#I call him Jaskier but English speakers know him under the name of Dandelion | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

gayregis · 3 years

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netflix witcher and netflix witcher fans really showcase the absolute Audacity of americans using foreign (in this case polish) words they don't understand and cannot pronounce right at all for absolutely no fucking reason like what was the point?? what was the point of butchering my language haven't yall had enough???

really agreed. sorry if this sounds like kind of off-topic or a tangent, but i swear i’ll loop it back around to your point eventually — i was discussing about jaskier’s name in the server earlier with @nightimefairy and the decision from lauren to keep it in polish in the [obv. american but important for content] netflix adaptation.

to an english-only speaker, the word “jaskier” doesn’t sound really different than any other name in the witcher, it does not translate the meaning that it’s the name of a flower.

jaskier/dandelion’s name being obvious to the audience as being the name of a flower is important, because it helps define his character if only by name. i remember when i first learned of the character, i really was like, that’s a strange name, no one is called dandelion from birth, and why would someone be called after a flower. of course months later when i read the tower of the swallow (or perhaps minutes later when i read the wiki, because i wanted spoilers ahaha) it was a mystery that was solved for me. but if he hadn’t been named his translated name — dandelion — i would have totally had missed this and not understood at all that his name is the name of a flower and not like, a “normal” name that one would totally give to the child they bore. but overall, this name of a flower suggests to the reader that buttercup/dandelion isn’t his real name, making them wonder what it, and thus his other identity, could possibly be. and we all know that artist-types tend to have a stage or a pen name under which they perform or publish, so dandelion having this name cements for the reader that he is such an artsy-type.

then of course, a buttercup or a dandelion being a small yellow flower makes it not an especially masculine name, and additionally these flowers are largely considered weeds... that’s two things we can tell about the character right off the bat. and since they are yellow flowers with golden petals, we can understand another thing about him — he’s blonde, it’s a fitting nickname due to his hair color. and of course, blondes carry with them many different literary and modern media tropes.

additionally, the name not being translated in english adaptations prevents it from carrying any other linguistic cleverness or connotations — for example a similar-sounding word for the original polish jaskier, “jaskrawy,” meaning vivid/vibrant/brilliant, or similar-sounding words for the english translation dandelion, “dandy,” a historical term for an effeminate or foppish man (think “yankee doodle dandy,” who ‘stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni’... i.e. basically ‘did something foolish and called it fashion’) and/or an colloquial expression to indicate pleasure or happiness (“oh well, that’s just fine and dandy!”, sort of like “swell!”)

although it’s not a perfect 1:1 translation, as a dandelion is not the same flower as a jaskier (buttercup), the name carries a very fitting connotation with it for the character, which can be used to understand him (and of course he is not the only one, for example, milva being named after a red kite, regis meaning king)

however, when you don’t translate “jaskier,” and leave his name as-is, this leaves the english-only speaking audience completely missing everything i just talked about. you won’t understand a thing about his character by knowing that his name is jaskier, because english-only speakers don’t know what a “jaskier” is, and they also don’t have the vocabulary in polish to understand the connotations in that language ...

and this is the entire point of translations. to translate meaning from one language to another — often imperfect, as is the nature of language, but necessary when trying to bridge gaps of understanding.

and when you deliberately don’t translate, you get english-only speakers thinking that they know how to pronounce words in polish because their favorite british boys on screen said a polish word aloud a few times. and you get anglicizations of words that don’t make any sense at all — for example... “jas” or “jask” as a nickname, when that’s not how polish language functions (to my knowledge) and there are specific conventions for making pet names or nicknames in the languages (with diminuatives?) (to my knowledge).

to me, it demonstrates, from both the american creators and the audience, the white american perspective that other cultures and languages are easy to understand and take from, as long as you think that you are being respectful (not that you ARE being respectful, only that you determine yourself to have good intentions). the approach lacks any actual respect, carefulness and preciseness, and most importantly actually talking or reaching out to people of that culture & language, so you are not just trying to do something yourself that you don’t know shit about, but that you can learn from others (and make friends along the way hopefully).

but as you said — what was the point?

in my opinion a lot of the point of including untranslated polish words in the netflix adaptation was part of the marketing towards the polish audience (and perhaps books audience?) that they attempted, with relatively little success. lauren proclaiming on twitter that she’s loved these books and read them dozens of times, the youtube videos with the actors reading scenes from the books with sound effects edited in (to me, reminiscent of the polish audiobooks, but the polish audiobooks have better quality), the games with the actors trying to guess what witcher-relevant polish words mean in english.

when in reality, it’s obvious they didn’t really care (or at least, the people making the top decisions) didn’t really care about making a books-faithful adaptation (this isn’t even attempting to touch the topic of making an adaptation that respects the origin culture of the witcher).

of course from the trailers (and casting... re: cavill and batey, who don’t look like their characters’ book equivalents) everyone could tell that this wasn’t an “adaptation of the books” like they sometimes advertised it. but if they were able to show, hey, we didn’t change this one name of this one character to english, hey, we have read the books, look, we are literally reading them on camera! ... then they might get some more polish books fans to give the series a watch, meaning more people to buy into a netflix trial which then all too easily leads into a subscription because people forgot to cancel or enjoyed the convinience of netflix and ‘hey what’s $10 anyways,’ which leads to money for them, which is how they gauge their success. they don’t give two shits about respecting anything, because that doesn’t give them any money.

i do find it amusing though, because they’re like “we have the amazing minds so much better than sapkowski to improve on the witcher and we’re truly just visionaries who are taking the books into an inspired direction and it’s not an adaptation, it’s so much more” while also being like “we respect the books so much and we worked with sapkowski and we really wanted to be faithful to the books and this is an adaptation where we really thought about the canon material” like just choose a marketing ploy and run with it, you’re going to tire yourself out running between both camps. though it does look to me like finally in season 2 the mask will be off because they’re adding so many new OCs and plotlines they really won’t be able to pretend they cared about the books at all (e.g. geralt throwing axes from trees)

#last comment is not intended to suggest i respect sapkowski im just saying this is what they say #ask #anon #the witcher netflix

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