I have to wonder that Eve is really saying “Who are you?” when she first ‘meets’ Wall-E?? It doesn’t make sense to me b/c she has not yet verified what language he speaks - which comes a few minutes later. Help! This is driving me crazy! I am such a geek.
“Who are you?” isn’t in the script for WALL-E. I think that “Who are you?” might be what Elissa Knight was actually saying during the recording session, but the viewer isn’t supposed to know that (it was sufficiently disguised by Ben Burtt). That’s my guess anyway. =) Welcome to the forums!
Are you talking about after the cockroach is on her arm and she brings it back to WALL•E, when she has her gun trained on him? In the script at this point, it says - EVE: (electronic hums) - [Identify yourself]. When recording the voice, Elissa Knight probably did say ‘who are you’, since ‘identify yourself’ is in brackets in the script, so therefor just a rough interpretation of what EVE may be saying at that point, not a direct translation.
This being said, I seem to remember seeing the movie, and hearing a computerized altered version of ‘who are you?’. At this point, WALL•E, shocked at her approaching him, doesn’t seem to understand what she is saying, as noted in the script, (Page 11 according to the numbers at the top), so this is probably why she tries out other languages with him later, (page 13), before reverting back to English.
As for subtitles being accurate, generally on TV, they don’t seem to be as much, especially with a none-scripted broadcast, but I think movies like WALL•E would tend to be. This is of course provided that you are watching a DVD, where the subtitles would presumably be put together by the studio. On TV, who knows, since sometimes they look like they were put together pretty quickly.
Hope this helps,
-C-3PO
My assumption was that because of the non-traditional dialogue of WALL•E, they don’t subtitle exactly what is being said, but they subtitle the general message being said. If I recall, the subtitles on WALL•E are for people who are hearing-impaired, and sometimes to translate dialogue into understandable sentences for deaf people, it needs to be altered slightly. If it were subtitles for people that simply spoke a different language, maybe it would be a direct translation.
But there are instances where what shows up on the subtitles is from an earlier version of a script or TV show, where the subtitles need to be submitted early, or they forgot or didn’t have time to change the subtitles, so what you get is an alternate line of dialogue (sometimes even the more risqué dialogue that got censored out, but not censored out of the subtitles, for whatever reason.)
You know how at the end of the movie, riiight at the end after the BnL logo comes up (you do watch WALL•E till the end, don’t you? ), well, I think the decision to have the “WALL•E fixing Luxo Jr.” logo rather than the typical Pixar logo was a somewhat last minute decision. This is because the subtitles come on a little too early, so you have the BnL words down the bottom while the Pixar logo is still playing.
As for which case it was with WALL•E and that line of dialogue. It could have been any of those reasons that have already been said, really.
The Russian localizers over-tried, as usual. In their translation, in the episode ‘behind the tires’ Eve is saying ‘Ktoah tuckoy?’ (‘who are you’ in a bit offensive way). It proves that someone thought it was ‘Who are you?’
Well, they’re a lot better than they used to be (they used to miss out whole words and phrases and rarely included any real punctuation, making the words look almost meaningless and devoid of any human emotion) but yeah, we’ve got to think about this in the view of someone who is hearing-impaired or deaf. When we hear what EVE says, even if we don’t understand it, we get the general gist that she’s asking a question because of her tone of voice. So having subtitles say something along the same lines keep those who need the subtitles up to date with exactly what is going on between WALL-E and EVE. I was actually surprised when the subtitles came up, though, since usually most DVD manufacturers (or whoever adds the subtitles) don’t bother if the words are a bit obscure.
Or maybe EVE does actually say ‘who are you?’ It does sort of sound like that when she says it.
She could also be saying it in a different language. The first time she says “Who are you?” or an equivalent (it makes WALL•E fall over) I couldn’t understand what phrase she said. But like I said before, rather than subtitling the foreign word, they subtitled its meaning. I want to know what the first phrase is, though.
First off, welcome, Hello Wall-E! 
I believe that really was what she said. However, when I first saw it in the theater, a friend and I heard (or interpretated it as), “Come out”. Strange.
If you slow it down then it does sound like she said who are you. But in the movie jsut sounds like a bunch of robot mumble, although I understand, if you do listen closely you can hear it. But in the script it said in brackets “identify yourself”
But I’m gonna take a guess and say that maybe Andrew realized that Eve didn’t know what language Wall-E understood, and then had Ben change who are you so that they wouldn’t have to have Elissa record mumble again, because of how Andrew really emphasized the “last minute” thing. So that was probably another minor last minute change.
During the scene where Wall-E is practicing talking to EVE before climbing up the garbage chute the DVD subtitles have him say “Pathetic”. I guess with a film where the main characters don’t have real voices you kinda have to make some stuff up.
Think of it as being translated from a base robotic language. EVE’s not really saying “Who are you?” at that moment, at least we aren’t meant to think so. There’s also a moment where it says WALL-E is saying “You pop.” about the bubble wrap. Clearly this is the translation of what he intends for her to do, but I’ve yet to “hear” WALL-E distinctly make the “you” sound in that scene, rather it sounds like “mmm pop”. The mmm’s meant to indicate he’s talking to her, of course, but I do not believe we should think he was genuinely saying the word “you”.
[quote]
During the scene where Wall-E is practicing talking to EVE before climbing up the garbage chute the DVD subtitles have him say “Pathetic”. I guess with a film where the main characters don’t have real voices you kinda have to make some stuff up.[.quote]
Yeah, that one bothered me too. He’s clearly not forming the syllables for pathetic, so I guess we can again assume it is being translated from a base robotic language.
I agree with that, wallefanatic. That’s basically what I did with my fanfic I’m writing here. I made up the human dialogue for the characters based on the robotic noises from the film. 