So I was rewatching Hotel Transylvania on Netflix using the SignUp Captions Chrome Extension to watch an American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation of it side-by-side (I do this to keep my language skills somewhat intact and just to see how different interpreters operate — highly recommend if you want a free and fun way to experience ASL, British Sign Language, Indian Sign Language and Australian Sign Language!) and here are a couple of cool/funny things I noticed:
a) during the first time Dracula does his weird growl/anger thing, the interpreter chooses to gesture at the film as if to say “just watch this” instead of try to emulate it, which is super hilarious to me. You know the count is being a drama queen when even an ASL interpreter just goes “yeah no, you can see this for yourself”. They do emulate his last anger/growl thing at the end and it’s great. I love it!
b) the interpreter does interpret the iconic “bleh, bleh-bleh!” in an interesting way. There is actually a “blah blah blah” sign which they could have used, but I think their way is better (and more funny). Basically, they use a classifier sign (this is kind of hard to explain if you’re not familiar with the language — just think of it as a way of highlighting specific details or conveying information efficiently in a way where you don’t necessarily *create* new signs, you just use get creative with them to get the point across? I’m not sure if that makes sense). Here’s what it looks like in action:
[Video ID: The video is without sound. Against a dark background, an American Sign Language interpreter sits in a chair. They are signing a conversation from the movie Hotel Transylvania (2012). The conversation, translated into English, goes as follows:
(Signing as Johnny) “You’re, like, the real Count Dracula. Like, ‘I’m Dracula, bleh, bleh-bleh!’”
(Signing as Dracula) “I’ve never said that in my life. ‘Bleh, bleh-bleh’ I don’t know where that comes from.”
The “bleh, bleh-bleh” part is specifically when they make the two-handed fist and have one fist move away from the other in a rhythm similar to how the character says it while also mouthing the words with their tongue out. I love this because you can even see how they subtly change their facial expressions from Johnny to Dracula when this happens: for Johnny, this expression is over-exaggerated and almost over-confident. It says “yep this is Dracula!” But when they sign Dracula doing it, it’s very close to how Dracula actually does this in the movie: with a deep frown and an expression of disgust.
So yeah, just some cool details I noticed!
