Emilia Pérez, a musical film directed by French director Jacques Audiard, is in the eye of a mediatic storm right now. It tells the story of a Mexican cartel leader, played by Spanish actress Karla Sofía Gascón, who undergoes gender-affirming surgery to transition into a woman with the help of a lawyer, portrayed by US actress Zoe Saldaña. The film has received many accolades, including 13 Oscar nominations and four Golden Globe wins, as well as the Jury Prize and the Best Actress award for its female ensemble at the Cannes Film Festival. 

The film has also sparked intense controversy and criticism, particularly in Mexico, due to what many Mexicans see as its use of stereotypes, its insensitive handling of the issues of drug trafficking and mass disappearances, and its production outside of Mexico with mostly non-Mexican actors. Actress Selena Gomez – who is not a Spanish speaker – has been criticised for her ”indefensible” accent and the awkward delivery of her lines, the cadences of which sound odd and somewhat robotic to native Spanish speakers. 

As regards the Spanish spoken by Gomez’s character, the director and the production team have argued that its deficiencies are justified by the fact that the character is a US citizen who is not fluent in Spanish. However, as has been pointed out by Mexican translator and linguist Adrián Chávez, there is a significant discrepancy between the character’s alleged non-proficiency in Spanish and her vocabulary, linguistic register, tone, and cultural references, which are suited to someone with a much higher competency level.

There are also issues regarding not Gomez’s delivery of her lines in Spanish, but the Spanish text itself. In one musical number, Gomez sings “bienvenida”, a term that at first blush makes little sense – until one realises that it is most likely a translation of the English phrase You’re welcome. 

You’re welcome, of course, has a double meaning: both that of welcoming someone, and the formulaic reply given when someone else thanks you – which can also be used sarcastically. The latter meaning would seem to fit better within the context of the song, in which Gomez’s character reacts with sardonic bitterness when she realises the extent of her husband’s betrayal. It has been argued, however, that this translation was a deliberate choice, reflecting the character’s ‘welcome’ into a new stage of her life. 

Many, however, remain unpersuaded – all the more so because, in the same song, Gomez’s character sings the words “cerró la llave”. Llave in Spanish means both key and tap or faucet; and the phrase “cerró la llave” only makes sense for the latter meaning: to shut off a tap or faucet. Again, this seems to be a mistranslation of the English blocked the key or the French bloqué la clé, since Gomez’s character is recounting how her estranged husband blocked her access to their bank accounts. A correct translation, given the context, would have been “bloqueó la clave”. 

Finally, and perhaps most notorious, is the sentence Hasta me duele la pinche vulva nada más de acordarme de ti (literally, “Even my f***ing vulva hurts when I remember you”) – an intensely awkward sentence that, it can be safely argued, was never uttered by any native Spanish speaker. There are many, many ways to refer to female genitalia in Spanish, but the clinical “vulva” is really rather unlikely in a non-medical context – much less its combination with the harsh Mexican Spanish profanity pinche. 

These mistranslations, it has been suggested, are the result of automatic translation into Spanish of text originally written in French and/or English. And we must say that, in the face of the evidence, we find this hypothesis plausible. 

Adrián Chávez has described the film as an act of cultural appropriation, which does not delve into the human reality of Mexico, drug trafficking, or transgender issues, but rather treats them as mere props. The filmmakers, he argues, targeted Global North viewers, not a Mexican or Latin American audience: hence their carelessness with the Mexican Spanish dialogues, which native speakers find not only offensive, but – which is arguably worse – ridiculous. 

Filmmakers, Chávez argues, make deliberate choices which are not only artistic, but economic and political – including what languages they use in their films, and how they translate them. Hence they shouldn’t be surprised when their choices are found risible by the audiences they neglected to consider.

A lesson, we find, which applies not only to film dialogues, but to any text.