Context is king.

[e_mir]

In the late eighties, when the Soviet Iron Curtain had finally dropped, Soviet citizens (including myself) became avid watchers of TV. Previously bleak Soviet TV suddenly turned to foreign movies, especially  American  blockbusters.  In Kharkiv (my home city), a new private TV channel appeared, and it broadcast 10 to 12 foreign movies daily! It was, of course, illegal VHS copies, very poorly translated, but I was fascinated. There was a new world with a strange and attractive life.

But now, when I watch some of these old movies again, I understand how poor my understanding of the context was. Even worse: the translators themselves lost context. For example in “Pump up the Volume” (1990) the protagonist Happy Harry said, “I got my wild cherry diet Pepsi…” and this was translated as, “I got my weird diet of cherries.”

Now I understand why in “Home Alone” and “Robocop” the crime rate is so high, and why later it dropped in NY and hasn’t dropped in Detroit, and I can put these movies into historical context.