French subtitles for Freeman's Mind 1-14

Hello, everyone! My native language is french (obviously), so please excuse my imperfect english.

 

I began working on french subtitles for Freeman's Mind (which I really love) in 2010, when my subtitles for Episode 10 were approved and added to

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dbou6vDU8Bw (with a messed up timing, I don't know what went wrong).

 

I translated other episodes and sent them but didn't receive any answers for a long time. It was really frustrating having the subtitles ready and not being able to share them, so I uploaded the subtitles (and the videos) on my own Youtube account (sorry!). I'll delete the videos immediately if you ask me to do it, I just wanted to bring the awesomeness of the show to french speaking people (and I've included a link to your website in each video).

 

That being said, you can find all my french subtitles at this adress (it's mostly in french, but you should be able to find them), or directly in one .zip (which may not be up-to-date) file here. I hope you like them!

 

Also, I prefer to make the timing before the translation, so I've made english subtitles for each video that didn't have them available on the website. You can download them on the same page but I would strongly suggest checking them (as you can see, my english isn't perfect).

Hey there,

 

I wanted to say, this is a pretty impressive job you did with all those episodes. Granted, I didn't check the whole lot of it, but only the first one, as I made my own version (silly me, I didn't see your post before I got started).

 

Anyway, about that first episode, here is a point I wanted to discuss.

 

At 1:44 you put

Ouais, c'est ça, je me ferais un steak ici si ça me chante !

 

Whereas the official english sub says

Yeah, whatever, I'll drink a 40

oz. up here if I FEEL like it!

 

Now, I googled for "40oz." since I wasn't familiar with this idiom. Wikipedia has it that it refers to a 40 ounce bottle of Malt Liquor, something we europeans would refer to as extra strong beer. So I think you could change that line to keep the booze reference Ross had in mind. Seeing how Freeman's character develops throughout the series, it really makes sense for him to be talking about beer.

 

Anyway hope that helps.

Keep up the good work.

tkz

Yep, that makes much more sense!

 

But I can't find the "official subtitles" for Episode 1 you're mentioning. Are you speaking about this ? If so, they aren't approved by Ross yet and I can't hear the word "drink" in the video, so maybe the actual line is a bit different.

 

But anyway, the booze part is definitely here, so I changed it to :

Ouais, c'est ça, je buvrai une bière ici si ça me chante !

(Anyone know a good way to keep the "extra strong" idea in french ? "bière forte" doesn't seem natural to me...)

You're doubly right, the srt i was referring to is by no means official -mistake on my part- and I too cannot clearly hear Ross saying "drink" during this line, so it might be different.

 

Two things, though.

 

The correct use of "boire" in the first person of the conditional tense (or should I say "mode"?) is "Je boirai" and not "Je buvrai", although it is my understanding that the latter is accepted in Belgium. Forgive me if I sound a bit curt here, I do not mean to.

 

As for "bière forte" it doesn't feel natural, as you say. I think you could go with slang, since Freeman's rants make extensive use of it (alongside profanity).

 

You could for instance try :

"je boirai une 8.6"

This is strong beer and that would give Freeman a bit of a thug stance, which seems to be part of the original text (looks like 40oz is a favorite with gangsta rappers) but we'd need Ross's input on that. Of course that's a brand, but seeing how it has become common in french street language (let alone french streets!) I don't see much of a problem here.

 

I'll try to do more of this "constructive criticism" if you don't mind. In the meantime, maybe you could set up a separate thread for all of your subtitles, I reckon it'd make tracking comments way easier.

 

Pleasure working with you.

tkz

I changed it to "boirais" (sorry about that awful mistake...), but I'm not sure about your "slang" translation. I think the current one is fine.

 

Please continue with the constructive criticism! However I think I'll keep one thread for the moment, as I'm not overwhelmed by comments and suggestions yet