Yesterday I started watching the latest season of Better Call Saul. It was something I had been wanting to do for a while, and I was finally able to start enjoying it. The idea was to watch just one episode and then go to sleep, but fans of the Breaking Bad-Better Call Saul universe will agree with me that it's very difficult to keep that promise.
Vince Gilligan's shows have always been characterized by the exquisiteness of each scene in terms of photography and script. The actors also take great care in their performances, giving viewers a taste of anxiety, fear, joy, and even the desire to become gangsters.
The latest season of Better Call Saul was no exception, at least from what I've seen. It's as if the production team were obsessed with delivering a perfect product. And they almost succeed.
Surely there are details that escape amateur viewers like me, and that ultimately become “invisible mistakes.” But there is one detail in particular that has always caught my attention in both series, and that is the Spanish spoken by characters who are supposed to be Mexican or Latin American.
The character Gustavo Fring is Chilean, but his accent is so thick that it affects the perception of native Spanish-speaking viewers and prevents them from believing that he is really Chilean. And of course, this phenomenon is more noticeable to audiences south of the Rio Grande, and perhaps to native Spaniards.
Perhaps we were underestimated, and maybe that's why the production decided not to hire, or at least make the effort to find actors who were native to South America. Maybe it was cheaper, I don't know, I'm just speculating. The rest of the world may not have a problem with it, but as a Latino, I feel a little betrayed. Yes, I'm a bit of a crybaby.
I can even forgive the fact that the accent wasn't ideal, because in the case of Fring, for example, I can't imagine any other actor but Giancarlo Exposito for that character. But at least from a semantic and grammatical point of view, they could have done a more serious job.
For example, in one of the episodes I saw yesterday, Juan Bolsa says this line to Hector Salamanca: “Estamos con usted hombro a hombro” (more or less how I remember it). The most common thing to say in a Spanish-speaking context would be “hombro con hombro.”
There are a few other phrases like this throughout both series with similar errors. This leads me to conclude (taking into account the English subtitles that appear when they speak Spanish) that the entire script was written in English, and then the Spanish parts were translated literally.
That's where the main error lies. Translating literally in a product that will be seen by so many people around the world creates barriers for part of the audience it is intended for. As I wrote this morning in a Snap, this was the main detail for me that prevents this series from being perfect.
Here in the community, there are native users from various continents and languages. Do you know of any other examples of movies and series with similar cases?
English isn't my native language. Text tranlsated in DeepL.com
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Images used are screenshots from the tv show