The story of casting Christoph Waltz to play Col. Hans Landa has been told multiple times. How the search for an actor who was fluent in English, German, French, and Italian ended with an Oscar for Waltz. But, what about Tarantino’s screenplay? The writer speaks English, a little Hebrew and some Spanish, so how did he make sure his precise and colorful wordplay was properly translated?
First of all the script itself is written entirely in English. This is to set a universal language the department heads, cast and crew can follow. Tarantino would note when the language was to be spoken in a different tongue. There was careful research done in Prep to properly translate the words and their intent, not just use Google translate and have the actors speak garbled nonsense. (The kind of line readings the film makes fun of when the Americans try to pass themselves off as Italian.) Tarantino also didn’t want to just leave the translation in the hands of the actors, who might add something in the moment that would be off-script. So German filmmaker Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run, Perfume) was brought in to be on-set and work with Tarantino.
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