A Pet Peeve

As many of you know, I speak three languages. One of my biggest pet peeves is when authors or movies or TV shows speak in a language I know and the language is wrong. Case in point: Chicago (the film of the musical). Not until the second viewing did I realize that the one innocent woman on death row (who gets hanged) is supposed to be speaking Hungarian. The accent was atrocious, the intonation abysmal, and the words barely understandable. My mother, who is native born Hungarian, didn't believe me when I told her they speak Hungarian in the movie. I showed her the scene and she didn't understand a word. Keep in mind that my mother still reads books in Hungarian and most of her friends are Hungarian and she speaks Hungarian every day.
If the producers spent that much money making a movie, the least they could have done is hire someone who speaks the language and fix it!

The same thing happened in a book I read recently. The story takes place in Germany (Prussia, which in the story is right next to the Black Forest!). The German was wrong from the start. None of the nouns were capitalized, and the word endings were wrong in spots. But my first real guffaw came when the hero called the heroine "messe," and she said in English something like, "Yes, I am messy. Just look at me." And the hero said, "No, I mean messe. Messe means fair in German. " Well, it does...only it means a fair like a state fair or a convention. It's a noun, not an adjective.

It got better (or worse; opinions may vary). During a love scene, the hero is kissing her and using German words like Liebchen (which is fine, except it wasn't capitalized), and messe (Again, and it wasn't capitalized as nouns are in German), but the worst was when he used the word Leiche (not capitalized). The author must have used a German/English dictionary to find the word body. Leiche is body...only it means dead body or corpse. Good thing I wasn't drinking milk at the time. Would have had fountains from my nose.

I have written a novel with Spanish in it, and I freely admit that I don't speak Spanish, but I had three different native speakers translate and check it for me. It isn't that hard to find native speakers of a language. This author should have found one.

And now, back to work.
--Gabi

Books I'm reading now:
Fire and Ice by Anne Stuart
Never Romance a Rake by Liz Carlyle