Now’s my time to shine. I speak multiple languages and I grew up watching TOS and many movies starring Bud Spencer & Terence Hill with German dubbing. I translated the key paragraphs from the German Wikipedia article for you:
Schnodderdeutsch refers to a style of language that is a mixture of pub jargon and youth slang. The term was coined by Rainer Brandt, a Berlin voice actor and dialogue writer. However, the style was also influenced by other authors (e.g. Karlheinz Brunnemann). In terms of purpose and form, Schnodderdeutsch is described as follows: “This form of German is used for humour and satire and is characterised by neologisms, apparent proverbs, atypical metaphors and comparisons, stylistic inconsistencies, violations of norms and logical inconsistencies.”
[…]
In the wake of the highly successful work by Rainer Brandt and Karlheinz Brunnemann, dubbing projects in this style were increasingly assigned to other dubbing studios, whose work, however, was often of significantly lower quality. For example, the film “Django and the Gang of the Hanged” was re-dubbed under the title “Joe the Gallows Bird” by Düsseldorf-based MGS-Synchron GmbH and heavily abridged in the process. The same fate befell the film “They Sell Death,” which was reworked as “The Fat Man and the Warthog.”
Many other series from the 1970s and 1980s (e.g., Star Trek [1], Kojak) were also adapted relatively freely, but differ significantly from the brash German and are more a reflection of the spirit of the times than an imitation of the work of Brandt and Brunnemann.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schnodderdeutsch
[1] The original broadcast of TOS in German television started on the 27th of May 1972.
Wow, fascinating. So a couple of guys who did a lot of dubbing work sort of created this gonzo style and got away with applying it willy nilly. I mean I get it. Sometimes you have to get weird to keep yourself awake at work. The Wikipedia article mentions further down that one of the editors they worked with “suspected a joke.” :D
I’ll see you and raise you.
Lindsey Davis does a series of mysteries set in ancient Rome. We know very little about the actual slang Roman plebeians used so she had to make up a lot of ‘tough guy’ language in her books.
The German dubbing of TOS was an embarrassment. For some baffling reason, they treated it like a comedy rather than the sci-fi classic it is. Spock was cracking jokes, plotlines were butchered - things didn’t make sense.
The comedic tone was a product of the era’s dubbing trends in Germany and a creative choice by the dubbing team, in a try to make the show more appealing to the German audience.Further reading: https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/adventures-in-german-star-trek.275740/
There are people who take old movies and then make trailers in different genres.
“The Sound of Music” as a horror movie, or “The Shining” as a comedy.
[off topic?]
That actually fits in well with how a 1920s era tough guy would talk.
Read the novel “Red Harvest” by Dashiell Hammett. It was written about that time. Hammett was a real life Pinkerton operative [private detective] who wrote about what he knew. If the plot seems cliché it’s because it was ripped off a dozen times I know of.
Never knew Hammet was a Pinkerton!
I agree, the line works for the cliché.
There are a lot of Hammett novels out there.
“Hammett” by Joe Gores and “Ragtime Cowboys” by Loren Estelman are both worth a read, imho.
This is a great true story. Hammett used ‘the rag lay’ in a story and the editor censored it because it sounded dirty. Even after Hammett told him it meant stealing linens off of clothes lines they kept it out. In his next story, Hammett introduced ‘punk’ and ‘gunsel.’ Both were accepted even though both meant homosexual.
Yeah, I’m a Hammett fanboy
Wow, never knew gunsel meant homosexual, and just rewatched The Maltese Falcon the other day!
Edit - just checked the etymology and look at that!:
gunsel(n.) by 1910, American English underworld slang, from hobo slang, “naive young boy,” but especially “a catamite;” specifically “a young male kept as a sexual companion, especially by an older tramp,” from Yiddish genzel, from German Gänslein “gosling, young goose” (see goose (n.)). The secondary, non-sexual meaning “young hoodlum” seems to be entirely traceable to Dashiell Hammett, who sneaked it into “The Maltese Falcon” (1929) while warring with his editor over the book’s racy language:
“Another thing,” Spade repeated, glaring at the boy: “Keep that gunsel away from me while you’re making up your mind. I’ll kill him.”
The context implies some connection with gun and a sense of “gunman,” and evidently that is what the editor believed it to mean. The word was retained in the script of the 1941 movie made from the book, so evidently the Motion Picture Production Code censors didn’t know it either.
The relationship between Kasper Gutman (Sidney Greenstreet) and his young hit-man companion, Wilmer Cook (Elisha Cook, Jr.), is made fairly clear in the movie, but the overt mention of sexual perversion would have been deleted if the censors hadn’t made the same mistaken assumption as Hammett’s editor. [Hugh Rawson, “Wicked Words,” 1989, p.184] also from 1910
Edit: Do you suppose he used “gunsel” like we use “your bitch” today, as both a dig at Kasper and an insult to Wilmer?
Yes.
Back in the day, a catamite was the lowest of the low.
Clips from old Hollywood movies showing stereotypes.
Also, I’m going to have to throw ‘catamite’ at some folks and see if they know what it means.
Thanks for the links - interesting stuff
The Guys and Dolls crossover that is inevitable.
