In the film the British pilot, Jack, asked the young Dutch boy, Michiel, for the Dutch word for "bastard." Michiel answers with the Dutch word, "Klootzak!" and Jack repeats it several times and both young men laugh. In truth, the Dutch word, "Klootzak!" literally translates as "ballsack" or "scrotum." Even today the word is the most used slur by Dutch speaking men, and many women.
shareNot true what you said here!
Jack does NOT ask the Dutch boy Michiel for the Dutch word for "bastard".
BUT... he asks Jack what to say in Dutch to a person he really likes.
And Michiel knows that Jack fancies his sister, so to get back to him he replies "klootzak"... and to that he says that his sister is a real "klootzak", instead of sweetheart or so.
But it is true that literally translated into English the Dutch word "klootzak" means "ballsack".
And that word is used in Dutch language nowadays, but I wonder if it was already used in World War II. And that word has the same meaning/impact as the American word "a**h*le".
Subtitles in English are meant, I guess, for those of us who speak English. It is logical that they would use a word like bastard, which we know as a slur, instead of the literal translation ballsack, which means nothing to us.
I suspect this sort of thing is done quite a bit, out of necessity, with movie subtitles.
Strange. I just put klootzak into google translate and it came up with azzhole but with ss. Translate.com came up with bastard.
If the subtitles had said ballsack, nutsack, or scrotum, I would see it as a funny insult.