In the history of Game of Thrones, no twist has blindsided the fan base like the revelation of Hodor’s origins. We’d all assumed that he was just an affable simpleton who worked for House Stark, and didn’t give much thought to why he could only say the word “Hodor.” But in the show’s sixth season, we learned that Hodor as we know him is the result of Bran Stark traveling back in time and screwing with his head, albeit unintentionally. “Hodor” is really a shortened version of “Hold the door,” the instructions Meera Reed yelled at Hodor as he held the door to the Three-Eyed Raven’s shut against a horde of rampaging wights, giving Bran and Meera Reed time to escape. The words reverberated back through time in a scene that has already become iconic:
But how, you may wonder, did this scene play in other languages? In the French dub of the show, for example, Hodor is still named Hodor, but the French translation for “Hold the door” is “Tenir la porte”; that’s not going to boil down to “Hodor.”
YouTuber Paxauror has put together a little supercut showing how this scene was translated into four different languages: French, Italian, Spanish and Japanese. Here’s how it shook out:
It’s fun to see how different translators came up with different solutions for the problem. The French changed what Meera said (“Don’t let them go outside!”) so it would collapse into something that sounded roughly like “Hodor,” while the Spanish didn’t have to change much of anything.
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