The Queen’s Gambit – what’s in a name?

After splurging millions of dollars on a lavish drama, you’d think Netflix would spend a little time and effort translating its three word title, but…

I was speaking to a French friend this weekend and wanted to recommend some shows for lockdown, so I searched the internet to see if The Queen’s Gambit is available in French, which it is, under the name “Le Jeu de la dame”.

This struck me as odd, the feeling I often have when proofreading texts which a quick reverse-search confirm to have been fed through a machine translation app.

“Gambit” is not the same thing as “game” or “play” in “English” so why would it be “jeu” in French. Some quick cross-referencing confirmed that “gambit” in French should actually be translated as… “gambit”! The specific opening move in chess, called the “Queen’s Gambit”, is known as “le gambit dame” which would have been the title I’d have suggested (the only word play, so far as I can tell, being an allusion to the title character as a “queen”, which loses nothing with “Le Gambit Dame” or “Le Gambit de la Dame”).

It seems the Netflix series used the French translation given to Walter Tevis’s book in 1990, so Google translate can’t be blamed this time, just a lack of linguistic awareness I think! #netflix #translation #thequeensgambit