I've always watched the original version, in particular the extended one, but since I wanted to watch this movie with a friend who doesn't speak English, I watched the dubbed version. And I couldn't believe my ears! Fran is renamed Jane in Italian!
Would anyone know anything about this? I really don't get the reason for doing this.
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Zombies ain't vegetarians!!
Complete guess here seeing as I don't speak Italian, but I'd figure there must be an Italian word "Fran" or similar that might mean something like Peanut Butter in English, so to avoid confusion or Italian audiences cracking up any time her name is spoken, they chose the plain "Jane".
It could also be there is no Italian name "Fran", so they may have chosen the closest name to Fran in Italian, but then when the Italian to English translation occurred, the Italian name translates back into English as Jane.
One final reason I can think of. Sometimes the Italian versions of American names sound different, but the Italian version Fran might sound similar to the Italian version of Peter or Roger, like Fran in Italian might be Frinze, whereas Roger in Italian is Fronze, so rather than have the audience going crazy between Frinze and Fronze, they just say "screw it! Just call her Jane!"
Thanks for your reply and sorry for not getting back at this earlier.
You make excellent points, they would all be good reasons. Except "Fran" in Italian could be short for "Francesca", it's the same name, so I don't think that's why they did it.
Really, really weird. Anyway, the original version is soooo much better. Names aside, I simply don't like Argento's cut, I think he left off too much.
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Zombies ain't vegetarians!!
The Argento cut is the first version I actually saw (with Romero's version as a close second) - the names could have all been translated into Italian (my first language and I'm a national/citizen).
Stephen = Stefano (my name) - for "Flyboy", he could have been nicknamed "Gino Pilotino" (Gino the Little Pilot)
Peter = Pietro
Fran = Francesca
Roger = Ruggero
Thank God they didn't!
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Zombies ain't vegetarians!!