Movie-related fact-checking has today brought me incidental amusement, via a few of the more bizarre translations of English-language film titles to be found around the world. I started small, with the rather worrying French and Belgian rendering of the 1998 flick Wild Things as Sex Crimes. Progressing to Italian, I chuckled a little harder at 1968 car caper The Love Bug becoming Il Maggiolino Tutto Matto (”The Totally Crazy Beetle”); and slightly harder still—although I’m not proud of this—at its 1974 sequel, Herbie Rides Again, appearing in West Germany as Herbie groß in Fahrt (translation, unamusingly, “Herbie, largely in transit”).
In Israel, still more inventive linguists clearly prevail, and even a rapid online survey yielded masterful conversions such as Groundhog Day into Waking Up Yesterday Morning, Spaceballs into Crazy in Space, Fatal Attraction into Fateful Courtship, and—a particular favourite—The Naked Gun into The Gun Died Laughing. My special achievement award, however, belongs to whoever decided that the 1992 zombie horror fantasy Army of Darkness would be best presented to Japanese audiences as Kyaputien Supamaketto, or “Captain Supermarket.” Genius like that needs no justification.
Haha — very amusing. I sometimes wonder about translations in, say, diplomatic situations.
For a live and amusing experiment in translation try entering the name of a famous book,film or record album into an online translation machine such as Babelfish.
Mailers “The Naked and the Dead” rendered into german becomes “Das Blanke and Die Toten” and then back into English as “The Bright and the Dead Ones”.
“The Mill On The Floss” becomes “Le Moulin sur la Soie.”
which back to English becomes “The Mill on Silk”
“Death In The afternoon” becomes “Muerte por la Tarde” = and back as “Death In The Evening”.
“Brave New World” becomes “Bravez le nouveau monde” which returns as “Face The New World”
and finally the “greatest” pop album ever made “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” becomes, in German “Herz-Verein-Band Des Sergeant-Pfeffers Einsames” and then translated back very snappily as “Heart association volume of the Sergeant pepper lonely”.
In Spanish it travels through “Venda Lonely Hearts Club De Sargento Pepper’s” and then remerges in a sickly form as “Bandage Lonely Hearts Club Of Sergeant Pepper’s”. Its a fun game.
Some bad translations from Japanese have also become internet phenomena:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_your_base_are_belong_to_us
http://www.rip-factor.com/starwars/badtrans/starpict.html