We have characters referring to galoots and numpties, and even an exclamation of “ Jings crivins, help ma boab!” Or have a few thick-accented characters who are translated for viewers, “He meant ‘Yes, that’s fair.'” Instead, we have a mother who warns her child that she’ll get gobblywobbles if she eats a whole pile of treats. The cowardly answer would have been to have the characters speak with a mildly Scottish accent and throw in a few “wee lads and lasses” and leave it at that.

Do you really need a translation to understand the emotional context of this real world squabble? Rather than translate him – or anyone – the characters react and move on. There are a lot of vocabulary words that would be totally unfamiliar to the average American child, and there’s even a character that speaks in an incomprehensibly thick Doric accent. Instead, Pixar encouraged the voice actors to make dialect suggestions. It would have been all too tempting to let executives step in and market position the Scottish right out of Brave. I gave up on trying to take notes in the dark fairly early on as I watched Brave, but one of the few I did manage was, “ a princess donea stuff her gob.” Why was that noteworthy? Because they left it in.

Brave movie accent