The German TV midday magazine program has been showing a clip of Kathleen Hepburn, at a fairly advanced age, saying she goes out every day intending the be the victor in the day-to-day struggles. It was dubbed in German. At the end she says ‘That’s me – everlasting ego’. At least, that’s what I understood. The German version was ‘immerwährender (?) Adler’, i.e. ‘eagle’.
I understand that dubbing can go wrong, but then I wonder why they show the clip at all if the punch line is so weird.
It reminds me of the Gary Larson cartoon the Nürnberger Nachrichten showed just before Christmas one year, where a witch is disappointed that her Brussels sprouts house is not luring any children. Brussels sprouts was translated as ‘Brussels lace’. The picture was coloured, but the lace remained white. Of course, the translation was not the NN’s work but syndicated, but why did they take the cartoon at all? I suppose because gingerbread houses and witches are Christmassy. At all events, it would be hard to convey in Germany that kids in the USA and Britain don’t like Brussels sprouts.