this is completely irrelevant to the story but... when louisa was talking about the americans she quoted them as saying something about "taking the piss." americans dont say "taking the piss." thats a purely english saying. i know not one american that even knows what that saying means. in america, it would just be a funny way of saying your going to pee. which is obviosly not what it means in england.
shareIt's been awhile since I watched this - can you give me some more of the dialogue where this expression is used? And what does it mean? (Across the pond, of course.)
Well, she's English, I believe, so if she's talking about the americans she may have used a coloquial expression known to herself, not to the americans.
sharelouisa was not english. vitus' mom was english. and louisa actually quoted the americans. she wasnt just decribing them or paraphrasing something they said.
from my understanding, taking the piss' meaning varies depending on the context. it can be used to say that you are joking, that you are making fun of someone, or that you are doing something for no reason. im american so i might be a lil' off on the meaning but i know i got the gist of it.
i dont know all the surrounding dialogue. i just remember it's the scene where vitus and louisa are in vitus' office/apartment; and louisa is talking about her meeting.
See the problem with a lot of translations in movies, is, that people who usually translate are native speakers of the language spoken in the film. And when people in Europe mainly learn British-English. Now, I might be wrong, but when Louisa was saying that, she didn't say it in English. Therefore when they translated it, it was translated into the British-English.
shareI think 'taking the piss' means making a joke... doesn't it?
share"See the problem with a lot of translations in movies, is, that people who usually translate are native speakers of the language spoken in the film."
Yes, and often (usually) they don't get a native speaker of the target language to proofread and put it more naturally.
So, "taking the piss" might not even be a British saying at all; it may be what a German translator THOUGHT something meant, but obviously it didn't translate correctly.
No, "taking the piss" is an English/British phrase, so in a broad sense it was translated accurately. However, one presumes the translators did not know that this phrase is virtually unknown in the U.S. and that it would sound out of place coming from an American businessman.
shareI'm american and I know what the phrase "taking the piss" means. So now you know one. Just teasing you. I get what you're saying.
shareI have just watched that scene again, to verify what she really said.
Now, I am a Saxon, not a Swiss, so I cannot write down the correct schwyzerdütsch words Luisa was speaking. But translated literally into High German she would have said "Der verarscht uns" or "Die verarschen uns".
This is a german vulgar slang being nowadays commonly used. Literally it would translate to english "to arse someone" (==> "they are arsing us"), but you don't have that expression in your language. So, the translator has to come up with a translation which comes closest in its meaning.
And maybe that is how the problem starts. What is closest to that? I would have translated that as "they are taking us for a ride". But that is what I learned in the 70s as meaning "verarschen". Maybe nowadays that old phrase is not even being used anymore?
I am fluent in english since 1976, but I have never heard that phrase "taking the piss". That doesn't mean it doesn't exist - I only have never read or heard it until today. So I can't even guess what it might mean.
When watching that DVD I was listening to the original swiss language which I can understand. That is why I didn't even notice the "piss" sentence. Because she never said it.
I'm American and I've never used it but I did hear it in the American movie Death Proof (2007). The line was, "Jeez, I'm just taking the piss out of you"
shareThis is going to be a little off color (I'll put spoiler blocks for the sensitive) but I think I know what is trying to come across(I'll try to clean it up). It is not taking the p*ss that Americans would say but taking the p*nis would be a closer translation. Or, as we would say in North America: Taking it up the butt. Being scr*wed in the butt. Or, 'bend over' as many would say to each other. That is very common in NA
share