What did you miss from watching Sherlock in the dub?

On the night of January 15-16, the premiere of the last episode of the fourth season of the cult British TV series "Sherlock" took place. In Russia, it was broadcast on Channel One in a completely dubbed form. And although in general, in our opinion, translators, voice actors and all other people who worked on localization did a good job with their task, there are still several problematic points in translation.

We will analyze the most difficult places in the series to translate. It is difficult to name these "mistakes" in translation and errors: some appeared due to untranslatable puns, and some - due to differences in grammar of Russian and English languages.

Attention! There are spoilers in the article, so we recommend reading further only to those who have watched all the episodes that have been released. If you haven't had time to watch the whole series, do it, and then come back.

I am SHERlocked

Let's refresh your memories of the series a bit. In this episode, Irene Adler appears. She has a smartphone that contains super-secret information that compromises one of the members of the royal family.

The smartphone is protected by a four-digit password, which Sherlock tries to guess several times during the series. The caption on the locked screen reads "I am **** locked". Sherlock tried both "221B" (home address in Baker Street) and other combinations of numbers, but nothing worked. However, at the very end of the episode, he realized that Irene had feelings for him, so she could not resist and set the password SHER. In full it turns out "I am SHERlocked" ("I am SHERlocked" - passive voice). This is a very witty play on words that cannot be adequately conveyed in Russian, so the localizers simply left the original text in the series.

HAT-man and Robin

Sherlock becomes very popular thanks to John Watson's blog. To hide his face from the journalists with cameras waiting at the door, he takes the first cap he comes across and puts it on his head. However, journalists still manage to make a good shot of Sherlock in a ridiculous headdress and headline the article HAT-man and Robin. This is a reference to Batman and Robin. Localizers decided to leave the phrase without translation.

IOU

Moriarty leaves Sherlock a clue of the three letters IOU on the apple. Later, Sherlock sees the same inscription on the building. IOU is short for I owe you. In Russian, there is no way to express this thought using three letters.

John is quite a Guy

Guy Fawkes Night is celebrated in Great Britain every year. In 1605, Guy Fawkes tried to blow up the Palace of Westminster during a speech by King James II. The conspiracy became known, and Guy Fawkes was executed. On the night of Guy Fawkes, it is customary to launch fireworks and burn a conspirator's effigy.

John Watson almost became such a scarecrow. Someone kidnapped him and put him in the base of the fire. Sherlock received an SMS from his kidnapper with the following message: "John is quite a Guy." This can be translated as "John is a very nice guy" or "John made a wonderful Guy" (guy - "guy", and in the same way the name of Guy Fawkes is spelled). Again, an interesting play on words. The translators preferred the Guy version, apparently because Guy's SMS was written with a capital letter.

The other one

Sherlock shot Magnussen, and Mycroft must send his brother on a very dangerous mission. When Mycroft is told that he shouldn't be gentle with Sherlock just because he is his brother, Mycroft says, “You know what happened to the other one”.

Everyone immediately thought that Mycroft was talking about the third brother. The translators also thought so, so they translated it - “another brother”. In the fourth season, it turns out that Mycroft and Sherlock have not a brother at all, but a sister.

The fact is that in English the other one can be said about both a man and a woman. In Russian, this is not possible, hence the mistake.

# 221BringIT

Sherlock receives the message "# 221BringIT!" ("Forward" or "For the cause") that localizers translated as "# 2213work!". In the original, address 221B is played up (B is the building of the house and the first letter in the word bring). In the translation, the letter B was replaced with the number 3, which looks like the letter Z, but the pun was lost.

Lying detective

But this is a real spoiler from the translators (as if the final episode had not leaked to the Web). The title of the series The Lying Detective, depending on the context, can be translated as "Lying detective" and "Lying detective". Sherlock has been under the influence of drugs for the entire series, and his health is in very poor condition. On the other hand, he also lies to Watson throughout the episode about his real intentions in order to catch the serial killer. In the Russian translation, the series is called very unambiguously: "Sherlock is dying."

A cereal killer

Sherlock will tweet a photo of Calverton Smith with the caption “He’s a serial killer”.

Smith immediately replied: he shot an ad in which he eats cereal. Later, he walks up to the car with Sherlock and John and says, "I'm a serial killer, okay?" Honestly, it's difficult to evaluate, unless you know that cereal (cereal, porridge) and serial (serial) sound the same in English. Smith made it look like Sherlock took part in a viral cereal ad with his tweet.

Despite the fact that the translation and voice acting of Channel One is very high quality, we recommend watching TV series such as "Sherlock" in the original with Russian subtitles. So the risk of missing some subtlety is minimal.