On y va..let's go!

I have been in Europe for close to five years now. It has been interesting to say the least. I started with a few basics in French: bonjour, comment-allez-vous?, colors, some food. You know simple stuff. Three years I was in Belgium with English speaking friends and church family. Needless to say I did not practice French nearly as much as I should have. Now, I have been back in France for over one year and I have made definite progress. Before I managed to say a sentence maybe two to try and get my point across. Now, I can carry on a conversation. I can joke (attempt to joke) with friends and even the cashier I see all the time in the grocery store I frequent. I mentioned attempting to joke. Oh my, how culture and language can play a role in making a joke or getting a joke. I have to learn a bit more about France, its entertainment, the language, etc. There are times when literal translation just does not work. When I watch a animated movie in French I try to watch it in English if I have not already. Take the 2012 animated movie Hotel Transylvania. First, when you watch something in a different language the voices are some what different. If you know Adam Sandler and hear him do this Dracula voice it is a bit different than the French voice for the same character. Then there is a matter of translation. Sure some things can be literally translated, but then there are other things that are just different. In this movie Dracula has a daughter named Mavis. At one point he offers her "scream cheese," get it cream cheese. In turn she offers it to the human character, Jonathan. He declines saying he is scream cheese intolerant. Well, in French scream is not scream, so does not rhyme with cream. However there is the cheese La Vache Qui Rit fromage (The Laughing Cow) so the French joke is "vache qui crie." To scream in French is crier. In French Jonathan does not have the same sort of comment as in English, but that is okay. This is merely one example that came to my head quickly since my girls have been watching this movie non-stop. I will also note that French subtitles rarely ever completely match with the spoken translation.