American/English Production Vocabulary Comparisons

Thu, 31 Aug 2006 20:00:00 GMT

"We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language" - Oscar Wilde, The Canterville Ghost, 1887

The idea for this dictionary began during a survey/scout of a theater/theatre in Brussels prior to an Anglo-American television production. The director selected camera locations. Two were to be located towards the rear of the lowest level of audience.

I wandered off to discuss technical issues with the stage crew. My French is poor and my Flemish essentially non-existent, but I had little difficulty communicating with the Belgians. I returned to find the American female producer and the British male producer screaming at each other. They were saying exactly the same thing and didn't realize it.

He: So we're having two cameras in the stalls.

She: No, we agreed not to put cameras in the boxes; they're going in the orchestra.

He: We agreed not to put cameras with the musicians!

She: Of course we're not having cameras in the pit!

He: Yes, we are!

It helps to know that the lowest level of theatrical audience in English is called the stalls, which seems suspiciously like boxes to an American. The same level is called the orchestra by an American, which means the musicians in English. To the American, those musicians play in the pit. But the pit is an old English theatrical term for the lowest level of audience.

Professions often have their own jargons, never mind American/English language variations. How many people not employed in theatrical work know that tormentors hide the view of off-stage areas from the audience or that vomitories are entrances piercing the seating? Abbreviate those terms as torms and voms, and people can't even look them up in dictionaries. Front porch, back porch, breezeway, flag, and pedestal might have certain meanings in architecture; they're also used differently to describe components of a U.S.-standard video signal.

Then there are those American/English variations. Americans in England giggle when they hear someone say he's knocked up the vicar's wife; the English in America find Don't Honk street signs equally amusing. It helps to know that to knock up, a perfectly respectable English term for to pay a visit means to impregnate in American slang. Similarly, to honk, perfectly normal American for to toot an automobile horn, is British slang for to vomit.

Times are changing. A billion used to be a thousand million in American but a million million in English, where a thousand million was a milliard. Since the 1970s, however, the thousand-million connotation has been used in Britain, though milliard is still used in non-UK English. Similarly, CSO is now usually called chroma key on both sides of the Atlantic. So take what follows with a grain of salt.

Enjoy!

Mark Schubin

Hollywood Post Alliance Technology Retreat

February 2004

31-Aug-06 3:00 PM

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American/English Production Vocabulary Comparisons