Timeline for Is Gandalf really on 'du' terms with the Balrog? (Odd 'duzen' example)
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
30 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Mar 20 at 12:30 | answer | added | Jan | timeline score: 0 | |
| Nov 15, 2023 at 1:26 | comment | added | Paul Frost | Does anybody know whether Smaug is "geduzt" in "The Hobbit"? | |
| Nov 13, 2023 at 11:24 | answer | added | user57303 | timeline score: 2 | |
| Dec 6, 2021 at 17:02 | comment | added | jez | I'm surprised it was translated using any modal verb at all. The sense I get from the prophetic-sounding "you shall not..." is that it is a challenge—something that might be rendered in modern English as "you're not getting past me". As such I would have expected the German translation "Du kommst nicht vorbei" to capture it. Admittedly the archaic English "shall" makes it sound grander and more dramatic, but "kannst" equally bursts that balloon. | |
| Dec 6, 2021 at 9:13 | answer | added | Sixtyfive | timeline score: 2 | |
| Dec 6, 2021 at 3:56 | comment | added | Peter Cordes | @guidot: Matching lip-flaps better might actually be part of the motivation for the choice of "du" for the movie. It would be interesting if book translations chose different phrasing. (If other dialogue is also different from any book translation, that would be a weaker signal.) | |
| Dec 6, 2021 at 3:26 | comment | added | AndreKR | I don't think there was much choice. Using "Ihr" (let alone "Sie") would just sound wrong for a dialog between a wizard and a monster. Doctor Strange and Dormammu for example use "du" as well, there is just no other idiomatic way. | |
| Dec 5, 2021 at 16:08 | comment | added | cruthers | @RDBury, that's kind of my point - I was responding to the fine grammatical points stated above that suggest that "future tense" is confusing, but which would by the same logic also support that "imperative" is confusing. My own view is that "you shall not pass" can be described as a mix of the two - it is imperative exactly because it states the future of the Balrog with the added implication that Gandalf will enforce that future! | |
| Dec 5, 2021 at 12:25 | answer | added | Peter - Reinstate Monica | timeline score: 9 | |
| Dec 5, 2021 at 4:35 | comment | added | RDBury | @cruthers: Both English and German have multiple ways of expressing an imperative other than a grammatical imperative; most of the time it's because the undisguised imperative is considered harsh or rude. I think Ich möchte, dass du nicht passt. & Würdest du bitte nicht passen? are possible but totally inappropriate under the circumstances :) | |
| Dec 5, 2021 at 4:02 | comment | added | cruthers | @tchrist, it's also confusing to call it an imperative, given how different "You shall not pass" (as used in this scene) is from a hypothetical alternative line - "Do not pass", which would be the classic imperative form. | |
| Dec 5, 2021 at 3:42 | comment | added | tchrist | "Thou shalt not commit murder" is not some "future tense" thing. If you want to call anything that talks about the future "future tense", you're welcome to do that of course. But it is very confusing to people who actually use that term to mean a synthetic/morphological inflection as we see happen in Latin and her daughter tongues. Germanic languages will not do that even if you ask them nicely—that's "will" deontic not epistemic because they refuse. It is not "future tense". Notice also how "He will have left by now" is actually talking the past not the future. There's no future tense there. | |
| Dec 5, 2021 at 3:33 | comment | added | RDBury | @tchrist: I think there are different possible interpretations of "shall" here. You can use "shall" for future tense; it's somewhat dated and formal now but Gandalf always talks like that. Both English and German form a future tense with auxiliary verbs (will/shall & werden) rather than with inflections, but that doesn't mean they don't have them. You can also use "shall" as a modal verb, and the meaning of the line is open to interpretation. I was thinking more along the lines of MacArthur's "I shall return" rather than the bible. | |
| Dec 5, 2021 at 1:59 | answer | added | Vilx- | timeline score: 38 | |
| Dec 5, 2021 at 1:35 | comment | added | tchrist | The English version from the movie with shall is NOT “future tense” (which English doesn’t have). There is no tense here at all: it is a command, an imperative. This therefore is a normal modal verb being in the deontic modality of obligations and permissions rather than in the epistemic mode of possibility. All modal verbs are bimodally deontic-vs-epistemic, including German modals, not just English ones. And the reason they added shall in the film was to hearken back to Biblical commandments like Thou shalt not X. | |
| Dec 4, 2021 at 22:39 | comment | added | Pere | I can't speak much about German (although my language also has a du/Sie thing), but being polite with the enemy in middle of a death fight doesn't seem appropiate. | |
| Dec 4, 2021 at 22:39 | history | edited | user unknown | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Gandalf, soweit ich weiß, wie im Text, nicht Galdalf (und auch nicht Galdanf).
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| Dec 4, 2021 at 18:00 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackGerman/status/1467191993734336514 | ||
| Dec 4, 2021 at 14:06 | comment | added | Kritiker der Elche | @RBarryYoung I do not think you can say this. Only in the German translation this could be possible, but Tolkien's English text does not allow this conclusion. | |
| Dec 4, 2021 at 13:48 | comment | added | RBarryYoung | My wife assures me that Gandalf used "du" as an intentional affront. | |
| Dec 4, 2021 at 12:59 | comment | added | Bernhard Döbler | The other way round. In the later translation by Krege Sam says Sie zu Frodo, as he's only the gardener. Theres some funny usage due to the translation. Still, as a German, you don't say Sie when you approach a foe. | |
| Dec 4, 2021 at 12:46 | vote | accept | RDBury | ||
| Dec 4, 2021 at 12:46 | history | became hot network question | |||
| Dec 4, 2021 at 11:05 | comment | added | Shegit Brahm | @guidot: see answer from Paul Frost available since now^^ | |
| Dec 4, 2021 at 11:02 | answer | added | Paul Frost | timeline score: 17 | |
| Dec 4, 2021 at 9:59 | comment | added | guidot♦ | A video is in my opinion a source lacking authority in respect to translation, since there are additional restrictions to be handled due to lip synchronisation issues. This is similar to the meter restrictions in poetry. Can anybody supply the quote from one of the German translations of the book? | |
| Dec 4, 2021 at 9:31 | comment | added | Kilian Foth | Translating movie dialog has to respect the syllable structure of the original wording, particularly when the speaker is featured as dramatically as Gandalf here. Therefore, it is often not representative of what an original work in another language would have said. | |
| Dec 4, 2021 at 8:33 | comment | added | Shegit Brahm | I was since ever under the impression that "Thou shall not pass" was used in the movie. Yet this discussion says otherwise: scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/35262/…. So my entire argument collapses. Beyond that I simply see the English in easy win with it's both you and you. And to say "Sie A...och" is quite less common. | |
| Dec 4, 2021 at 8:24 | answer | added | infinitezero | timeline score: 27 | |
| Dec 4, 2021 at 4:46 | history | asked | RDBury | CC BY-SA 4.0 |