OT German dialogue.

M

MadMark

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Jun 14, 2000
Messages
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Can any German-speaking forumites tell me the third line spoken by the Germanic chieftain in the opening battle scene in the movie "Gladiator". First he says(off-camera)"Du bist a hunde"(You are a dog). Then he steps out of the trees and says
"Ihr seid verfluchte hunde" (You are all damned dogs).
Then he holds up the Roman emissary's head and says something else I can't make out or find on a fansite. This has been driving me crazy(er) ever since I first saw the movie a couple of years ago. Then Yvsa's post about what an assortment of characters inhabit this forum got me thinking that someone here might know the answer.
Cheers, Mark
P.S. For the German speakers in the crowd, I know "a" isn't a German word, but that is what he says.
 
:( Sorry can´t help. Just searched for an English copy of that film (a friend owns one) - and being native German speakers we could just not find out what he says. I guess they tried to make the "German" sound antique. I found the same question as yours on a german forum - but noone had an answer to that. see here.


German Gladiator Forum Question

Maybe it was not pc what the chieftain said ;) (we found it interesting that the main characters are hispano, coloured and white - very pc if you ask me...) however, great film!

Andreas
 
Maybe he said, "Sie sind ein Schwartzwalder kirschtorte."
My spelling is probably off.
:)

Ben
 
I have also heard talk that they were saying "Huhn" not "hunde".

Huhn is German for chicken.

Kinda fits since they sent an emissary asking for thier surrender.

<shrug>

I dunno on the third line.

Verax
 
:D Good one, Bruise.lol
Pragitam, I tried the closed captioning trick but they just say "Shouting in German", also when the officers are ordering the archers to nock, the caption reads 'knock'. I guess they must work from a copy of the film rather than a script.
You're right, Andreas, the chief probably said something rude, especially if he was ad-libbing. (You're right about the PC, too.)
 
Just checked out Andreas' link. If a German "Gladiator film" forum doesn't have the answer then I reckon I'm SOL on this one. Still sounds like hunde rather than huhn to me, Verax. That is when it doesn't sound like "Schwarzewaller kirschtorte"
 
Can any German-speaking forumites tell me the third line spoken by the Germanic chieftain in the opening battle scene in the movie "Gladiator".
Click to expand...

Don't know what he actually said but I envisioned something like "we gonna kick some butt and take some names here!". It just didn't quite work out that way. :p
 
You're probably pretty close on that translation, Semper. I got obsessed with the details, but the general meaning is pretty plain. I just had a thought though, the actor would know what he said, wouldn't he?:D;)
Edited for punctuation
 
Reminds me of a long ago incident in a cowboys and indian movie where the indians were told to fake what they said. So they did use a tribal language.

The Director didn't catch on, but the producer was Jewish and knew Yiddish when he heard it.
 
Apparently they used to have a lot of fun on the set of the old silent pictures because they had to be speaking but it didn't matter what they said since it wasn't being recorded. So some of them would try to crack the others up with some really outrageous ad-libs.
 
"Du bist der Hund! Ihr seid verfluchte Hunde! DAS steht euch bevor!"

translation:
"You're the dog! You are all god damned dogs! THIS is your destiny!" (throwing the head) The rest is also shouting "Dogs! dogs!"

Found this on the IMDB.com forum. Just posted a few days ago. Hehe, knew I'd find out one day.
 
Wow, Mark, talk about delayed gratification! Glad your life is now complete.
 
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