It seemed as though Ewan McGregor's line was dubbed over with the word "Target" from whatever store the residents of the UK shop in on Sunday. Anyone else notice this?
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I dearly love a laugh.
Was originally "Costco," not Target.
shareHow odd! Did they not get permission from Costco to use their name?
http://janeaustenfilmclub.blogspot.com
I dearly love a laugh.
The original was "Tesco," which is found all over Europe, but isn't in America.
shareThat would make more sense! Saw it written as Costco in several different places, but Tesco fits the bill much better.
shareI find it hilarious that they dubbed over it... Just saw it in Hungary with my friend (we're both Americans) and after we were saying that if this movie is shown in America, they probably change "Tesco" to "WalMart" or something because most Americans don't know what Tesco is... so funny that they actually did!
shareThat IS hilarious. You called it first!
http://janeaustenfilmclub.blogspot.com
I dearly love a laugh.
Tesco have almost 200 stores in the US, but they're on the West Coast and are called Fresh and Easy.
shareI made note of that as well, since it was so clearly a dubbed-in line. A strange choice; why change it to a non-British reference in a thoroughly British movie?
shareExactly! It's not like they changed "Prime Minister" to "President" just so we would have an easier time understanding! Most Americans who watch these types of films are to an extent Anglophiles. Most Anglophiles have enough of a passing familiarity with British culture to know what Tesco is. What makes this even funnier is the film itself references Tesco when Patricia makes the revelation that they can source their salmon from fish farms. That packaged meat (I guess it was fish?) that rolls out of her fridge had a Tesco label. When pitching the idea to Alfred and the Sheik, she essentially says, "This is where Tesco gets their fish." Anyone casually paying attention to the movie has already made the connection that Tesco is a large grocery franchise in the U.K. so it makes even less sense that they felt the need to change that line.
shareIn their defense, the line "On Sundays we go to Tesco," wouldn't have registered at all with the vast majority of Americans who don't know what Tesco is. The line is a joke, that relies on the amusing substitution of a commercial enterprise for a religious one. In other words, what makes the line funny (and what gives it any reason to be in the movie) is because "Target" (or "Tesco") works against the context. If the line had stayed Tesco, it wouldn't have meant anything at all, because the vast majority of viewers wouldn't know whether Tesco was some kind of church, or a community organization, or what. It would've been preferable to drop the line altogether rather than keep it.
In the Kristin Scott Thomas line (wasn't it something more like, "straight to Tesco"?), it doesn't really matter whether you've heard of Tesco, because the context makes it clear what's meant. You wouldn't really gain anything by substituting a US reference (like "Safeway" presumably ... though some regions of the US are relatively free of Safeways, actually).
The KST line is such a quick throwaway, that I wouldn't count on it to make the audience understand the meaning of "Tesco," even if they heard it clearly. Did it occur before the "Target" line? I seem to think it was later, but I don't really remember.
I think the "Target" dub was a smart move.
Did it occur before the "Target" line? I seem to think it was later, but I don't really remember.
I find it odd that they pander to American audiences but don't bother with other markets. I'm Australian, we don't have Tesco but I happen to know that it's a UK store. It would certainly spoil the punchline if you didn't though.
shareIn their defense, the line "On Sundays we go to Tesco," wouldn't have registered at all with the vast majority of Americans who don't know what Tesco is. The line is a joke, that relies on the amusing substitution of a commercial enterprise for a religious one.
Well said!
It was a ridiculous choice to dub over his line. Completely pointless and it makes no sense. Even if an American doesn't know what Tesco is, who cares?? They can always Google it and find out. This doesn't take place in America, so I really question the thinking of people who make these changes.
> They can always Google it and find out.
Theaters I'm familar with have this weird aversion to audience members using laptops while a film is playing (or even phones).
My view (already in another post, I think): if they didn't want to dub "Tesco" to "Target" in the American prints, it would've been preferable just to cut the whole line.
Thanks for your thoughtful contributions to this thread and for not just jumping on the bandwagon of thinking that it was a terrible thing to change that line. Yes, the U.S.A. is a big, poorly educated country with an oddly pervasive culture, but I'm happy the film was shown here and I'm happy they said "Target" so that people would laugh (they did) and enjoy it more. It deserves all the love it can get.
The average American doesn't have a lot of opportunities to learn about British and European things. If we want to watch BBC programs, only a very few are shown on the Public Broadcasting System (one channel), and at that, each local affiliate station of that network can choose which programs to show (so each city shows some of what's available, but probably not all of them). The rest of the BBC programming that's shown here requires paying extra to subscribe to a premium cable or satellite service. It also costs a lot to travel to the U.K. or Europe, especially from some parts of the U.S., so between that and how very large and diverse the U.S. is -- so that it would take more than a lifetime to see it all -- is it that odd that some Americans never leave the North American continent? (How regularly do people from there come to this hemisphere before they die?) Workers here don't get much holiday leave per year, either.
I couldn't read the Tesco label on the fish when I saw the film today -- and I wouldn't recognize it quickly because I haven't seen one before. A few more of us know what Tesco is now, because they've opened Fresh & Easy grocers here, but I imagine most Fresh & Easy customers in the U.S. haven't even heard of Tesco. Most of us heard of Tesco, in Phoenix, Arizona, because they were planning a Fresh & Easy where one of our favorite tacky old bars (the Emerald Lounge) stood.
I guess I'm saying one ought not really blame our people for the fact that other countries are drenched in our movies and TV and not the other way round. If I went to films much in the first place, I'd like to see more foreign ones.
Tesco is not just "a large grocery franchise in the UK". It has a worldwide presence and is the world's second-largest retailer by profit. And is not a franchise of any kind. And is way bigger than Target.
Wonderful how we're expected to know some of the crappy little american groups, yet merkins by and large wouldn't have a clue about a foreign group that size, so the name has to be changed to something that makes no sense in its natural market.
It was also somewhat irritating to find the English subtitles using american spellings. A British film made by the BBC, and we have to put up with that? I think not.
I thought it was odd that they left in a reference to the tv show EastEnders, which is shown on a few PBS stations (and the episodes are 7 years behind the BBC), but didn't think we could figure out what Tesco is.
shareAgree. -c
shareI don't know, but I do know that it was the funniest line of the movie and I laughed at least a minute after he said it.
shareIn the version I saw, Fred said Tesco.
My guess is they changed the shop's name for the American version in order it would be explicable.
After all would you understand the line, "and on Sundays we go to Karstadt."?
Don't Care What The Governments Say
They're All Bought And Paid For Anyway
- Sun Green
Yes I would know Karstadt.
Seen it in Germany.
But if people don't travel they would not.
Tho I think most could make a guess.
I would prefer that if the story took place in Rome; Paris or Berlin
they don't change the line.
Idioms on the other hand like "In the soup" would need to change
for non-English speakers. "In the ink-well" would make no sense
in English.
Love film love cinema keep the suits at bay.
This shouldn't be about changing the line to suit each respective country, the line shouldn't be changed at all since the film is about British characters and thus the store they shop in should be British. Fred saying they go to Target doesn't make any sense because we don't have Target in England (as far as I know) so the line actually implies that every sunday he takes a quick trip across the pond just to go shopping in the US of A. Ridiculous.
What gets me though is this never happens the other way round. All those American films that mention, or feature, American supermarkets (or indeed any other product or company) in any way don't have lines re-dubbed for the British public. We accept these characters are American and thus shop in American stores. I mean, what's next? A re-release of Clerks where every time the Quick Stop logo appears it's been digitally replaced to read 'Co-op'?
"You fill your days with creating worlds which have meaning and order because ours doesn't."
Watched the movie in Melbourne Australia the other day and the line was definitely Tesco, the UK Supermarket chain. I laughed as the context was that nobody went to church any more, and shopping in Tesco is now the British normal thing to do on Sundays.
shareWhat you're missing is that the line is a joke. Jokes are very fragile. If you leave it as "Tesco," you kill the joke.
What makes the joke funny is the insertion of [ho-hum everday store name] in place of something religious. The sudden juxtaposition of the blandly commercial with the divine creates a sort of "break" that's humorous. If the line had been "Tesco" it wouldn't have meant a thing. What makes it funny is that saying the name of store is (slightly) surprising. It's not surprising if you have to figure it out (if you even can figure it out). If you don't know what it is, you can't tell from context whether it's a store, a park, a sporting event, a town or even some sort of religious observation. Sure, someone could explain it to you, but a joke you explain isn't funny.
I don't know whether they ever do the same thing when adapting a movie set in (and filmed in) the US for a British audience. If they don't, there are certainly instances when they should.
Example: I saw "Splash" in a theater in London. There's a line where, immediately after Madison is publicly revealed to be a mermaid, the Tom Hanks character gets a long list of messages from his secretary: [long string of news outlets, etc.] "and Mrs. Paul." I was the only person who laughed.
I totally agree with you.
This frequently happens in ANY decent foreign language translation (I see it all the time in novels); going on about a totally foreign concept/place is not benefiting the audience and causes more disconnect than humor.
You are looking to laugh, not search your brain for a possible connection or maybe even find you have no idea what they're speaking of at all. If you DO know what Tesco is... great. Not everyone in North America does, but I'd say most know of Target and moreover, have shopped there. A mark of a good film/book is spending the time to make it understandable to the targeted audience while leaving the underlying meaning intact, not to spew a bunch of gibberish.
That this particular cases happens to not be a language barrier but a geographical one is no different. To understand what is being said, the words must change.
I watched the dubbed German version tonight, and there he just mentions that on Sundays they go shopping. He doesn't mention any particular shop. If they were afraid that Americans wouldn't understand what Tesco is, they could have done it like that for the American audience as well and just have him say shopping.
share"On Sundays we go to Target" is funny. Not hilarious, but enough to get a laugh if delivered properly.
"On Sundays we go shopping" is clearer literally, but not funny at all.
I don't know whether this is some sort of commentary on German audiences, or at least on the filmmakers opinion of them.
yes, noticed it at 52:42
and kts said tesco's at 1:02:something
This might be the one time in the existence of dubbing over movies where they should have done it. I live in California, have traveled all over the world, know what Tesco is, etc. However, it would not have been nearly as funny here. Target is crazy packed on Sundays here. It made me relate to the character more. I see why they did it. I'm sure in the original version it's not dubbed over.
When he said "Target" my thought was "I didn't know they had Target in the UK".
sharehaving lived in england for a year and shopped at safeway asda and tesco mostly , it did come off weird to me , immediately after i was like TARGET ??
i couldnt for the life of me remember if there are target stores in england , i dont remember seeing any on the high streets of many towns i visited during my stay (i was in the west midlands birmingham)
agree though why changed something like in a predominantly british movie needs to do this to not bother americans in their comfort zone
i'm glad i go out of my way to know about other people country and cultural references
"Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments..." sonnet 116