beabutton: Greedo’s lines are actually meaningless phrases in Quechua. It’s reported that Lucas Arts approached a linguistic anthropologist to have him record the lines but he thought it was exploitive when told the lines would be played backwards to sound more alien.
There’s a huge effort in some indigenous communities to keep language alive especially with the younger generations so dubs like this are both fantastic and so very important!
Sumit316: Fun fact about Navajo language –
“Germany and Japan sent students to the United States after World War I to study Native American languages and cultures, such as Cherokee, Choctaw, and Comanche.
Because of this, many members of the U.S. military services were uneasy about continuing to use Code Talkers during World War II. They were afraid the code would be easily cracked, but that was before they learned about the complexity of Navajo.
The Navajo language seemed to be the perfect option as a code because it is not written and very few people who aren’t of Navajo origin can speak it.
However, the Marine Corps took the code to the next level and made it virtually unbreakable by further encoding the language with word substitution.
During the course of the war, about 400 Navajos participated in the code talker program.”
ThingsThatAreBoss: “The good news is we translated Star Wars into your language!”
“Wow, really!? How cool! What’s the bad news?”
“The only film we did was Attack of the Clones. Enjoy!”
Wref: Ever seen a Star Wars bootleg that was poorly translated from English into Chinese and then back into English?
[Would you like to?](https://youtu.be/XziLNeFm1ok)
IShitOnYourPost: My son actually goes to an elementary school that offers Diné (Navajo Language) and Spanish, [Puente de Hozho](https://www.fusd1.org/pdh) in Flagstaff, Arizona.
john_jdm: It came out in 1977, so that only took 40 years. Freaky Friday with Jodie Foster must be next on the list.
The_Undrunk_Native: I’m Navajo and never heard of this, this is awesome!
drawkbox: Navajo is actually the third most spoken language in Arizona.
DoctorPrisme: How the fuck do you say Spatial Crusader in a native american language?
Trey_Lightning: They also did Finding Nemo in Navajo, it was cool to see that playing at my local theater.
MorrisM:
Alastor3: I wondered if they had to invent words since probably some didn’t exist in Navajo.
SockMonkeyLove: Part Navajo, Star Wars geek here. If anyone has a link to a copy of this, I would LOVE to check it out!
Bozdemshitz: Finding memo is better in Navajo!
yuri_a: I completely favor such a move to support the indigenous languages and after a time it becomes really crucial to come up with such methods to ensure that we don’t disconnect with our indigenous language(s).
imalinguistbelieveme: Not quite true. Bambi was dubbed in Arapaho by researchers in Wyoming in 1994 as part of community language revitalization efforts. [Bambi](http://www.tribalcollegejournal.org/walt-disney’s-bambi-–-arapaho-language-version/)
Elcatro: I’m currently learning Japanese and I had a bit of a showerthought moment the other day, Japanese sentence structure is kind of backwards compared to English and sounds very similar to Yoda when you translate it *directly* to English.
Example: Watashi wa gakkou ni ikimasu. = I school am going to.
In the Japanese dub of Star Wars does Yoda speak normal Japanese, or does he speak using English sentence structure to retain his quirk?
BraveNewRedditor: Were the rest of them dubbed then?
dagdegan: Nananago hashoko
Wataha ninitzinqua
Nanana
VapeThisBro: Is there a clip or something??? I’m curious what Navajo star wars sounds like
LobsterCowboy: And it only took 36 years
sailorjimbo: This is so great. Ubiquitous recordings of speech- the same script, recorded in many languages- are important for maintaining a language. In history many languages have been recorded only on stone tablets. While decipherment of these languages is sometimes possible (like with ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics or Linear B, looking at predictable recordings like inventory descriptions or descriptions of trade routes contributed to decipherment), phonetic recreation is much more difficult.
There are ways to have an *idea* of what lost languages sound like by using names transcribed in multiple languages – a researcher might begin with things that would sound the same in every language, for example the names of foreigners. They can gather the sound of a few letters that way. They would then have to infer the phonetics of the rest. That’s obviously quite difficult and often impossible. In addition, names themselves are sometimes spoken differently in different languages. That tool isn’t always useful to researchers.
Spoken records of each translated language using the same movie script is a fantastic way to ensure that even if the last living speaker of a language dies out, that language, that vital piece of understanding culture of an entire people will never be lost.