Saturday, January 05, 2008

Freiburg/Fribourg

For some reason, the first lesson in my German textbook is about Freiburg/Fribourg, a city in Switzerland on the German-French linguistic border. Everybody speaks German and French there (and probably Swiss German and English and maybe Italian or something else, too - dang Europeans with their mad language skilz).

For homework we had to look up stuff about Freiburg online, and I found the website of their brand-new movie theater, which has a totally complicated schedule: Different showings of the same movie can be in VF (dubbed in French), VD (dubbed in German), or in the original language with French and German subtitles (Odf).

Let's see...tomorrow you could see Bee Movie at one of two showings dubbed in German or three in French. Good, it makes sense to dub kids' movies. Michael Clayton only has subtitles, but you can choose to see Elizabeth: The Golden Age in French or with subtitles. If you want to see I Am Legend, however, you're going to have to settle for Will Smith speaking ze Francais.

How weird must it be to see a movie with subtitles in both French and German? It seems like the writing would take up half the screen.

3 comments:

Coloradan said...

I saw a couple of movies with the two subtitles in Geneva (a.k.a. Geneve, a.k.a. Genf, etc.). It wasn't too obtrusive.

Cheryl said...

That sounds like so much fun! I don't speak a word of German and I speak marginal French at best so I would choose an English movie dubbed in German with French subtitles. Do you think they have that?

Talentedhands said...

Add the sign languages (American, French and German) to the mix, and you've got a party. Nope, sign language isn't universal. Who would enforce that, anyway?