Happy Halloween! Despite its success in America, the TV comedy Seinfeld has failed to find an audience in Europe. While this video is about why Seinfeld doesn't translate into another language well, it’s about a lot more than that; it’s a story about language, culture, and the nature of comedy. Is Seinfeld a big thing in your country? Let me know in the comments below; I’m really interested to find out.
Seinfeld is very popular in Croatia (which is in Europe 😁). We are under huge influence of American culture because we NEVER dub movies. And most movies and TV shows aired in Croatia are American. 😀 EDIT: the subtitles often include explanations of references, for example, "Joe DiMagio (baseball player)".
We tried translating our videos into several different languages - and wow, we didn't realize how many "English Word Jokes" we made until we tried translating them into Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Russian...most of the time it just doesn't work at all. So the experience of our viewers of those other channels must have been quite, quite different. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
It wilds me out that you're 16 and doing all this. *I'm* 16 and have half the charisma and a quarter of the ability to present as you. Not to mention, you're already great at educating down to a science. Keep up the great work!
@@Ludix147 I thought he was 14 :D maybe he's just kept outlook from first videos then. great job, though. age is just a number. and i am never able to guess people's age - same age ppl look so different, how come.
It works surprisingly well in Australia. Even if some of the cultural things are firmly American, the parts we can't relate to we at least know about. The vibe of the show still works over here.
Not knowing about An American Hero made that scene even more funny, in my opinion. Instead of being a blatant reference, I'd be more funny to assume that he composed his own song for his answering machine. Main reason why the German version doesn't work is because the dubbing actors are pretty unenthusiastic about the whole thing, which is a shame since there are several dubs that greatly improve upon the original. Spongebob for example has a ton of deeply German jokes in the Dub and the actors seem to fit more (although I might be biased because I grew up with that version). Also not-so-great productions like Shyamalan movies are also better because even if the actors on screen are stiff and emotionless, their voice actor can get out quite a lot of emotion from their voice alone.
I don't really find Seinfeld funny, but most of the translation issues are due to having translators who are not comedic writers as the translators. You have some people who will translate the words and then try to make them funny. But often they are not comedic writers and are just banking on the original writing being funny. All of the joke you used German examples for had better phrasing and word choice there just wasn't enough effort put into it.
Weirdly, it’s also quite popular in Romania. I remember watched it on TV when I was there still ar reruns on TV. Man, we’re so lucky that we subtitle our movies and shows! Also, I think the exocticism of the NY subculture played a major role in making the show interesting to a post-communist Romania.
oh my god thank you for explaining this. I'm swedish, i've always loved american TV but always haaated seinfeld. So much! They aired it all the time when i was younger, on tv, but WHY it was SO BAD. I didn't understand how it was so big, especially once i got on reddit. Even though we have it with subtitles and not dubbed, I agree with everything you mentioned the dutch focus group said. They're really... just saying. boring sentences. and the laugh track plays. And i'm just sitting there like a question mark??? also, i always hated the stand-up bit in the beginning, because 1: it was never funny to me and 2: it makes NO SENSE to have it before the show? I'm just. So confused. And seeing you laugh during the video was so weird, even when you're explaining the jokes and references, I didn't find them funny at all. It's so weird. It's just. Too many references, I guess? I don't know all your celebrities names, we don't even have celebrity culture here! Wow. Americans seem to often feel that they have no culture but it clearly couldn't be further from the truth. Awesome work, as always. Thank you!
I'm from Croatia and it was quite popular here when it first aired and later there were constant reruns. My favorite show. It's gold Alex, gold! 😄 We do subs, not dubs.
Brazilian here, Seinfeld is not really that big here, but FRIENDS and HIMYM are, pretty much anyone has at least heard about one of them, and the point about beeing shows inhently american stands for both. I guess Seifeld wasnt televised at the time, and it was before .mp4 and other ways of watching sitcoms. Also to note that we have "novelas" here, wich are sitcoms wich have humongous audiences, 99.9% of homes with eletricity have televisions, and 80% of televisions have pretty much only Globo (the channel where most "novelas" air). So a lot of people have more relatable sitcoms with easier access. But nowadays with Netflix and streaming a lot of it is changing
Jerry Seinfeld used to do a lot of commercials back in the day, and this topic reminded me of one of them. He was doing stand up in England and no one got his jokes. It was something about the 7th inning stretch. I don't remember what the commercial was for. Anyway, at the end he is doing the same joke but he translated it, made it about cricket instead of baseball and added some Cockney slang, and it killed.
Your Flex Tape/Squarespace big at the end was a good example of things that just can’t be translated like you talked about in the episode. If the viewer doesn’t know what flex tape is, they’ll just thing that you’re talking sort of weird, which is mildly funny, but not as funny as those who know the reference.
I’m American but I’ve travelled to quite a few other countries. I never really thought about it until now, but I don’t think I’ve ever stumbled across an episode of Seinfeld anywhere. Very strange, as here in the states reruns are nonstop. Very good video man. (Quite impressive that you’re only 16, too. You’re mature in both your research and your presentation.) It’s incredibly depressing that you were probably born the year I graduated high school in 2004 lol. Anyway, well done man. Edit: I see this is from last year, so maybe 2002 or 2003. Lol
I live in scotland and hadn't heard of it until I started watching a lot more American youtubers, they talk about it loads. I understood and found a lot of the clips you showed to be funny but that's just cause I understand American culture. There are some aspects though, and this goes for every American sitcom, that just seem silly to me. Like characters being in a new relationship every 2 days. This happens in friends, Seinfeld, always sunny, how I met your mother and a bunch of other modern American shows. It seems totally over the top, most people here have maybe 3 or 4 relationships on average in their whole life.
This makes me think of watching the UK Office as an American... it was still funny, but I felt like I was missing a huge piece of what made it popular even though i speak the language, because the subtleties about British life and office environment just weren’t familiar to me.
As a professional translator English to French, I can say this problem exists pretty much everywhere. It's not as easy as it sounds to translate something to an other language if you want to preserve the meaning, the intent, the rhythm, and the cultural relevance. Also, French often needs more words than English to express the same thing. So a document 150 pages long can easily end up 160 pages long or more after translation, and that can be a real problem like if I'm translating a video game with a limited UI size. THat's why the expression "lost in translation" exists. There's always something lost if you don't know the original language to enjoy the medium -be it movies, books, video games or whatever- as intended by the creators.
I listen mostly to Seinfeld in Quebecois French and I find it outstandingly funny. I must have heard the English versions about 3 times and the French ones about 30 times. THEY ARE STILL FUNNY. And the voices of the Quebecois French are so similar to the American version that it looks like Jerry and the gang have really learned French and played the episodes all over in Quebec.
Subs over dubs forever man! European here (from Croatia) we dont dub except animated movies such as Frozen (for kids) and I think that makes sense because you know it takes some time before they learn to read properly. I have seen some cartoon movies (I think it was finding Nemo) in original and dubbed version, and they are really two different things, I liked them both. The problem is that there is soooo much lost, and its just not the same thing, so much of the actor performance is their voice, for example, take Samuel L. Jackson or Clint Eastwood and replace their voice with some italian dude, its a crime against art! Also Seinfeld is popular in Croatia even without people understanding all the reference. EDIT: by reading the comments seems like you have a big audience in Croatia, wonder why :)
Monty Python would probably have a similar case with "Meaning of Life" and "And Now For Something Completely Different". While a lot of the jokes do translate, there are some that are very British and some that only really worked if you know what was happening at the time. "Life of Brian" and "Holy Grail" had a lot more setting humour though, so they were more universal
I'm actually more curious about why Seinfeld is so much more popular in Latin America than in Europe. I would not have thought it would be easier to match the cadence and language humor in Spanish, and they're another audience more likely to dub. Maybe they have more cultural parallels, or better voice actors? I remember the Big Story interview with the Spanish-language voice actor for Homer Simpson and how he said he had to turn everything up a notch to overcome the potential cultural barriers across multiple countries.
I was never much of a fan of Seinfeld. Although, as usual, you took the whole thing and made me look at it in a way I haven't before. Next time I catch an episode I'm going to be looking at it from a whole new angle... One small problem since I clicked away from the video which i had to come back and tell you about... now I've got the theme from "The Greatest American Hero" stuck in my head... 😖 Thanks, Technicality... 🙄😄
You're so right about the cultural translation being lost when aired in different countries, as the same thing happens when for example British sit com's are shown to American audiences, as often the jokes and subtle pieces of humour are lost much like when Seinfeld is shown in the UK.
I'm from Moscow, Russia and I don't know anyone from here who's heard of either "Seinfeld" or Seinfeld. But both dubbed and subtitled versions of it exist on Russian torrenting sites :) I've ony ever watched it in the original though. Reasons: 1) wordplay in most cases is impossible to translate (same goes for accents from different parts of the US btw, there is just no way of getting it across to a Russian audience, it's a very specific cultural thing.) 2) Russian words in general are longer than the English ones so it doesn't matter if the show is dubbed or subbed - stuff almost always gets omitted.
Hey Alex! Great video! Here in Brazil it's not a huge success as friends but it's not unrelatable to our culture since we have an "Americanized-Globalized" society and share most of the values regarding social statues, moral and frivolities. When cable TV aired Seinfeld it was subtitled and the jokes pretty much worked!
Glad to know I’m not the only one obsessed with that Greatest American Hero voicemail it’s one of my favorite moments although I’ve only seen a handful of episodes
Honestly, I am from Europe, I never cared for Seinfeild, but I couldn't click away from your video. The articulation and the script is superb! You remind me of Mike Rugnetta from idea channel. Keep up the work
Another key factor that hinders subtitles is literacy. Television reaches a lot of lower class people that don't have the reading skills to keep up with scene and the words at the same time. Because of that, Brazil has created a very big dubbing industry. We have tons of great voice actors, such a shame that their work is frequently injured by the inflexible translation of jokes. Most of the time, the translators don't even try to adapt the jokes to our culture, which severely impacts the overall quality of the show. Sidenote: the dubbing team of Disenchantment did the polar opposite and replaced a lot of working jokes with dead memes. It's audiovisual gore.
Havent watched Seinfeld for many years, but maybe I should try to rewatch. Much the same things apply for literature that's translated. At the time Seinfeld aired I didn't care much for learning english. I'm norwegian by the way, and fortunately subtitles is prefered to dubbing. But the last 10 years I've gotten interested in car tuning, and the main language used in aftermarked ECUs is english. And the last 5 years I've gotten a love for reading fantasy, and very litle fantasy for adults is translated to norwegian, so most of my reading has been english the last years. I have read writers like Stephen King in both norwegian and english, and I prefer to read novels in english when thats the writers language. Watching tv shows after learning english better, it's easy to pick up many times when things get lost in translation. Watching some standup from UK from time to time, and depending on the person performing, it often is hopless to use the subtitles.
I didn’t appreciate the show until after 6 years studying abroad in the US. In my freshman year, I loved friends and watched it many times. Four years later living in the US Seinfeld is my favorite sitcom. I still like Friends, but it’s not comparable to Seinfeld. I love the lack of emotional attachment between the characters, it’s gives the writers freedom to do whatever they want. Also I love how a simple indecent can weave through the whole episode, affecting all of the characters. Lastly, I like the show self awareness. Especially, when they addressed the fact that Jerry is a bad actor. A bad comedian who knows he is bad, is 10 times better than a decent comedian who thinks he’s funny.
Love this! Another problem with translating TV shows is one of perceived potential offence to the audience. I was a big fan of Friends when it was first shown on TV and loved pretty much every episode. Earlier this year i found that all episodes were now on Netflix and decided to watch the whole thing in German and whilst it got it mostly right, they changed some things for unclear reasons. 1 example is when Joey is deciding on a new stage name and wants it to convey a sense of strength and power. In the original, he decides on Joseph Stalin. In the German dubbed version though, the name is changed to Albert Einstein. I can't imagine a modern day German getting offended by hearing Stalin and it totally ruined the joke delivery, so why the change?
You lucky bastard.... Here's a good parallel, if you like the idea of a single joke being drawn out and beaten into the ground then you might like Seinfeld. It's kinda like the new Ghostbusters movie's sense of humor.
Quite late to the party but I only discovered the channel through recent discovery of Tom Scott haha :) I grew up in Poland in the 80s and 90s and have never heard of Seinfeld until a few years ago when I was already in my mid-30s. We had Friends and dozens of other US sitcoms but not Seinfeld. I only learned about it when I moved to an English speaking country where everyone knew and loved Seinfeld. I started watching it maybe a year or two ago and while I do get many of the jokes on account of growing up with American pop culture, I 100% agree that it's not translatable at all especially from post-Soviet viewer's perspective. Can't even imagine Polish dubbing of it - wouldn't make any sense. I'm also convinced that purely due to my Eastern European background, Seinfeld is not even in my top 10 favourite US sitcoms. I totally appreciate what Jerry Seinfeld did for comedy and I get why he's so immensely popular but only because I read about it rather than having developed such opinion through watching his work. Love the channel BTW and can't understand why the subs are not in the millions. Come on YT algorithm! ;) EDIT: I just realised that there's been no new videos since early 2020! :(
almost across the room with laughter when you said "yada yada yada" what episode that was from just kills. way to sneak out past the youtube censors youngin!
Seinfeld is pretty popular in Australia even our streaming services have all seasons of the show. This is probably because our culture is pretty similar to America’s, we don’t get every single joke, but most of them.
I'd like to say that I have never heard of The Greatest American Hero before, but that song is everywhere in popular culture. While I probably couldn't belt out the entire song by heart, I am really familiar with it.
It was actually pretty big here in Australia, but I admit we are a bit more "American-ised" than most countries. I did learn what George's answering machine song was parodying from this video though, but the tone of the song was such that we recognised it as a TV tune even if we didn't know what one, which is probably another example of how much American TV we consume.
Verbal comedy is always hard to translate. Groucho: "That's what they call, 'A sanity clause'" Chico: "You can't fool me, there's no such thing as 'Sanity clause' (Santa Claus)"
Seinfeld isn't a phenomenon in India but it does have a decent following. That however is probably due to the fact that we have around 350 million who can speak english, so most watch it in the original language only.
Seinfeld in the UK seems to be weirdly popular with COMEDIANS, who often cite it as genius. However I don't remember it having much of an impact on us generally, the main thing I personally remember it for was the whole "bass+comedy" trope that kinda wound me up :)
ive literally never heard of seinfeld. i had heard the theme music used as a meme, learnt that it was from seinfeld last year. this was the first time i had seen any clips from it. american tv shows have a lot of these jokes that dont translate, but that is just how it is with shows being shown in other cultures. ive watched a bunch of disney tv shows when i was a child, some of them dubbed (dubbing isnt as big of a thing in finland, everything for not-children is subbed) and when watching them again now as a bilingual person in the original english, i notice all the jokes i had missed. i didnt realize some shows were meant to be funny, i just thought they were entertaining or weird or interesting for their plot or characters.
Brazilian here. Despite having heard a lot, and I truly mean a lot, of praises towards this show, I've never even tried to watch a single episode of it. Why? Because in *every single one* of the video essays I watched on it, whenever there was scene shown as an example of good comedy, I simply didn't find it funny. Any of it. I never laughed at any of these scenes, not even once. This includes the ones you've shown in this video. It's not a problem with american humor, as I found all of the jokes in Nerdwriter's video on Louis C.K. very funny. Heck, I'm not British and I still find their humor to be a particular favorite of mine, especially what I've seen of Mr. Bean and Rowan Atkinson in general. With Seinfeld, not even subtitles could do it for me. I just don't relate to the American life style, I guess. Great video.
guri com foto de anime for me the show isn’t gag based and a lot of the funnier moments are because you know the plot of the episode and you know what has led to this moment
It's funny that you said that Seinfield got popular in latinamerica, becasue I'm a 23 year old mexican and I never ever watched an episode of Seinfield on my life. And I grew up with the simpons, malcolm in the middle, friends, fraiser, and others. For some reason my TV channels of my youth never aired it (or at least on the schedules I could watch it)
chilean here. I totally get what the dutch lady was on about: american culture is closer to ours, since we're so heavily influenced by it, but it's still the case that it's more like "hahah look at the funny gringos", rather than "omg so relatable"
this is why professional translators are very sought out for when they are truly native in both languages which is quite rare,, to be able to instinctively understand the entirety of meaning & context behind something in one culture and to have the knowledge & identity enough in another to be able to find parallels
Seinfeld is a pretty polarising show in Australia. Some people love it, some hate it, most who don't have an opinion secretly hate it but don't wanna say that in front of their cool Seinfeld-loving friends. It don't think it's anywhere near as popular as it is or was in the US, but pretty popular. Personally, I loved it. I was also young when I started watching it (about thirteen or fourteen). My parents hated it, like they didn't want me watching it at first. I feel like there may be a generational split, more people who were young when it aired seem to like it, but that's just my intuition on it. Anyway, no translation problems to deal with, and we're pretty much Florida with weirder accents, so it's not surprising it'd do well here. It's just different enough that some would react very poorly to it, but if you're young and you watched a tonne of American TV growing up anyway, it's a great show. Also, I may or may not have stayed up for three days straight once to catch a Seinfeld marathon. I am so glad they invented streaming.
In italy nobody saw or knows Seinfeld, it wasn’t in television unlike friends and himym, this frustate me so much, i love comedy, the Seinfeld writing and humor it’s a direct line with mine(i’m thinking about making a video actually about why it didn’t had success in italy), it’s unrelatable for most people here and i get it. But i’d have enjoyed sharing the excitement for the show and the characters with a community like everyone else do.
It's funny how even in a country that's so closely related with the US like Mexico is, the comedy of Seinfeld was absolutely lost, even for the ones of us that speak english and could have watched the show in its original form. I have personally watched a couple episodes and most of the humor just flew over my head.
In Serbia we don't do dubbing at all, makes a HUGE difference! Huge portion of the population, especially youth, speak English. It did hurt Serbian though, as English creeps into our colloquial use more and more...
Do you have subtitles in Serbia? But the thing with especially youth learning to speak english good, I think may be common to many countrys. Social media like RUclips, Facebook, etc, probably is a big reason for that.
@@espenschjelderup426 Yes, we have subtitles instead of dubbing. Makes a big difference and doesn't take as much away from the original. Social media and technology also helps, but not if its all translated. Nowadays we have it all in Serbian as well, but I'm so used to technology in English that when I'm fixing something on someone's phone or computer I switch to English so I can find my way around.
I feel like translating Seinfeld into Hungarian would work well as we have free word order, but i haven't seen any dub of it and I'm not sure if there's even one.
I mean even though I get most of the examples you said and that I speak English natively, I do get that while watching one or two things might go over my head. I mean that's just the nature of watching something foreign, I mean if you watched killinaskully as an American you'd probably not get a few things I would. That being said, it does explain why I never see seinfeld dvds for sale anywhere
I'd like to know how popular Seinfeld is in the UK, where it doesn't need to be translated, but there is still a cultural barrier. I do know that a lot of modern American sitcoms are popular over here, like Friends or How I Met Your Mother.
16 years old? Turn those numbers around and that is me... I feel immature subscribing to a 'kid'... but you are obviously more well read as well, as well spoken than many if not most adults... Plus... you made a lot of sense with this video. So I am subscribing.. Now.. I dont expect much BUT... I would much appreciate you taking the time to just check out some of my music and let me know what your feelings are about it.. Happy songs... I know some things... C-zonz... Looking forward to more videos from you..
I've never been able to watch TV with a plot. Plot belongs in books. TV is for quiz shows, panel shows, and documentaries. Panel shows are interesting: they exist in the UK and Australia, and no other English-speaking nations. Some other countries in northern Europe have a few.
One of the reasons why Seinfeld is superior to the other sitcoms mentioned because it is the more subtle humor about the mundane moments of life. yes dependent on the culture directed at it, but not so one note that you can have the standard sitcom trope plot arc that every show checks off over time.
Which is weird, because like, King of the Hill is also pretty uniquely American, and Southern at that, but Japan apparently loves it, and debates over whether it's better subbed or dubbed. Which makes me wonder why its humor translates better. Cause like, I know the average japanese dude has never seen a commercial for a monster truck ralley enough to know that's what the mower expo is parodying, or have neighbors with deeply-held poorly-educated conspiracy theories about the government, or even has to deal with a lot of the racial divides that come to play in the show.
There are so many shows I struggle to watch because they're just so American... Loud, garish, etc, to my low-key English sensibilities. Plenty of British shows are heading that way too though.
Personally not a fan but the way I remember it Seinfeld was quite popular in Sweden - you number one subs country where kids learn English at the age of 10 from watching tv and movies. The question to ask is if Seinfeld was funny to us or if we watched it because it was popular over there.
Didn't like Seinfeld then (as a kid), tried it again and i still don't (in my 30's). I like this video tho, reminds me of growing up during the early days of anime here in the US... the difference in the subtitled versus the dubbed scripts were like night and day. Had to learn a fair amount of japanese cultural references too.
Well I sure am glad that German schools taught me how to speak and understand English otherwise I'd really be missing out on some great content. I don't like movies or TV shows with voiceover, it's always kinda weird to watch.
I think the problem is trying to translate something. Any show, from any country, to any language. What doesn't people just put the subtitles and watch something in its original language?
I think Seinfeld is verbal slapstick. Slapstick comedy seems to work well in America. This is not the same in a lot of non English speaking comedy. Also all the cultural stuff you mentioned.
I'm Dutch and perfectly fluent in english but I don't get Seinfeld one bit. They jokes are indeed either too much dependent on US culture things I know nothing about and/or about 'mundane' situations that don't resonate with me at all that the over-the-top-ness of it just comes across as dumb or strange instead of funny.
Happy Halloween! Despite its success in America, the TV comedy Seinfeld has failed to find an audience in Europe. While this video is about why Seinfeld doesn't translate into another language well, it’s about a lot more than that; it’s a story about language, culture, and the nature of comedy. Is Seinfeld a big thing in your country? Let me know in the comments below; I’m really interested to find out.
Seinfeld is very popular in Croatia (which is in Europe 😁). We are under huge influence of American culture because we NEVER dub movies. And most movies and TV shows aired in Croatia are American. 😀 EDIT: the subtitles often include explanations of references, for example, "Joe DiMagio (baseball player)".
Technicality lol my hair is longer than your
It ran at like 1am Thursdays in Austria. Nobody knew or watched it.
We tried translating our videos into several different languages - and wow, we didn't realize how many "English Word Jokes" we made until we tried translating them into Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Russian...most of the time it just doesn't work at all. So the experience of our viewers of those other channels must have been quite, quite different. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
It wilds me out that you're 16 and doing all this. *I'm* 16 and have half the charisma and a quarter of the ability to present as you. Not to mention, you're already great at educating down to a science. Keep up the great work!
I'm 30 and an educator and I feel the same way.
royalninja right! Imagine what his school presentations look like
To be honest, he has been doing it for a couple of years.
And he gets more money when he's better.
@@Ludix147 I thought he was 14 :D maybe he's just kept outlook from first videos then. great job, though. age is just a number. and i am never able to guess people's age - same age ppl look so different, how come.
It works surprisingly well in Australia. Even if some of the cultural things are firmly American, the parts we can't relate to we at least know about. The vibe of the show still works over here.
Not knowing about An American Hero made that scene even more funny, in my opinion. Instead of being a blatant reference, I'd be more funny to assume that he composed his own song for his answering machine.
Main reason why the German version doesn't work is because the dubbing actors are pretty unenthusiastic about the whole thing, which is a shame since there are several dubs that greatly improve upon the original.
Spongebob for example has a ton of deeply German jokes in the Dub and the actors seem to fit more (although I might be biased because I grew up with that version).
Also not-so-great productions like Shyamalan movies are also better because even if the actors on screen are stiff and emotionless, their voice actor can get out quite a lot of emotion from their voice alone.
I don't really find Seinfeld funny, but most of the translation issues are due to having translators who are not comedic writers as the translators. You have some people who will translate the words and then try to make them funny. But often they are not comedic writers and are just banking on the original writing being funny. All of the joke you used German examples for had better phrasing and word choice there just wasn't enough effort put into it.
Weirdly, it’s also quite popular in Romania. I remember watched it on TV when I was there still ar reruns on TV. Man, we’re so lucky that we subtitle our movies and shows! Also, I think the exocticism of the NY subculture played a major role in making the show interesting to a post-communist Romania.
oh my god thank you for explaining this. I'm swedish, i've always loved american TV but always haaated seinfeld. So much! They aired it all the time when i was younger, on tv, but WHY it was SO BAD. I didn't understand how it was so big, especially once i got on reddit. Even though we have it with subtitles and not dubbed, I agree with everything you mentioned the dutch focus group said. They're really... just saying. boring sentences. and the laugh track plays. And i'm just sitting there like a question mark??? also, i always hated the stand-up bit in the beginning, because 1: it was never funny to me and 2: it makes NO SENSE to have it before the show? I'm just. So confused. And seeing you laugh during the video was so weird, even when you're explaining the jokes and references, I didn't find them funny at all. It's so weird. It's just. Too many references, I guess? I don't know all your celebrities names, we don't even have celebrity culture here! Wow. Americans seem to often feel that they have no culture but it clearly couldn't be further from the truth. Awesome work, as always. Thank you!
If that
I'm from Croatia and it was quite popular here when it first aired and later there were constant reruns. My favorite show. It's gold Alex, gold! 😄
We do subs, not dubs.
Brazilian here, Seinfeld is not really that big here, but FRIENDS and HIMYM are, pretty much anyone has at least heard about one of them, and the point about beeing shows inhently american stands for both. I guess Seifeld wasnt televised at the time, and it was before .mp4 and other ways of watching sitcoms. Also to note that we have "novelas" here, wich are sitcoms wich have humongous audiences, 99.9% of homes with eletricity have televisions, and 80% of televisions have pretty much only Globo (the channel where most "novelas" air). So a lot of people have more relatable sitcoms with easier access. But nowadays with Netflix and streaming a lot of it is changing
Ya like jazz?
I like jazz and eating a Snickers with a knife and fork after eating a big salad.
Jerry Seinfeld used to do a lot of commercials back in the day, and this topic reminded me of one of them. He was doing stand up in England and no one got his jokes. It was something about the 7th inning stretch. I don't remember what the commercial was for. Anyway, at the end he is doing the same joke but he translated it, made it about cricket instead of baseball and added some Cockney slang, and it killed.
This channel is the MOST UNDERRATED channel on RUclips!
It's still a classic in Australia.
I came here from you Hamilton video in 2016 and now I'm learning SO much I love this channel already!
Your Flex Tape/Squarespace big at the end was a good example of things that just can’t be translated like you talked about in the episode. If the viewer doesn’t know what flex tape is, they’ll just thing that you’re talking sort of weird, which is mildly funny, but not as funny as those who know the reference.
I’m American but I’ve travelled to quite a few other countries. I never really thought about it until now, but I don’t think I’ve ever stumbled across an episode of Seinfeld anywhere. Very strange, as here in the states reruns are nonstop. Very good video man.
(Quite impressive that you’re only 16, too. You’re mature in both your research and your presentation.) It’s incredibly depressing that you were probably born the year I graduated high school in 2004 lol. Anyway, well done man.
Edit: I see this is from last year, so maybe 2002 or 2003. Lol
I live in scotland and hadn't heard of it until I started watching a lot more American youtubers, they talk about it loads. I understood and found a lot of the clips you showed to be funny but that's just cause I understand American culture. There are some aspects though, and this goes for every American sitcom, that just seem silly to me. Like characters being in a new relationship every 2 days. This happens in friends, Seinfeld, always sunny, how I met your mother and a bunch of other modern American shows. It seems totally over the top, most people here have maybe 3 or 4 relationships on average in their whole life.
This makes me think of watching the UK Office as an American... it was still funny, but I felt like I was missing a huge piece of what made it popular even though i speak the language, because the subtleties about British life and office environment just weren’t familiar to me.
As a professional translator English to French, I can say this problem exists pretty much everywhere. It's not as easy as it sounds to translate something to an other language if you want to preserve the meaning, the intent, the rhythm, and the cultural relevance.
Also, French often needs more words than English to express the same thing. So a document 150 pages long can easily end up 160 pages long or more after translation, and that can be a real problem like if I'm translating a video game with a limited UI size.
THat's why the expression "lost in translation" exists.
There's always something lost if you don't know the original language to enjoy the medium -be it movies, books, video games or whatever- as intended by the creators.
I listen mostly to Seinfeld in Quebecois French and I find it outstandingly funny. I must have heard the English versions about 3 times and the French ones about 30 times. THEY ARE STILL FUNNY. And the voices of the Quebecois French are so similar to the American version that it looks like Jerry and the gang have really learned French and played the episodes all over in Quebec.
Subs over dubs forever man! European here (from Croatia) we dont dub except animated movies such as Frozen (for kids) and I think that makes sense because you know it takes some time before they learn to read properly. I have seen some cartoon movies (I think it was finding Nemo) in original and dubbed version, and they are really two different things, I liked them both. The problem is that there is soooo much lost, and its just not the same thing, so much of the actor performance is their voice, for example, take Samuel L. Jackson or Clint Eastwood and replace their voice with some italian dude, its a crime against art! Also Seinfeld is popular in Croatia even without people understanding all the reference. EDIT: by reading the comments seems like you have a big audience in Croatia, wonder why :)
Monty Python would probably have a similar case with "Meaning of Life" and "And Now For Something Completely Different". While a lot of the jokes do translate, there are some that are very British and some that only really worked if you know what was happening at the time. "Life of Brian" and "Holy Grail" had a lot more setting humour though, so they were more universal
I'm actually more curious about why Seinfeld is so much more popular in Latin America than in Europe. I would not have thought it would be easier to match the cadence and language humor in Spanish, and they're another audience more likely to dub. Maybe they have more cultural parallels, or better voice actors? I remember the Big Story interview with the Spanish-language voice actor for Homer Simpson and how he said he had to turn everything up a notch to overcome the potential cultural barriers across multiple countries.
I was never much of a fan of Seinfeld. Although, as usual, you took the whole thing and made me look at it in a way I haven't before. Next time I catch an episode I'm going to be looking at it from a whole new angle...
One small problem since I clicked away from the video which i had to come back and tell you about... now I've got the theme from "The Greatest American Hero" stuck in my head... 😖 Thanks, Technicality... 🙄😄
You're so right about the cultural translation being lost when aired in different countries, as the same thing happens when for example British sit com's are shown to American audiences, as often the jokes and subtle pieces of humour are lost much like when Seinfeld is shown in the UK.
I'm from Moscow, Russia and I don't know anyone from here who's heard of either "Seinfeld" or Seinfeld. But both dubbed and subtitled versions of it exist on Russian torrenting sites :) I've ony ever watched it in the original though. Reasons: 1) wordplay in most cases is impossible to translate (same goes for accents from different parts of the US btw, there is just no way of getting it across to a Russian audience, it's a very specific cultural thing.)
2) Russian words in general are longer than the English ones so it doesn't matter if the show is dubbed or subbed - stuff almost always gets omitted.
Hey Alex! Great video! Here in Brazil it's not a huge success as friends but it's not unrelatable to our culture since we have an "Americanized-Globalized" society and share most of the values regarding social statues, moral and frivolities. When cable TV aired Seinfeld it was subtitled and the jokes pretty much worked!
Glad to know I’m not the only one obsessed with that Greatest American Hero voicemail it’s one of my favorite moments although I’ve only seen a handful of episodes
Honestly, I am from Europe, I never cared for Seinfeild, but I couldn't click away from your video. The articulation and the script is superb! You remind me of Mike Rugnetta from idea channel. Keep up the work
Another key factor that hinders subtitles is literacy. Television reaches a lot of lower class people that don't have the reading skills to keep up with scene and the words at the same time.
Because of that, Brazil has created a very big dubbing industry. We have tons of great voice actors, such a shame that their work is frequently injured by the inflexible translation of jokes. Most of the time, the translators don't even try to adapt the jokes to our culture, which severely impacts the overall quality of the show.
Sidenote: the dubbing team of Disenchantment did the polar opposite and replaced a lot of working jokes with dead memes. It's audiovisual gore.
Havent watched Seinfeld for many years, but maybe I should try to rewatch. Much the same things apply for literature that's translated. At the time Seinfeld aired I didn't care much for learning english. I'm norwegian by the way, and fortunately subtitles is prefered to dubbing.
But the last 10 years I've gotten interested in car tuning, and the main language used in aftermarked ECUs is english.
And the last 5 years I've gotten a love for reading fantasy, and very litle fantasy for adults is translated to norwegian, so most of my reading has been english the last years.
I have read writers like Stephen King in both norwegian and english, and I prefer to read novels in english when thats the writers language.
Watching tv shows after learning english better, it's easy to pick up many times when things get lost in translation.
Watching some standup from UK from time to time, and depending on the person performing, it often is hopless to use the subtitles.
I didn’t appreciate the show until after 6 years studying abroad in the US. In my freshman year, I loved friends and watched it many times. Four years later living in the US Seinfeld is my favorite sitcom. I still like Friends, but it’s not comparable to Seinfeld. I love the lack of emotional attachment between the characters, it’s gives the writers freedom to do whatever they want. Also I love how a simple indecent can weave through the whole episode, affecting all of the characters. Lastly, I like the show self awareness. Especially, when they addressed the fact that Jerry is a bad actor. A bad comedian who knows he is bad, is 10 times better than a decent comedian who thinks he’s funny.
Came from Counter Arguments, nice content man.
Love this!
Another problem with translating TV shows is one of perceived potential offence to the audience.
I was a big fan of Friends when it was first shown on TV and loved pretty much every episode.
Earlier this year i found that all episodes were now on Netflix and decided to watch the whole thing in German and whilst it got it mostly right, they changed some things for unclear reasons.
1 example is when Joey is deciding on a new stage name and wants it to convey a sense of strength and power. In the original, he decides on Joseph Stalin. In the German dubbed version though, the name is changed to Albert Einstein.
I can't imagine a modern day German getting offended by hearing Stalin and it totally ruined the joke delivery, so why the change?
ill admit it, ive never seen an entire episode of Seinfeld
I'll admit it I hate Seinfeld I've never found it funny or relatable
You lucky bastard....
Here's a good parallel, if you like the idea of a single joke being drawn out and beaten into the ground then you might like Seinfeld. It's kinda like the new Ghostbusters movie's sense of humor.
Welp, it looks like someone is going to hell.
Quite late to the party but I only discovered the channel through recent discovery of Tom Scott haha :) I grew up in Poland in the 80s and 90s and have never heard of Seinfeld until a few years ago when I was already in my mid-30s. We had Friends and dozens of other US sitcoms but not Seinfeld. I only learned about it when I moved to an English speaking country where everyone knew and loved Seinfeld. I started watching it maybe a year or two ago and while I do get many of the jokes on account of growing up with American pop culture, I 100% agree that it's not translatable at all especially from post-Soviet viewer's perspective. Can't even imagine Polish dubbing of it - wouldn't make any sense. I'm also convinced that purely due to my Eastern European background, Seinfeld is not even in my top 10 favourite US sitcoms. I totally appreciate what Jerry Seinfeld did for comedy and I get why he's so immensely popular but only because I read about it rather than having developed such opinion through watching his work. Love the channel BTW and can't understand why the subs are not in the millions. Come on YT algorithm! ;)
EDIT: I just realised that there's been no new videos since early 2020! :(
interesting video alex! i don’t think seinfeld is very popular here in germany. hope all is well with you :)
In Canada it was huge. In Ireland and England they just didn't get it but lots of people I knew there had seen every episode of Friends.
almost across the room with laughter when you said "yada yada yada" what episode that was from just kills.
way to sneak out past the youtube censors youngin!
Seinfeld is pretty popular in Australia even our streaming services have all seasons of the show. This is probably because our culture is pretty similar to America’s, we don’t get every single joke, but most of them.
I'd like to say that I have never heard of The Greatest American Hero before, but that song is everywhere in popular culture. While I probably couldn't belt out the entire song by heart, I am really familiar with it.
🚫 🍲 4 U! Love Seinfeld and it has always been a crowd pleaser down here in Australia!
In New Zealand, everyone is able to get the humor, but no one ever talks about the show
Seinfeld is still funny in New Zealand in 2020.
It was actually pretty big here in Australia, but I admit we are a bit more "American-ised" than most countries. I did learn what George's answering machine song was parodying from this video though, but the tone of the song was such that we recognised it as a TV tune even if we didn't know what one, which is probably another example of how much American TV we consume.
I just watched your guest video on tomska about calories in splenda and your voice is totally diferent, it's really cool.
Glad to see your growth! This seems weird but I'm kinda proud lol keep doing what you're doing :)
Verbal comedy is always hard to translate.
Groucho: "That's what they call, 'A sanity clause'"
Chico: "You can't fool me, there's no such thing as 'Sanity clause' (Santa Claus)"
Seinfeld isn't a phenomenon in India but it does have a decent following. That however is probably due to the fact that we have around 350 million who can speak english, so most watch it in the original language only.
Hey, if you need anyone to pronounce German words and phrases for you, just let me know! 😉
Did you know that Seinfeld’s theme song was slightly different every episode to match Jerry’s stand up routines?
Seinfeld in the UK seems to be weirdly popular with COMEDIANS, who often cite it as genius. However I don't remember it having much of an impact on us generally, the main thing I personally remember it for was the whole "bass+comedy" trope that kinda wound me up :)
Norway almost never dubs films and TV shows from other countries, but Seinfeld is still not so popular here😅
Brilliant video. I really enjoyed that. Thanks.
By complete coincidence I managed to grab the ENTIRE SERIES of Seinfeld today for just $32.
Jerry, this kid is SIXTEEN. Genius.
ive literally never heard of seinfeld. i had heard the theme music used as a meme, learnt that it was from seinfeld last year. this was the first time i had seen any clips from it.
american tv shows have a lot of these jokes that dont translate, but that is just how it is with shows being shown in other cultures. ive watched a bunch of disney tv shows when i was a child, some of them dubbed (dubbing isnt as big of a thing in finland, everything for not-children is subbed) and when watching them again now as a bilingual person in the original english, i notice all the jokes i had missed. i didnt realize some shows were meant to be funny, i just thought they were entertaining or weird or interesting for their plot or characters.
Brazilian here. Despite having heard a lot, and I truly mean a lot, of praises towards this show, I've never even tried to watch a single episode of it. Why? Because in *every single one* of the video essays I watched on it, whenever there was scene shown as an example of good comedy, I simply didn't find it funny. Any of it. I never laughed at any of these scenes, not even once. This includes the ones you've shown in this video. It's not a problem with american humor, as I found all of the jokes in Nerdwriter's video on Louis C.K. very funny. Heck, I'm not British and I still find their humor to be a particular favorite of mine, especially what I've seen of Mr. Bean and Rowan Atkinson in general.
With Seinfeld, not even subtitles could do it for me. I just don't relate to the American life style, I guess. Great video.
guri com foto de anime for me the show isn’t gag based and a lot of the funnier moments are because you know the plot of the episode and you know what has led to this moment
Seinfeld did come to Croatia with subs but it wasn't ever that big, here the biggest shows are Friends and Two and a Half Men
It's funny that you said that Seinfield got popular in latinamerica, becasue I'm a 23 year old mexican and I never ever watched an episode of Seinfield on my life. And I grew up with the simpons, malcolm in the middle, friends, fraiser, and others. For some reason my TV channels of my youth never aired it (or at least on the schedules I could watch it)
Loved the advert at the end - hilarious!! The rest of the video was awesome too...
I wonder if anyone's going to contribute translated subtitles for this video.
chilean here. I totally get what the dutch lady was on about: american culture is closer to ours, since we're so heavily influenced by it, but it's still the case that it's more like "hahah look at the funny gringos", rather than "omg so relatable"
this is why professional translators are very sought out for when they are truly native in both languages which is quite rare,, to be able to instinctively understand the entirety of meaning & context behind something in one culture and to have the knowledge & identity enough in another to be able to find parallels
Seinfeld is a pretty polarising show in Australia. Some people love it, some hate it, most who don't have an opinion secretly hate it but don't wanna say that in front of their cool Seinfeld-loving friends. It don't think it's anywhere near as popular as it is or was in the US, but pretty popular.
Personally, I loved it. I was also young when I started watching it (about thirteen or fourteen). My parents hated it, like they didn't want me watching it at first. I feel like there may be a generational split, more people who were young when it aired seem to like it, but that's just my intuition on it.
Anyway, no translation problems to deal with, and we're pretty much Florida with weirder accents, so it's not surprising it'd do well here. It's just different enough that some would react very poorly to it, but if you're young and you watched a tonne of American TV growing up anyway, it's a great show.
Also, I may or may not have stayed up for three days straight once to catch a Seinfeld marathon. I am so glad they invented streaming.
In italy nobody saw or knows Seinfeld, it wasn’t in television unlike friends and himym, this frustate me so much, i love comedy, the Seinfeld writing and humor it’s a direct line with mine(i’m thinking about making a video actually about why it didn’t had success in italy), it’s unrelatable for most people here and i get it.
But i’d have enjoyed sharing the excitement for the show and the characters with a community like everyone else do.
Great work
It's funny how even in a country that's so closely related with the US like Mexico is, the comedy of Seinfeld was absolutely lost, even for the ones of us that speak english and could have watched the show in its original form. I have personally watched a couple episodes and most of the humor just flew over my head.
In Serbia we don't do dubbing at all, makes a HUGE difference! Huge portion of the population, especially youth, speak English. It did hurt Serbian though, as English creeps into our colloquial use more and more...
Do you have subtitles in Serbia?
But the thing with especially youth learning to speak english good, I think may be common to many countrys.
Social media like RUclips, Facebook, etc, probably is a big reason for that.
@@espenschjelderup426 Yes, we have subtitles instead of dubbing. Makes a big difference and doesn't take as much away from the original. Social media and technology also helps, but not if its all translated. Nowadays we have it all in Serbian as well, but I'm so used to technology in English that when I'm fixing something on someone's phone or computer I switch to English so I can find my way around.
I love this. I live in Spain and tried to show my Spanish gf Seinfeld. Now i know why it didn't stick..
Yeah people totally ignore warning labels. If they see a bug they will blanket their bed with raid and toxic chemicals.
I feel like translating Seinfeld into Hungarian would work well as we have free word order, but i haven't seen any dub of it and I'm not sure if there's even one.
I mean even though I get most of the examples you said and that I speak English natively, I do get that while watching one or two things might go over my head. I mean that's just the nature of watching something foreign, I mean if you watched killinaskully as an American you'd probably not get a few things I would. That being said, it does explain why I never see seinfeld dvds for sale anywhere
Seinfeld doesn’t even air in the UK. Friends is everywhere though... No idea why
Because Friends got a prime slot on Channel 4
Seinfeld was relegated to a late slot on BBC2
I'd like to know how popular Seinfeld is in the UK, where it doesn't need to be translated, but there is still a cultural barrier. I do know that a lot of modern American sitcoms are popular over here, like Friends or How I Met Your Mother.
Ypu have such a great voice. Very cool explanation!
16 years old? Turn those numbers around and that is me... I feel immature subscribing to a 'kid'... but you are obviously more well read as well, as well spoken than many if not most adults... Plus... you made a lot of sense with this video. So I am subscribing.. Now.. I dont expect much BUT... I would much appreciate you taking the time to just check out some of my music and let me know what your feelings are about it.. Happy songs... I know some things... C-zonz... Looking forward to more videos from you..
I’m bet this kid has seen every episode of Space Ghost’s Cartoon Planet...
WOAH
BIG VOICE CHANGE
I CAME FROM A VIDEO TWO YEARS AGO AND OH MY GOODNESS
I've never been able to watch TV with a plot. Plot belongs in books. TV is for quiz shows, panel shows, and documentaries. Panel shows are interesting: they exist in the UK and Australia, and no other English-speaking nations. Some other countries in northern Europe have a few.
It is popular in Argentina/Uruguay, but it could be english is really common knowledge
One of the reasons why Seinfeld is superior to the other sitcoms mentioned because it is the more subtle humor about the mundane moments of life. yes dependent on the culture directed at it, but not so one note that you can have the standard sitcom trope plot arc that every show checks off over time.
Have you ever done a default dance?
In Belgium, I've never heard of Seinfeld (and as far as I know, nobody here knows what it is)
Which is weird, because like, King of the Hill is also pretty uniquely American, and Southern at that, but Japan apparently loves it, and debates over whether it's better subbed or dubbed.
Which makes me wonder why its humor translates better. Cause like, I know the average japanese dude has never seen a commercial for a monster truck ralley enough to know that's what the mower expo is parodying, or have neighbors with deeply-held poorly-educated conspiracy theories about the government, or even has to deal with a lot of the racial divides that come to play in the show.
I rang the bell
Kotztanzo is because kotzen means to puke. Puke, haha thats a funny word may I use it?
There are so many shows I struggle to watch because they're just so American... Loud, garish, etc, to my low-key English sensibilities. Plenty of British shows are heading that way too though.
You know you’re British when you say, garish
The German insult is spelt kotz-tänzer and means vomit-dancer
Yay new episode
Personally not a fan but the way I remember it Seinfeld was quite popular in Sweden - you number one subs country where kids learn English at the age of 10 from watching tv and movies.
The question to ask is if Seinfeld was funny to us or if we watched it because it was popular over there.
Didn't like Seinfeld then (as a kid), tried it again and i still don't (in my 30's). I like this video tho, reminds me of growing up during the early days of anime here in the US... the difference in the subtitled versus the dubbed scripts were like night and day. Had to learn a fair amount of japanese cultural references too.
Well I sure am glad that German schools taught me how to speak and understand English otherwise I'd really be missing out on some great content. I don't like movies or TV shows with voiceover, it's always kinda weird to watch.
I think the problem is trying to translate something. Any show, from any country, to any language. What doesn't people just put the subtitles and watch something in its original language?
I think Seinfeld is verbal slapstick. Slapstick comedy seems to work well in America. This is not the same in a lot of non English speaking comedy.
Also all the cultural stuff you mentioned.
To show you what a heart looks like, I sawed this dude in half!
hey wheres the hat
also whats the hat called
I'm Indonesian, i cant understand seinfeld jokes. Feel flat to me.
I'm Dutch and perfectly fluent in english but I don't get Seinfeld one bit. They jokes are indeed either too much dependent on US culture things I know nothing about and/or about 'mundane' situations that don't resonate with me at all that the over-the-top-ness of it just comes across as dumb or strange instead of funny.