Shogun: Hit Series Gets Lost in Translation

Why does it strike me as a bad call when characters in a TV series claim they’ll translate to Portuguese but continue speaking English?

Rui Alves
Fanfare
Published in
6 min readMay 2, 2024

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Japanese actor Hiroyuki Sanada as lord Yoshii Toranaga in Shogun.
FX Networks

I’m a native Portuguese speaker and English is my second language. I’m also a linguist and a teacher who has done his fair share of translation work, and my love for…

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I'm a language teacher, linguist and published author (who joined the Army and worked for the EU). A publisher, digital ronin, musician and alchemist of sound.