17 January 2012, 4:29 pm
There's a special word for this, I'm pretty sure. It's not "anachronism" or "translation". Examples of this would be: In the film "Gladiator" with Russell Crowe, the film is in English, but in actuality, the characters are "speaking" classical Latin. The characters don't actually know or speak English. In the "Star Wars" universe, people speak Basic (which presumably, in "actuality", sounds nothing like English) but when we watch the films they are speaking in English. The characters themselves don't actually know or speak English, however, they are actually speaking "Basic". In an episode of the television series "LOST", in an episode which focused on the backstory of Jacob, the episode starts out with them speaking Latin (iirc), but then quickly switches to English for the audiences' benefit. The characters don't actually know or speak English (at that point). In the video game "Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem", a scene starts off with people speaking Latin, but then quickly switches to English so that the audience can understand. The characters don't actually know or speak English (at that point), they are still speaking Latin, we only hear it as English. Basically, it's when the characters themselves are speaking a certain language, but we the audience "hear" that language in our language. There's a distinction between the language the characters (not the actors) are speaking and the language the audience "hears" them speaking.... Read More »
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