Speak this way, I do. This way do others speak, hmm?

April 30, 2009 6:50 AM

In the English version of Star Wars, Yoda speaks using some interesting word-order. In other language translations, is this technique carried?

I understand not all languages use the subject-verb-object order like in English, but I'm curious to know if other Star Wars language translations try to mix up Yoda's syntax too. Examples would be great.

posted by nikkorizz to writing & language (6 comments total)

In spanish the yoda-speak is downplayed. While the word-order remains in some cases ("Ayudarte podría, sí" -> "Help you I can, yes")

it gets 'fixed' in others
"El tamaño no importa. Mírame a mí. Me juzgas por mi tamaño, ¿eh?" -> "The size doesn't matter. Look at me. You judge me because of my size" instead of the original "Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you?"

Also, it depends a lot of the subtitles/dubbing as some do it and some don't.

Try checking wikiquote for more examples, just search in-page for Yoda.
posted by Memo at 7:13 AM on April 30

In French, the difference is minimal as well. Admittedly, I did not take a huge sample (just watched the scene in Yoda's hut from TESB) but the spoken French contains so few transpositions that I would not have know them for Yodaisms.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:20 AM on April 30

When I was in Russia, I watched the original trilogy with my house sisters and I asked them about Yoda speak. They looked at me funny because to them it was just normal. I confirmed this with my Russian friends.

In Russian, there are cases, so you can tell the position of the word by the case, making word order less important. Word order still exists in a lot of situations, but you can invert a verb and subject or use just a verb without the subject and convey the same idea. So, Yoda's dialect didn't cross over well into Russian.
posted by zizzle at 7:46 AM on April 30

Some of this has to do with the fact that English is an almost entirely uninflected. "Inflected" or "fusional" languages modify words to signify changes in usages. For example, not only does German have gendered nouns with matching articles, ("Der", "die", and "das" refer to masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns respectively), but those articles change with case ("Der" is nominative, "den" is accusitive, "des" is genitive, and "dem" is dative). Modern English is only weakly inflected, having dropped most declensions over time.

What this means is that changing word order in many non-English languages makes significantly less difference than it does in English, as relative meaning is incorporated in modifications to words themselves, and less in their relative positions. Ergo, Yoda's bizarre word order might seem less interesting. For example, if you swap a direct object with a subject in German, the sentence looks a little odd but the meaning might still be clear. If you did that in English you'd have entirely different sentence.

Also, translation is hard enough as it is without having to muck about with silly grammatical mannerisms.
posted by valkyryn at 7:47 AM on April 30 [2 favorites has favorites]

This doesn't answer your question, but fyi: Yoda speaks in near-constant hyperbaton, which is a classical figure of speech used by ancient Greek and Roman orators. Anastrophe is a synonymous term.
posted by hpliferaft at 8:10 AM on April 30 [8 favorites has favorites]

Even though valkyryn nicely explains why Yoda's style is somewhat specific in english, I think they carried it pretty well into the German translation.

Example:
Immer zwei es sind! Ein Schüler und ein Meister!
Always two there are, a master and an apprentice!

In that example it's pretty much the same in German as it is in English.
posted by Vidamond at 11:45 AM on April 30