Last
addition: July 26, 2001
Turkish TV Stupidities
As you might
expect, television is a great source of all kinds of imbecility. When private
TV stations entered the picture a few years ago, some people thought that the atmosphere
of competition would cause an increase in the overall quality of the stuff we
were supposed to watch. As anybody who has ever seen anything involving YIldo
will tell you, this was not the case.
Since social
stupidity is a process with positive feedback, there seems to be no way to
remedy the situation. But, if you cannot correct it, you can at least enjoy it.
I came up with the following idea about four years ago. I devised a
stupidity-driven zapping game, which can be played by any number of people
(it's nicer if you have remote control devices for each participant.) The idea
is to start watching a channel and zap to another one whenever a stupidity (a
blatant logical error, a wrong news item, a mispronounced or misspelt word, a
translation error, etc.) is encountered. The person who justifiably zaps the
most number of times is the winner.
Recently I
noticed that the level of idiocy had really undergone an exponential explosion
and I was having trouble remembering my favorites among the zillions of
"wonderfully bad" stuff that I'd seen throughout the years. So I
decided to start this list. Here are only a few of the specimens of supreme
stupidity that have appeared on Turkish TV in the recent past. Send me the stuff that you encounter and I'll
add them to the list.
Brigadoon is
not real!
This happened many years ago, in
the single-channel, black&white days. Brigadoon, Vincente Minnelli's
famous musical about an enchanted town in Scotland which appears for a single
day every 100 years, was about to be broadcast. Just before the movie started,
a female announcer unexpectedly appeared on the screen, and read from the sheet
in her hand (as they always do) the following important announcement:
"SayIn seyirciler, az sonra izleyeceGiniz film bir hayal ürünü olup,
gerçek olaylar ve kiSilerle ilgisi yoktur."
I'm still
puzzled.
Drinking
American Soup with a Turkish Spoon
(Reported by Cem PayaslIoGlu) During
an interview, one of our politicians says, in a delightful Anatolian accent,
"No Gomment"
The
portable port
May 18, 1996. President Demirel
survived an assassination attempt in izmit. In several TRT news bulletins, they
showed a map of Kocaeli in which the town of Gölcük was placed on the wrong
side of the Bay of izmit. Two things occurred to me:
The Captain's
private pieces
(Reported by Levent AkIn) In an
unspecified private TV station, a foreign movie translated by a local genius is
being broadcast. In this particular scene, two cops have entered their superior
officer's room. The Captain is not there. One cop says to the other:
"Hey, kaptanIn çes tahtasIna dokunma! Biliyorsun çok kIzar…"
Playing it
safe
Thanks to the breakdown of the
Turkish education system, a majority of our citizens don't know the distinction
between the words "de, da" and the suffixes "-de,
-da." Mistakes based on this stupidity are too numerous to list here in an
entertaining manner. What I will report here is a stupi-ingenious trick
employed by one TRT producer to make sure that he/she got at least one usage
right. May 25, 1996. A pop music program. The subject: A Turkish singer who
shot the videos for his album in Germany. On the screen, we see the following
words of wisdom:
"Madem kasedi kendi ülken de yaptIn, klibi de kendi ülkende çek."
In & Out
(Reported by Cem PayaslIoGlu) The
title of the movie "Out of Africa," which is almost entirely set in
Africa, has been repeatedly translated as:
"Afrika'nIn DISIndan"
American
delicacies
(I read this somewhere; please
let me know if you can actually confirm it) American movie. Two friends in the
streets of New York. One makes a delicious offer:
"Haydi Surada birer sIcak köpek yiyelim."
Star Trek
goof
Several masterpieces of pure
idiocy were exhibited in Kanal 6's translation of the classic Star Trek
episodes. One example: The translator, not knowing what the word
"helmsman" means, wrote it as a proper noun in the Turkish text,
resulting in the following command by Captain Kirk:
"Yörüngeye girelim Bay Helmsman."
Insert witty
caption here
(Reported by Günay AnlaS)
Interstar. The moronic American cop show Hunter is being shown. Hunter's
female partner is going to a party, and she's nicely dressed up. A detective
sees her and says:
"SilahIn güzelmiS."
After some hours
of heavy thinking, it was discovered that the guy actually says "Nice
gown," but the translator hears it to be "Nice gun."
"The
Stopping of Mistrust"... What?!?
May 21, 1996. Kanal D is showing Basic
Instinct. Sharon Stone, a writer of crime fiction, explains the power of
literature to the cops making use of the term "Suspension of
Disbelief," or, in the words of the translator:
"GüvensizliGin DurdurulmasI"
Overnationalized
(Reported by Cem PayaslIoGlu) In
a World War II movie, upon seeing a Swastika, one of the resistance fighters
says:
"Burada da bu AllahIn cezasI Malta HaCI!"
Teleology
on Television
(Reported by Tony Blake) In the late
90's, Show TV's indescribable "news" anchor Reha Muhtar asked the
following question to a group of prisoners who had escaped by digging a tunnel
under the prison compound (and who were captured afterwards):
"Siz bu tüneli kaçmak için mi kazdInIz?"
As Stupid As
Possible
May 19, 1996. The (very bad)
movie called Screamers is being shown on atv. The wizard of translation
is at work again. Peter Weller is reading a message that he's recently
received:
"Bizim üsse gelin. ASAP. imza: …"
(ASAP = As Soon
As Possible)
Star-crossed
This happens so frequently that
it may have a permanent effect on future generations. Newsreaders and editors
do not know the difference between the words "astronomy" and
"astrology." In fact, they have not heard the word
"astronomy" at all, and use "astrology" whenever
"astronomy" should be used. The last time I noticed this was on atv,
in a report about the Galileo spacecraft.
No Comment
The Turkish-owned Turkish
language TV station HBB pronounces its own name as "Eyç Bi Bi."
Aha!
(June 9, 1996) HBB's
"Turkish" name for the country which others call "Western
Sahara" is "BatI Sahara."
Var Ben
Türkçe Bilmemek
(Thanks to L. AkIn) May 22, 1996.
Young and Restless on atv. The translator managed to invent a brand new
expression "omuz sallamak" to be used in place of the old and tired
"omuz silkmek".
Turkey's
Village Idiot
Reha Muhtar's contributions to
the cause of imbecility can be the topic of a Ph.D. thesis. Here's an incomplete
list (sent to me by Ali Chousein, certainly after traveling several steps):
*********************
Given : Harika AvcI has had
an abortion.
R.M. : Peki, bebek Simdi
nerede?
*******************************
Given: The funeral of Alpaslan TürkeS:
R. M. : Cenaze töreninde sayIlarI
on binin üzerinde yedi bin güvenlik görevlisi vardI.
********************************
Interview with the man who
strangled his wife:
R. M. : Efenim, baSInIz
saGolsun..
***************************
R. M. : DoGuStan kör olduGunuzu
anladIm da beyefendi, küçücükken de gözleriniz görmüyor muydu onu soruyorum?
**************************************
-Efenim, bir gün daha böyle
geçti, efenim.
- iyi günler, Türkiye!
-Her nerede yaSIyor ve
yaSatIlIyorsan..
Two
Chechens far from home
This one also occurred several
times, but the frequency seems to have decreased after it was publicly made fun
of in some newspapers. (Ethem AlpaydIn reports this particular specimen; Cem
PayaslIoGlu reported a similar one.) American movie about racial relations
being shown by the TRT. One cop says to the other:
"Hücrede iki tane KafkasyalI var."
Pretty
Bad Translation
It was widely
reported a few years ago that the boss of Discovery Channel fired a translator
because she was “too fat” for being in the same working environment with the
aesthetics-conscious boss. Here are a few excellent examples (reported by Zafer
Barutçuoğlu) of linguistic murder committed by the (probably very skinny) DC
translators since then:
“suç rekoru" = “criminal record”,
"sivil mühendis" = “civil engineer”,
"ateş savaşçıları" = “firefighters”...