Asinine Film Title Translations

[djali999]

The Puppet Masters -Someone moves the threads

Sure that's not for this forum?

[jbeall]

Now for some brazilian translations. Some are almost impossible to translate, even in portuguese i don't fully understand them!

Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back - The empire ( of nuisance ) strikes back

The tuxedo - The 2 bil. dollar suit

That first translation is hilarious--and so true!

As for the second one, I kinda like it--it hints at Six Million Dollar Man aspect of the secret agent genre. (As for the movie tiself, I haven't seen it, so can't comment on that.)

Some dumb translations into English:

The Czech movie Musime si Pomahat ("We must help each other") becomes "Divided We Stand."

And isn't the literal title of Throne of Blood something like "The House of the Spider Web" or something like that?

Jacques Feyder's La Kermesse Heroique ("The Heroic Fair/Carnival") becomes "Carnival in Flanders". I realize that these are relatively minor (and unfunny) bad translations, but in each case I think the translation misses out on the point of the original title.

[djali999]

Throne of Blood's Japanese title is something like "Castle of The Spider's Web". I'll take Throne of Blood over that any day of the week, mind you, and I think High and Low - which actually dilutes the meaning of the original title - is a far worse case scenario.

[mikebowes]

I've got an Asian DVD (HK, Japan?) of Philppe Garrel's "Night Wind" which translated the title to "Flavor of the Night Breeze." Reading the description on the back cover is simply side splitting, and the credits on the bottom are for some Mario Van Peebles film.

[MichaelB]

OK, here's a translation issue that I'm having to wrestle with right now in connection with the BFI's upcoming Jan Å vankmajer box set. I've just licensed some clips from a 1977 Czech comedy called Adéla jeÅ¡tÄ› neveÄ

[Kinsayder]

One of the IMDb aka titles is Dinner for Adele, which has a nice ring to it.

[tryavna]

At the moment, I'm tempted to go for the latter option, but what do you think?

Michael, I've never seen the movie, but I know that it has a fairly sizeable cult audience here in the States -- or used to anyway. And all the references to it I've ever seen in print use the title Nick Carter in Prague. In fact, I believe Leonard Maltin lists it under that title in his movie guide. Not the most authoritative of sources, I know, but it's the most prominent source I can think of at the moment.

[MichaelB]

I think that's probably good enough for me - quite apart from anything else, it's much easier to remember.

So Nick Carter in Prague it is - and thanks for the info.

[Sanjuro]

Japan:

A Knights Tale = ROCK YOU!

Actually that's probably a better title...

Masked and Anonymous = Inside Bob Dylan's Head.

That's pretty good too. Gotta think of some bad ones...

[Sanjuro]

More amusement from Japan:

House of a 1000 Corpses & The Devils Rejects = Murder Ride Show 1 & 2 respectively. Yeah!!

Children of Men = Tomorrow World. Huh??!

[Jun-Dai]

I actually prefer the High and Low over 天国ã

[Apu]

In the Netherlands they stopped translating titles into Dutch about 20 years ago. Now they are just released with their English title and a lot of films, especially Asian films, but also some films from Spain or Italy and even Germany are released with an English title too.

Some of those old Dutch translations (some are hard to translate):

The Cannonball Run - On the highway hell breaks loose
The Cannonball Run 2 : On the highway hell breaks loose again!
Arthur - His education has ended... and failed
Das Boot - On the other side of war
Porky's : porky's spicy amusement park
Forced Vengeance: Chuck Norris plans your funeral
The Evil Dead - Don't go alone

[domino harvey]

Forced Vengeance: Chuck Norris plans your funeral

too good to be real

[hieronymus]

In Korea the major trend in naming American films recently is to simply write in Korean how it sounds in English, although when it's too long, they get shortened, whether it makes sense or not:

TOMORROW NEVER DIES -> 007 NEVER DIE
THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW -> TOMORROW (a prequel?)

The most inventive retitling I remember is one for Wes Craven's SHOCKER, which was turned into THE NECKLACE OF THE SPIRITS. The distributors came up with this clever idea to market the film as a supernatural love story like its contemporary hit GHOST. Nobody bought it, of course.

[Cinesimilitude]

you think title translations are funny? Check this stuff out.

The Two Towers... In Engrish.

[skuhn8]

you think title translations are funny? Check this stuff out.

The Two Towers... In Engrish.

LOL! 'Warmongering?!' becomes 'You are warm hungry'

or

'Can you not see? Your uncle is wearied by your malcontent... ' becomes:
'Can you not see that your uncle is varied by your mall content.'
but one of the best is
'Too long have you watched my sister... ' translated as:
'too long i wanted my sister' yes, indeed, any time is probably too long.

Hilarious. Life here is much like that. Go to almost any restaurant in Budapest and the English menu is crawling with embarrassing and stupid mistakes that often as not render the description incomprehensible. Never mind that the city is teeming with English teachers that would gladly proof the whole menu in one go for the price of a meal and a beer. Special certain kind of pride in getting wrong.

[MichaelB]

LOL! 'Warmongering?!' becomes 'You are warm hungry'

Apparently there's a notorious French 35mm print of Sam Peckinpah's Cross of Iron where the urgent warning "Tanks!" is rendered as "Merci!"

Special certain kind of pride in getting wrong.

I discovered Hong Kong films in the 1980s, and still feel intensely nostalgic for the subtitles on authentic HK prints, to the point where I'd love it if companies like Hong Kong Legends offered two subtitle tracks: correct English ones for purists and original ones for... well, purists of a different stripe.

There was a great letter in Sight & Sound in the early 1990s in response to one of their video critics complaining about poor subtitles on one of the first official HK releases on the UK market. I'm paraphrasing from memory, but it pointing out (correctly) that the lousy subtitling was one of the great incidental pleasures of HK filmwatching, and that when you're confronted with Chow Yun-Fat in Tiger on the Beat voicing his suspicions about the contents of a female drug smuggler's underwear and it comes out as "I suspect her bra also contains cock"...

...well, you're not exactly going to be irritated by it, are you?

[jbeall]

[quote="MichaelB"]OK, here's a translation issue that I'm having to wrestle with right now in connection with the BFI's upcoming Jan Å vankmajer box set. I've just licensed some clips from a 1977 Czech comedy called Adéla jeÅ¡tÄ› neveÄ

[Bajaja]

I would vote for the "clunky" "Adela Hasn't Eaten Yet" in order to keep in line with the whole series of Czech comedies of that time, which include "Tomorrow I'll Wake Up and Scald Myself with the Tea", "Marecek, Hand Me the Pen, Please", "Jachym, Throw Him in the Machine"... I am convinced that the "clunky" titles were deliberate and together they make sense, kind of.

[MichaelB]

I would vote for the "clunky" "Adela Hasn't Eaten Yet" in order to keep in line with the whole series of Czech comedies of that time, which include "Tomorrow I'll Wake Up and Scald Myself with the Tea", "Marecek, Hand Me the Pen, Please", "Jachym, Throw Him in the Machine"... I am convinced that the "clunky" titles were deliberate and together they make sense, kind of.

That would be a very convincing argument if I was presenting the film in that context - i.e. as un film de Oldřich Lipský, or as part of a series of 1970s Czech comedies. But I'm using this material as a representation of what Jan Švankmajer was up to in the 1970s when he was banned from making his own films - so the comedic element is irrelevant.

(Actually, when you reduce Adéla to its special effects sequences, as I've just done, it's rather disturbing - as one might expect!)

Oh, and just to stay on topic, I've always thought The 400 Blows was a ludicrous title - I'm sure it works in French, but it gives quite the wrong impression in English! (Someone came up with Wild Oats at the time, which might have been better). And I've heard delicious rumours that Godard's Pierrot le fou was once released as Crazy Pete - then again, that's not a million miles removed from the original!

[Kinsayder]

Some Renoir-related nitpicking:

La Grande illusion becomes Grand Illusion. Is that even a translation at all, or just a mispronunciation? The French word "grand" ("big") does not translate to the English word "grand" (connoting excellence) without a heavy dose of irony. When the French say "Grande Bretagne" the phrase is purely descriptive!

La Règle du jeu becomes The Rules of the Game. Not asinine, but it misses the other meaning of "jeu": "performance" as well as "game". It's the hypocrisy of social performance that Renoir is targeting, a point emphasised by the "jeu" of the actors in the amateur theatricals. "Rules of Play" has a sense of the double meaning but is not wholly satisfactory either.

[Cinesimilitude]

Games are generally associated with children, and I believe that supports the "jeu" in question being translated as such. with the state of the world at that time, all these people can do is go to their mansion and chase each other's women. childish, no?

[colinr0380]

Oh, and just to stay on topic, I've always thought The 400 Blows was a ludicrous title - I'm sure it works in French, but it gives quite the wrong impression in English! (Someone came up with Wild Oats at the time, which might have been better).

Would it have sounded better at the time, when caning was still a fun pasttime for teachers? It does sound slightly suspicious in this era of underage sex!

Sadly, I could never tell my friends about watching the great 50s film Young Man With A Horn, without hearing them snigger! (I guess that is why they changed it to Young Man of Music in Britain and Young Man With A Trumpet in Australia!)

The idea of clunky titles reminds me of the Lasse Hallström film on the My Life As A Dog disc - Shall We Go To My Or Your Place Or Each Go Home Alone, but then I think that was a pretty accurate translation!

[Anonymous]

The most ridiculous titles are mostly in the exploitation corner. It's really hilarious to go through all the original Mario Bava titles and then look at the translations. Operazione paura (= Operation Fear) becomes Kill, Baby... Kill! Which maniac had that stupid idea?

[Gregory]

Recently I noticed that the title of Miyazaki's Tenkû no shiro Rapyuta was translated in the UK as Laputa: Castle in the Sky. I'm not sure why they changed the first letter but to the growing number of Spanish speakers there, the title reads: "TheWhore: Castle in the Sky."