How to solve a translation problem: Futurama

If you have followed me during the last months, you'll know that, apart from translation, I like also sci-fi in films, series or books. Futurama is a sci-fi animation serie, which is set in the year 3000. My post of today is related precisely with the translation of this serie.

The original language is English and in the chapter about I'm going to talk, Professor Farnsworth has invented an universal translator that only translates into a dead language. In the original version in English, and as in Spanish version, the “dead language” is French

English

Spanish

However, if we watch the chapter in French, it is not possible that this language, into which the machine translates, was French too. That's why, the translators of the serie had to choose another “dead language”: German.

That is another curious translation case, because a serie that it is translated into different languages, and, as in this chapter, it plays also with them, translators face to this type of problems. In this case, it has been solved in a correct form. Maybe there are people who think that this solution is very far of the original, but in some cases, and this is a very good example, translation doesn't go together with the source text, because it won't have any sense. In addition, the context and the idea of the machine keep intact, as well as the touch of humor talking precisely about one of the most spoken languages nowadays.