[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What%27s_Up,_Tiger_Lily%3F

So a Norwegian interpreter - who has no obligation to know of Lincoln whatsoever - can read it and reasonably interpret it as a request for an address in Gettysburg, for Mr Lincoln.

Part of being a decent translator is having a knowledge of the common cultural references of the source-language’s country/countries. Films very frequently generally play on local history or previous films or literature, and you are expected to be able to deal with that.

Do you seriously not know that a speech is an "address?"

that was the entire point of the comment

A few years after I saw this, I entered the film translation business myself. Generally for anything Hollywood or otherwise big-budget, you can watch a copy of the whole film yourself to understand the context, and you can bill the client for the time spent doing that. Therefore, I tend to suspect that such cases of mistranslation are laziness or a company with an incompetent workflow.

Putting this here for anyone who needs a laugh:

Star War The Third Gathers: Backstroke of the West: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DI5WyiHQno

(Someone took a copy of Revenge of the Sith that had been translated from English to Chinese and back, and then re-recorded that dialogue and put it back over the original footage.)

(Baader-Meinhof is a funny thing. I have learned of this movie less than 12 hours ago and here it is again)

I'm amazed by how much more realistic the space fights looked in the first three Star Wars movies compared to the CG stuff.

http://winterson.com/2005/06/episode-iii-backstroke-of-west....

It was originally bought from a DVD street vendor in Shanghai. And it's the source of "do not want" as a meme!