is english really that hard? im not from an english-speaking country but still my english is far better than that of the actors, jeezzzzzzz.. the bad acting + the english talking sequences made me wanna cry, why couldn't they hire actors who knows how to act, and speak english?
it really destroyed the whole charm of the movie, a real good story got ruined by bad acting, really sucks.
maybe the director was smoking ganja.
Yes, English is really that hard. Korean and English are two completely different language (ZERO similarities, except that you make noises through your mouth.), and for a person who probably didn't get to learn English until in her adult year, I thought Yi Young Ae's pronunciation was excellent.
As for the Swiss soldier & Swedish soldier, neither of their characters were native English speakers. In fact, even Yi Young Ae's character's native tongue would be either French, German, Italian, or Swiss dialect (considering she's a Swiss) so if anything, their bad accent makes more sense then sleek pronunciation.
"Bad acting"... well, that's up to the audience, so I won't argue with you, but imho, I thought Yi Young Ae, Song Gang Ho, Shin Ha Geun, and even Yi Byung Hyun's acting was magnificent.
If you're talking about the foreign actors... No movie industries except Hollywood can afford to hire 'good' native-english speaking actors. Blame the disgustingly overinflated Hollywood actor/actress salary.
I don't mind bad English but the acting is mediocre and Lee Young Ae looks like she is doing a horror movie. Aside from that, it's very enjoyable.
shareSwiss people aren't native english speakers lol
French, Italian etc. are their first languages. That makes it explainable, and honestly I dont mind how bad the English is..... being a2nd generation korean-american and being forced to watch without subtitles listening to english is very soothing lol. luckily i'm getting better at my korean so its getting one hell of a lot easier to watch :P
French, Italian?? I believe German is the first language in Switzerland. You may find French and Italian at the borders.
All that we see or seem. Is it but a dream within a dream?
Isn't it like 66% German, 20% French, 13% Italian, and 1% Romansch?
shareThat seems about right.
All that we see or seem. Is it but a dream within a dream?
quote from The Cia Fact Book
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/sz.html
German 65%, French 18%, Italian 10%, Romansch 1%, other 6%
In fact it's not German. It's Swiss German. Most of the Germans wouldn't understand Swiss German as I can tell myself being a Swiss from Switzerland's capital Bern in the Swiss German speaking part.
There are several dialects within Swiss German. Each canton (similar to the states in the U.S.) has it's own.
If we'd be talking proper German, people from the other parts of Switzerland wouldn't have such difficulties understanding and learning our language. The so called "Röstigraben" (hash browns ditch), the weak segregation between the German and French part is mostly due to this circumstance.
Lmao, idiot poster. I do agree it was annoying but far from ruining such a great film.
shareI think whats hard is that there are people who cant appreciate a movies beauty and wonderfully written story because they're too shallow to go pass an accent. The english was not bad...there were just accents. I'd watch an accent laden korean drama over a Uwe Boll perfectly executed english drivel anytime. If thats the way you watch films then my friend you have just underappreciated a large percentage of films today.
share"If thats the way you watch films then my friend you have just underappreciated a large percentage of films today."
That's not true, most of my favourite movies are non-english speaking. Yeah the script wasn't bad at all but the accent/english was so bad I couldn't even focus on what they said.
Imo it's the directors fault, he shouldn't pick actors to speak english who doesn't actually know any english. If he does, he should at least make them pronounce their lines better, come on, It can't be that hard, they didn't even talk that much.
Don't tell me he was a too much of a wuss to push them harder into doing a good job.
But it makes no sense that they would have a sleek accent. All three English speaking characters were not native English speakers (including Sophie Jang), and all three actors are not native English speakers. I'm guessing Park wanted originality with their accents.
shareHe failed. The accents weren't original, just overdone, and the movie suffered greatly because of it. The plotline lost me somewhere in the middle, and not because it would be incomprehensible, but simply because of the horrific acting and english. It wasn't even a nice enough try for me to finish the movie.
shareYeah the movie would have been better if it was completely in korean. Or if the non-korean dialogues were minimized so much that you wouldn't notice it.
The acting was horrible when they spoke english, the guys and the girls but the korean-speaking acting was quite ok, dont u agree?
I find out, in 90% of the cases (at least ones I asked), when people say that the foreign movies had horrible acting, they were watching it with dubbing instead of subtitles. I tried it out and watched Oldboy (one of my favorite movies) with dubbing... and I gotta say, acting sucked ass.
Song Gang Ho, Shin Ha Kyoon, and Yi Young Ae were all excellent in my opinion. Lee Byung Hyun could've been better, but hey, he made redemption with A Bittersweet Life.
Give them a break. There's no way in hell Korean producers can afford decent English-speaking actors. If you look at the average budgets for a movie in Korea... some of them match what the actors get in Hollywood.
Yeah but this movies wasn't dubbed, it was with subtitles(the version I saw). And the sucky english combined with the acting still ruined what could have been a real good movie.
Btw oldboy is also my favourite movie and I haven't seen it dubbed, just with subtitles.
"Give them a break. There's no way in hell Korean producers can afford decent English-speaking actors. If you look at the average budgets for a movie in Korea... some of them match what the actors get in Hollywood."
Seriously, I don't get your point. How could an actor who speaks fluent english cost more than one who doesn't? It's not like an actor gets more paid just because he knows english. If the director wants to have ENGLISH speaking actors in his movie at least HE COULD get some decent ones, and why would they be more expensive? Tell me please.. Oo
Don't tell me he was a too much of a wuss to push them harder into doing a good job.
Since Yee Young Aeh's play, she was from Switherland, so it could be better both UN official and her speaking french, or at least she has some french dialect inside of her english.
shareNo, french dialect on english doesn't sound like that, that dialect was definitely asian.
The problem with reality is the lack of background music
English speech not very good.
Minor part of film.
Rest excellent.
The actors had a German accent. So far it is pretty okay with me, since they are supposed to be Swiss.
Let me hear you make decisions, without your television
Not the girl - she had a east asian accent. And the guys from german/europe had an unreal accent too, how do I know that? 'Cause i live in theese areas and I know how it sounds when ppl talk english, it's not that bad. Those actors had the worse accent i've heard, thus making their acting look fake.
The problem with reality is the lack of background music
Well, no offense, but you realize that both of them are Germans in real life? The swedish soldier also stars in "Verbotene Liebe" as Lars Schneider. I thought it was amazingly funny to see him in JSA.
Let me hear you make decisions, without your television
The swedish soldier is german, and his accent ruined all his dialogues, they should've choose someone else, and same goes for the other actors. It's strange tho, usually soldiers, ambassadors, jurists etc working abroad tend to be the ones with best english, thats quite logic. But this movie examples the opposite, ppl with crappy english working abroad ey?
People have english-accents on different levels, because it gets less noticable the more you practise english. And im quite familiar to german/swedish ones 'cause I live here, and those portrayed in the movie was the crappiest I've heard, strange coming from people who works and lives abroad.
**The problem with reality is the lack of background music
you have NO idea how different korean is from english. unless maybe if you were japanese
shareWhat is wrong with the English on that movie? I didn't have difficulties understanding it. What are you? A *beep* yank?
shareFor those that find the stilted English a problem. perhaps go to a country where the universal language is one that very few poeple speak natively, and then you may see similar bad dialogue in real life! I am speaking of Singapore. I have spent some time there, and quite often I have witnessed conversations between people from all over Asia in English, which for all of them is a learned language.
The characters in JSA, and it has been a long time since I saw it, since I picked up an initial Korean R3 release of it, are not native English speakers right, yet they need the language to communicate?
by Kil_Killion 4 days ago (Sun Apr 1 2007 10:28:58 ) Ignore this User | Report Abuse
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For those that find the stilted English a problem. perhaps go to a country where the universal language is one that very few poeple speak natively, and then you may see similar bad dialogue in real life! I am speaking of Singapore. I have spent some time there, and quite often I have witnessed conversations between people from all over Asia in English, which for all of them is a learned language.
The characters in JSA, and it has been a long time since I saw it, since I picked up an initial Korean R3 release of it, are not native English speakers right, yet they need the language to communicate?
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English is nearly an International language, that could be a good thing for the World,so everybody can avoid misunderstandings, accent or not, as long everybody speaks clearly.
If you can let an accent ruin the movie for you then I think you've probably missed the spirit of the movie.
And 'bad acting'?? Song Kang Ho, Lee Byung Hun, Lee young Ae, Kim Tae Woo all reaped in excellent performances (OK, LBH probably could've been a smidge better but still very, very good.) The acting made this movie as great as it is.
BTW, if you want an idea of how the Koreans do struggle w/ the English language, watch "Please Teach Me English." I think it's so bad they decided to poke fun at themselves by making this movie.
Accents and different languages is something even Hollywood productions struggle with. One example that comes to my mind is "Die Hard" where the supposedly German terrorists are speaking such poor German that in German theaters, they were changed to Swedish terrorists (according to what I've heard). Another example is in "The Rundown", where the Brazilian characters speak Portuguese with a quite strange and definitely not Brazilian accent (and I speak native Brazilian Portuguese, so I know).
I really don't understand why this aspect of the production is never taken care of carefully. In some cases they go to extremes in production so everything is perfect but they never worry too much about the accents.
In the case of JSA I find it acceptable that the English speaking characters have accents (as it was pointed out in this thread countless times, they're not native English speakers), but I also think that the woman had a very poor acting performance. Not counting the following things that are very hard to believe:
- She's half Korean but she looks like the definition of a 100% Korean woman. If you look for Korean Woman in the dictionary they will show you a picture of her.
- I don't know how old she is in the movie, but she looks too young to be a major.
Being in the swiss army right know I can assure you that the swiss general ("divisonnaire") seemed very real for me ;-)! He also has a swiss german accent when he talks english AND has a swiss german accent when he talks in french to the major because she comes from geneva and you speak french there.
share