick up something.

The thing that strikes me is the loss of information. I may not be able to read Dutch, but in seeing it written and knowing roughly what it was meant to mean I can deduce quite a lot about sentence structure, and can see that there simply isn't as much information in the subtitles.

I may have said that not knowing French was sufficient condition to stay away from Paris, that's not to say that knowing it would be sufficient reason to go there.

Sometimes there is indeed a loss of information due to the translation. The main reason for that is the fact that they have a limited space to translate whatever is being said on. As the translation of the words needs to be on the screen for a sufficient time in order for people to actually be able to read it, sometimes some information is let out.

For flemish tv channels for instance they get two lines. In cinema however they only get one. This is because the movie needs to be subtitled in both Dutch and French (in cinema that is).

However, even though there is much to be said against subtitling I still prefer it to dubbing each day. I used to hate watching movies in french that were made in english.

Another pet peeve of mine is that american movies that are situated in France have virtually no french in them (and if they do, the french is with an accent so thick that a frenchman couldn't understand a word of it even if he tried to). Usually there are a couple of sentences in the language of the country where the story is situated but even those can't seem to be pronounced correctly. Honestly, how hard can it be to pronounce one or two sentences correctly?

Even though i understand the reasons behind it, it still annoys me. I would prefer to hear some french spoken at least (if not by the main characters then by some other ones.)

Though where does one have to draw the line then? Do movies about ancient Greece have to be in Ancien greek aswell?

I doubt anyone would applaud that decision. However as i said it would be nice if at least some of the movie were to be in the language of the country where the story is situated.

*shrug* I doubt there are many who would even consider this to be of any importance. I won't stop seeing movies because of it but it does bug me sometimes.