Travels in the space-time vortex are set to change course in 2010 as a new decade brings a new Doctor (played by Matt Smith) to the popular BBC series Doctor Who, making this the eleventh incarnation of the Time Lord to materialize on our screens.
Doctor Who has built up a strong fan-base worldwide. Its episodes are broadcast in countries across the globe and are translated into many different world languages. In two separate entries, the Guinness World Records lists the series as the longest-running sci-fi television series and the most successful television show of its genre. At Comic-Con International 2009 in San Diego, Doctor Who’s worldwide appeal was further acknowledged – transforming the series into not only a multi-dimensional affair, but also an international one here on earth.
Translating Doctor Who poses a host of challenges: series and episode titles, acronyms, specialised language and character names, all of which have contributed to the series’ cult status and are potential pitfalls for the unwary translator. Oh for the benefit of a translation sphere used by the Ood (one of the series’ alien races) – a device which enables seamless translation from their mother tongue into any language and which would certainly be a welcome addition to any translator’s workbench! Furthermore, the Doctor’s Time/Space machine (the famous TARDIS) has an inbuilt real-time universal translation tool which allows for communication and understanding of any language. Sadly for professional linguists, such tools are unavailable at this time and translators of Doctor Who will have to rely on their linguistic and translation skills!
On a more serious note, the afore-mentioned difficulties posed by dubbing audio-visual material into any foreign language came to the fore in Germany recently. According to an Internet report regarding the 2005 series (broadcast in Germany in 2008) the main complaints relate to mistranslations and inappropriate dubbing, which in some cases led to errors in German sentence structure. For example, ‘chips’ and ‘crisps’ were mistranslated – no hot potato in itself but something which did have an effect upon continuity. Dubbing was also criticised when the Doctor’s companion Rose Tyler (a confident, streetwise Londoner in the original language version) was given a young, ‘bubbly’ voiceover in German. This was completely out of tune with the character being portrayed and was a voiceover choice which gave rise to much viewer discussion and plot confusion. It would perhaps be an advantage in this case for the translator to be a true fan or have sufficient subject familiarity with the series in order to convey the intended message to international audiences who rightly demand the same viewing experience as their English-speaking counterparts.
Nevertheless, at this point in time, Doctor Who’s success is soaring both within UK and foreign markets alike. It remains one of the BBC’s most popular exports and will continue to entertain and delight audiences the world over – at least, that is, until the year 5733!
