Brazilian Television

GOM (Grumpy Old Man) alert! First of many!

I spent 2 years with no access to television, and must admit that I did not miss it, but finally succumbed and subscribed to Sky. OK, I have no problem with them dubbing English-speaking programmes into Portuguese (I am, after all, living in Brazil!), but I do get angry at the terrible translation errors!

While watching Ice Road Truckers, The Andes, they stated that they were driving 2700 kilometres above sea level, but later got it right at 2500 metres. If someone just listened to it before broadcasting they would have known this was wrong.

They also need someone who can convert miles per hour to kilometres per hour (and miles to kilometres) – it is a very simple conversion!! Divide mph by 5 and multiply the result by 8 for kph. The same goes for pounds to kilos – a pound is 2.2 kilos, not 2, 4, 6, or whatever else the translator might think. (In this case often the dubbing is over the original voice so you can hear the pound figure)

Subtitles are another bugbear of mine – even when the programme is in my native English, I cannot stop reading the subtitles (OK, I am weird, I even read them when they are in languages I don’t understand!), and they are worse for errors than the dubbing. But I “love” it most when they spell names differently each time they appear!

Final muttering here – number changes! They keep changing the programme numbers and names! For some reason you cannot select “favourites” so have to scroll through over 100 channels (including about 70 that are blocked as they are pay-only) looking for programmes (if, like me, you can never remember the numbers), but every now and then (regularly as I have only had TV 6 months so far) they move programmes, or change numbers, or “free” programmes become pay-only. For example, the package I took out had a Golf Channel, but this disappeared completely!

First rant over!

Update: This was originally written a couple of years ago, and I have since cancelled my SKY subscription and taken out one with Netflix. Great thing is it goes with me wherever I am so I have access while in Peru for 6 months of the year!