In English, there is one word for sister. In Chinese, there are two separate words, for elder and younger sister. This is actually a translation problem because if you see the word sister, you don't know how to translate it to Chinese because you don't know if it's an elder sister or younger.
Russian subs are a bargain at $60,000. Unfortunately, none of the dials or instructions are in English.
Chevrolet was puzzled when they discovered that their sales for the Chevy Nova were off the charts everywhere but in Latin America. They finally realized that "Nova" in Spanish translates to "no go." Not the best name for a car... anywhere "no va."
But I do not want to use Hungarian verses for British people.
I'm told that a couple of my Russian translations are just plain terrible, though, and there may be others.
A lot of times, people complain about how books and stories change when they're translated to the screen. But I think sometimes people forget that a lot of changes have to be made because we're not in a book when we're watching a movie.
Sometimes I don't use the words 'will' and 'want' in the right way. The German word 'will' is the English word 'want,' so that's a little bit of the problem.
I would like to do 'King Lear.' But I would like to do it in Swedish.
A donkey appears to me like a horse translated into Dutch.
The mystique of the femme fatale cannot be perfectly translated into male terms.
Some words, you know, it's amazing but some words would come only in French, and when I speak French, it would only come in English. And so the adjustment is very difficult sometimes.
Now I know Hindi, and I can read and write Hindi, but the problem is that I can't improvise when I am acting because I think in English, so I have to translate my thinking from English to Hindi, and therefore, I speak slowly.
It's interesting, in the U.K., I'm known for doing comedy things, which often doesn't translate to the U.S.
