charlie

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“is mise do pheannchara, a Charlie.” (Shelley)

direct translation: “I’m your pen pal, Charlie.”

subtitle provided: “I’m your pen pal, Charlie.”

okay, so they translate “pen pal” two different ways in this scene. the first, used here, is “peannchara”. this is a compound word, much like all those long words you get in German. it’s a perfectly good choice given there is no one standard choice for translating that concept.

“tá brón orm, ach ní thuigim cad atá ráite agat. is féidir liom gibberish a léamh, ach ní féidir liom í a labhairt.” (Charlie)

direct translation: “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand what you’ve said. I’m able to read gibberish, but I’m not able to speak it.”

subtitle provided: “I’m sorry. I don’t understand what you just said. I read gibberish, but I don’t speak it.”

I would slightly disagree with the subtitles here. the “just” bit isn’t expressed at all. in fact, there is no Irish equivalent to that word, and we often just use the English one in the middle of an Irish sentence because of this. however, I expect that RCG (Rob McElhenney, Charlie Day, Glenn Howerton) wrote the subtitles and then handed them to an Irish translator, in which case the translator did a perfectly good job. a couple of notes about the use of “gibberish” here. I love it. firstly, we totally do drop English words into sentences like that. secondly, I really like the choice to use the feminine form of “it” here (that is, to make “gibberish” a feminine noun). all languages except English are feminine nouns in Irish as a rule, so it’s just a lovely detail calling back to the fact that Charlie thinks of it as the gibberish language. also, Charlie Day really does absolutely nail that voiceless velar fricative (the consonant sound in “ach”, as in Scottish “loch” or any number of German words), a sound even many natively English-speaking Irish people are lazy about. good on him.

“níl aon ciall le sin. sé á labhairt anois!” (Shelley)

direct translation: “there’s no sense to that. it’s being spoken now!”

subtitle provided: “that doesn’t make any sense. you’re speaking it now!”

I adore the phrasing of the first sentence here. thoroughly authentic. there are much more obvious ways to phrase it, but this is absolutely what a native speaker might go with. same goes for the second, actually. Colm Meaney says the second line in a sort of shortened way (same idea as how we might turn “do not” into “don’t”) so I’ve struggled slightly with how to directly translate it. interestingly, Shelley categorises “gibberish” as a masculine noun here, but this isn’t really wrong since it doesn’t have an official grammatical gender due to not being an actual Irish word. just a little odd. also, to fit better to the subtitle of the second sentence, I personally would’ve gone with “tá sé á labhairt agat anois” rather than “tá sé á labhairt anois” (the full version of what Shelley says), as this includes the information of by whom it is being spoken.

“’s é mo dheartháir mo chara pinn.” (Charlie)

direct translation: “it’s my brother that’s my pen pal.”

subtitle provided: “but my pen pal is my brother.”

firstly, to be clear, the nuance of the sentence structure here is not captured in either of the above translations because there simply is not an English equivalent to it. secondly, Charlie uses a contraction here by shortening “is é mo dheartháir mo chara pinn”. super cool. also, there’s that other translation of “pen pal”! this one is “cara pinn”, which uses the Irish genitive case (the word mutates instead of using an equivalent of the English word “of”; this case also exists in other languages including Swedish, German, Latin, and Greek). I like this translation very much too. both work! Charlie Day again delivers this line really nicely, even stressing the word for “brother” (and pronouncing its initial consonant mutation absolutely gorgeously)! I am truly very impressed.

“níl aon fhírinne le sin, a mhic. ’s é do chara pinn… d’athair.” (Shelley)

direct translation: “there’s no truth to that, son. it’s your pen pal who is… your father.”

subtitle given: “no son. your pen pal is your… father.”

so, I really disagree with the first sentence of the subtitles here. it works, but also misses a lot of the beautiful nuance that could have been got. I would have gone with “that’s not true, son” or, more likely, “that’s not right, son”. I also disagree with the placement of the ellipsis in the second sentence, as you see (and my frustrations in translating this sentence structure to English continue, as well). however I like the use of “a mhic” (“son”) here, very much. this is a mutated form of “mac”, meaning “son” (yes, as in all of those Irish surnames; they all just basically say who the person is the son of). it carries both meanings that exist in English: an actual son, but also the use of the word as an affectionate way to refer to any man younger than the (usually male) speaker. this is a really nice choice.

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so, yeah! those are my thoughts. feel free to ask any questions you like. I love this scene so much. as well as the reasons above about how good the translation and delivery is, I also love two other main things about this.

firstly, the level of dignity given to the language. Sunny makes fun of Irish-Americans all the time, but doesn’t really do the same to Irish people from Ireland, which I like (I do also wanna talk about Mac and Charlie as members of the Irish diaspora because it is so so interesting, but that is for another day). Irish as a language is not often given dignity, especially in American or English media, so I really love that it isn’t the butt of the joke here.

secondly, that such a significant scene is delivered through this language. just wonderful. after fourteen and a half series, we finally discover the biological father, and the scene cannot be separated from this beautiful language. it just is so perfect.

RCG, and of course Charlie Day in particular, we Gaeilgeoirí (Irish speakers) thank you! our little language made it to the screens of so many people around the world.

I hope this was interesting haha.

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