Surgeons = Grey’s anatomy?? / Chirurgove = Gray’s anatomy??

Whenever Jamie writes me an e-mail, the content is so good that I just have to post it (of course, with Jamie’s consent)! What a fun topic!

CZ: Pokazde, kdyz mi Jamie posle e-mail, stoji to za to. Jeho obsah je vzdycky tak zajimavy, ze  se s vami o nej proste musim podelit (samozrejme ze se souhlasem Jamieho).

Hey, Tanja!

If you want some fun, go to the TV Prima website, look at the “Zahranicni serialy” (Foreign TV shows) and try to figure out why some titles are translated, and why some aren’t. And why some of them are translated the way they are. I did this last night, and here is what I wrote to a friend about it:

I’ve been snooping around trying to find foreign TV to watch, and I’m getting interested in when, why and how they translate the names of the shows. Sometimes the Germans don’t translate them, but the Czechs almost always do.

The thing is that I can’t always figure out why they translate them the way they do. The ones with one-word names are usually translated with the exact word for the same thing. However, I can’t figure out why “Charmed” became “Witches”, because the Czech language has plenty of words for getting the whammy put on you:

• Bones -> “Bone Collectors” (I have no idea why)
• Grey’s Anatomy -> “Surgeons” (because they don’t have the classic science textbook “Grey’s Anatomy”)
• Reba -> “Diary of a Worthy Mother” (probably because nobody knows Reba McIntyre from anything but that show, plus “Reba” sounds too much like the word for fish)
• Sabrina the Teenage Witch -> “Sabrina, young witch” (because Czech has no word for “teenage” or “the”. The best they
• could do is call her “Pubescent witch Sabrina”, which wouldn’t be any good)
• Crossing Jordan -> “Snotty Jordan” or “Smart-Mouthed Jordan” (no idea why. I’ve never seen the show)
• NYPD Blue -> “Police — New York” (because Czech cops usually wear green or black)

Then there are some shows that don’t get Czech names, and I don’t know why. They’re showing “Knight Rider”, and that’s kept as is. “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air” is called just “Fresh Prince”, in English, but it’s followed by a Roman numeral apparently designating the season. Right now they’re on “Fresh Prince III”.

One weird thing is that when they talk about our shows, even sitcoms, they refer to every episode as “part” plus a number. It makes sense to write “NYPD Blue – part 214”, because it’s a continuing serial. It doesn’t make sense to write “Full House – part 36”, but they do it. They even talk about knock-off movie sequels as if they were part of a series, whereas we think of them as unconnected stories.