Firefly Lost in French Translation

Conclusion

This article is part of a series of reviews analysing the translation work for the French dubbed Firefly series and movie(s). It is intended for anyone who would like to know a little better how a French audience would perceive Joss' wonderful creation.

Introduction to this series
Previous review: Serenity Movie

It is a sad day for me. As long as I was coming up with these reviews, I had the feeling of being part of the Browncoats 'Verse. To the risk of sounding pretentious, I had the feeling I was contributing something unique. Now that the end has come, I know I'll slowly but surely drift away from Firefly. It won't be part of my life the way it's been for the past four months. For me, Firefly has died a second time!

I'm aware that this opening is rather depressing, so I'll do my best to finish this article on a more positive note. I hope you'll enjoy this wrap-up of my little adventure into the French 'Verse.

Reviews Recap

I'll start with the episodes listing including their ratings. Here are the translation rating significations as I stated them in my first post.

The translation has no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
Not good. Too much mistakes or bad decisions have been made. It disfigures the original work.
Average. The spirit of the episode is, on the whole, kept. Contains nonetheless serious mistakes or inappropriate choices.
Good. Contains just a few mildly severe mistakes, but not enough to betray the original work.
Very good. Contains no major errors. Very faithful to the original work.

*List of episodes with their respective ratings.*
Title	Rating	Chinese Rating
Serenity	3	2/14
The Train Job	5	5/6
Bushwhacked	4	5/6
Shindig	2	1/11
Safe	3	2/16
Our Mrs. Reynolds	4	7/11
Jaynestown	4	0/6
Out of Gas	3	3/7
Ariel	2	0/4
War Stories	2	0/7
Trash	5	0/9
The Message	5	3/7
Heart of Gold	5	1/8
Objects in Space	3	0/3
Serenity Movie	4	7/7

The average translation rating is 3.6 out of 5.

The average Chinese score 29.5% (Chinese lines that were kept in French)

The best translation is, taking into account its length, the Serenity Movie.

The worst translations are "Shindig" and "War Stories", ex aequo.

A Subjective Review

I've done my best to make these reviews as objective as I could. My rating system was also based on objective criteria. Following these technical evaluations, allow me to give a more subjective, general, review.

As I already alluded to in a previous instalment, I almost always prefer subtitles to dubbing, when I don't understand the original language. Although I have much respect for the translating job, I find dubbing less commendable. The French Firefly only strengthened my opinion. Dubbing is, without a doubt, very hard to do well and I feel that the translation team (including the voice-over actors) didn't put the necessary efforts for a quality dubbing. I cringed on more than one occasion - per episode - and I missed the original voices and dialogs. In fact, this experience gave me the urge to watch the series all over again in its original version... to cleanse me from this French stain!

One problem very prevalent in dubbing is the variety of language accents. With Firefly, the Western/Multicultural/Science-Fiction lingo was, without a doubt, a difficult challenge. I'm afraid they didn't succeed in overcoming it. Science-Fiction in French is rarely done well. For instance, Star Trek's French techno-babble is horrible. Firefly had the advantage of being almost free of technical terms, but not entirely. A few mistakes were made on this front. At the other end of the spectrum, how do you convey in French the Far-West way of talking which is sprinkled all over this series? I don't think you can. And I won't even talk about Badger's cockney accent. In short, I think it's an impossible task to dub well a cinematographic piece containing various accents or languages. In French, I would say that it's like trying to resolve the square nature of a circle (the infamous quadrature du cercle)!

One positive point of French Firefly is that, probably because of better recording conditions, the contrast between the voices and the ambient sound and music is more defined. Subjectively speaking of course! Also, the actor dictions were better. It was easier to follow and I don't think that French being my primary language was the cause. I detected no mumbling in French.

In general, the actor voices were appropriate although I didn't like the woman voices. I found them too high-pitched, too girlish. The movie, however, doesn't suffer from this. At least they had the good sense of hiring the same actors for recurring characters: Saffron (she'll always be Saffron to me!), Niska and Badger.

To leave this subjective appreciation on a sunny side, here are the few scenes which, in my opinion, worked better in French.

The hodgeberry scene in "Safe", slightly more moving.
Having replaced "people who talk at the theatre" with "theatre actors" in the special hell scene.
The subtle usage of the third person tense in the "Out of Gas" flashbacks. This subtlety could not have existed in English.
The arrival of the crew to the whorehouse in "Heart of Gold": "There's a bit of everything, you'll see" coming from Mal and Wash's "way to pilot" Kaylee.
Inara's lips scene at the end of "Objects in Space".

A Call to Arms

This immersing experience was a fascinating exercise and I had fun doing it. I would like very much to accomplish a similar project for the Spanish track. Unfortunately, I'm not qualified to do this.

So, I would like to call for a courageous Browncoat out there who would be interested in doing a "Lost in Spanish Translation" series. The pay is minuscule, but the rewards are great!

Please! I need to know if Spanish Firefly is better than French Firefly!

My Working Method

Partly to demystify the whole thing and partly to encourage volunteers to respond to my previous call, I'll explain the process I used to create these articles. I chose the word demystify because I suspect that some of you think it was enormous work when, in fact, it wasn't. First, it goes without saying that you need to know your Firefly. Indeed, it helps a lot to be very familiar with every scene of the series and the movie.

I can split the work involved in creating a review into 4 parts, which I followed to the letter for each review:

Listened to the episode with the French audio track and the English subtitles. The English subtitles are very, very close to the dialogs. I rarely had to double-check using the original audio track. I tried to stay focused on the subtitles. When I found a difference, I paused the playback and jotted down the character's name, the original line and the French line.
Reflected back on the French dubbing. Took some notes about what I wanted to write about in the "General Comments" section. Next, I translated in English the French lines and wrote a preliminary comment for each. This is also when I rated the episode.
Let simmer a few hours to a few days and, then, repeat step 1. That's right! I found it necessary to re-watch the episode in French with English subtitles to note down the omissions and mistakes that I missed the first time. Every time, I found at least one scene worth mentioning that I initially missed.
Completed the "General Comments" section, reviewed the ratings, revised the translations and added the missing excerpt comments. Read over one last time to correct spelling and grammar errors and, naturally, missed many of them!

As for the Chinese breakdown, I used the Firefly Wiki when I watched the episode on step 1 and 3. Each episode page of this site includes a complete list of Chinese lines. Very convenient!

The toughest part of this process was certainly staying focused and not getting carried away by the story. That's why I had to watch each episode twice.

Thanks

Thanks to everyone who took the time to read my reviews and post comments. It was always a treat to read. I want to give a special thank to Asarian who always had useful and constructive comments and helped me make better articles that I could ever do by myself.

Thank you all, once again!

My name was Michel and I was lost in French translation. Signing off until Serenity 2... Hoping to get lost again soon!

Previous review: Serenity Movie