Archive for August, 2009

TV channel Fox started airing Skins on German TV recently. Skins, which was only available as download via BitTorrent or DVD import to Non-UK residents for a good while, became an insiders’ secret for gay teenagers all over the world but  the German perversion of dubbing foreign series turns it into a disaster.

Tony and Maxxie from Skins, season 1 | Photo via The Bats Nest

The BAFTA-winning teen drama that follows a group of teenagers in Bristol, South West England as they grow up is one of the most popular TV series in the United Kingdom and fans, as well as critics, appreciate its authenticity, humour and the sentimentality of puberty it shows. But the German version cut out too much of that. Not only is it hard to stand the desperate attempt to translate English youth slang into German which is moreover presented by bored, 40 year old voice actors but even the carefully selected original soundtrack of the series was replaced with mainstream soap trash.

Worst of all: In the original version Skins uses a loose but correct way of referring to homosexuality. In the German version ‘tho, the Gay character Maxxie sounds like the worst cliché of a nancy boy; and right in the first scene of the first episode Maxxie’s father is insulting him as a “little faggot” – nothing like that happens in the Original series. German TV has managed to turn a show that has a respectful approach to homosexuality into an amplifier of homophobic language and behaviour.[via queer.de]

0