Post by Nigel on Feb 11, 2008 10:47:09 GMT
A couple of nights ago, at long last, I watched the Scramble City episode on the Transformers The Movie Ultimate Edition DVD. I had never seen it so had been looking forward to watching it. Unfortunately, I was unable to enjoy it because I was increasingly annoyed by the poor standard of English in the subtitles.
The pluralisation was appalling. In almost every case, Autobots and Decepticons were incorrectly named Autobot's and Decepticon's. What made it worse was that the errors were not even consistent; occasionally, the plural forms were correct. In one particularly strange sentence, the correct form, Combaticons, was used together with the incorrect Decepticon's. To cap it off, towards the end of the episode there was a sentence along the lines of, "The Decepticon's used all there power." It's unbelievable that these errors would make it through to production; although it's not possible to know when the mistakes were made, there could have been at least three people who saw the text: the translator, the caption writer and the Metrodome co-ordinator.
I recently noted that the covermounts on Titan #8 incorrectly used "who's" instead of the correct possessive, "whose".
It amazes me that such errors, of all organisations, would be made by publishers.
I would imagine that the individuals with responsibilty for these items at Metrodome and Titan were of similar age and background, young executives or assistants aged eighteen to twenty five. It suggests that the education system has somehow failed this generation. When I was in school (and I am not much older, turning twenty nine this month), basics such as how to form plurals and the difference between "their" and "there", or between "who's" and "whose", were drummed home at an early age. It seems that these lessons have not been learned by those now entering the workplace. The larger concern is, the same generation is now teaching our children; how is somebody supposed to teach English to a child if they don't understand it themselves?
The pluralisation was appalling. In almost every case, Autobots and Decepticons were incorrectly named Autobot's and Decepticon's. What made it worse was that the errors were not even consistent; occasionally, the plural forms were correct. In one particularly strange sentence, the correct form, Combaticons, was used together with the incorrect Decepticon's. To cap it off, towards the end of the episode there was a sentence along the lines of, "The Decepticon's used all there power." It's unbelievable that these errors would make it through to production; although it's not possible to know when the mistakes were made, there could have been at least three people who saw the text: the translator, the caption writer and the Metrodome co-ordinator.
I recently noted that the covermounts on Titan #8 incorrectly used "who's" instead of the correct possessive, "whose".
It amazes me that such errors, of all organisations, would be made by publishers.
I would imagine that the individuals with responsibilty for these items at Metrodome and Titan were of similar age and background, young executives or assistants aged eighteen to twenty five. It suggests that the education system has somehow failed this generation. When I was in school (and I am not much older, turning twenty nine this month), basics such as how to form plurals and the difference between "their" and "there", or between "who's" and "whose", were drummed home at an early age. It seems that these lessons have not been learned by those now entering the workplace. The larger concern is, the same generation is now teaching our children; how is somebody supposed to teach English to a child if they don't understand it themselves?
Thank you for picking me up on that; I have duly made the correction.
