During the BIFF, I’ve seen a number of Spanish Language films. Most have been amazingly beautiful, not to mention in a language that I love.

None of them have been comedies.

However, the Spanish to Korean “translations” which take place during the Q&A, following the film, is nothing but pure comedy.

Now, I know that there are no Spanish speaking countries near Korea, so naturally one would not expect a large Spanish-speaking population of Koreans to be hanging around; however, this being one of the biggest film festivals in Asia, one would generally expect that qualified translators would in fact be employed.

Not so the case with BIFF. I can only assume that those in charge of translator-finding duties, walked into a university Spanish 101 class and hired the students with the highest grades.

The Spanish-Korean Q&A sessions were nothing short of hilarious.

During the first Q&A I sat through, the Barcelonian director switched over to broken English (so the English translator could relay the message), rather than listen to the “translator” suffer through not knowing a single word in Spanish beyond “que.” There was a lot of “uh uh uh” and “크크크.”

Today’s Q&A was with a Porteno (director from Buenos Aires). My friend Erin and I could not control our laughter as the translator relayed the messages into Spanish from the audience with questions such as  “Why would the man fall in love with the woman, because she’s not very pretty?”