China’s translation of the title Guardians of the Galaxy leaves something to be desired.
But at least it’s not Captain Supermarket.
I don’t know, “Interplanetary Unusual Attacking Team” doesn’t sound too far off, to me. Sticking “unusual” in the middle sounds a bit odd to English-speaking ears, but then, the rules for adjective use are subtle and complicated, and it could well be perfectly natural to Chinese-speakers.
Sounds like something produced by a translation program. I’m sure a live translator who’s a native English speaker would render it differently.
I was in Spain not too long ago and they had movie ads that translated to “Infiltrating the University”. Not too bad – at least it’s kind of an accurate description for 22 Jump Street.
J.
Honestly, that’s not a terrible alternate title for Army of Darkness.
Assuming that Chinese characters work like they do in Japanese, in China, it’s not really an adjective. The “unusual” is probably treated more like a prefix. E.g. normal and abnormal. In Japanese, I believe that the title in the link would be:
Seisai Ikoutai
Minus the “unusual”, it would be just:
Seisai Koutai
Only one letter difference. A better translation of the title would probably be “Galactic Xenoforce”.
Yeah, probably machine translation.
I remember hearing about a (bootleg?) Chinese version of Star Wars Episode 3 that translated “The Jedi Council” as “The Presbyterian Church”. It made sense, in a way, as “Jedi” supposedly derives from the Japanese word “jidai” meaning era, and “Presbyterian” comes from the Greek for “of elders”. For the second word, “church” really can mean any group in a metaphorical sense. In many languages, the word typically used for “church” basically is the same word used for many non-religious gatherings. So, translating “The Jedi Council” as “The community of elders” isn’t that far off the mark. In theory.
Or what seems to be the Japanese title: ガーディアンズ・オブ・ギャラクシー
gaadianzu obu gyarakushii
Although the literal Chinese title does sound like stereotypical translations of maybe a tokusatsu film.
Almost every sci-fi anime has a pre-title that sounds something like “Guardians of the Galaxy”, so I suppose it makes sense for them to keep the English transliteration.
Assuming it’s not a hoax.
I don’t understand the logic here. I mean there must be a Chinese word for Guardian. Whether it be the Chinese equivalent of that is Sentry, Defender, Warden etc. The concept of ‘Someone that protects something’ must surely exist in Chinese. Similarly there must surely be a Chinese word for Galaxy.
Google Translate suggests for me “Shǒuhù zhě Yínhé”
Some possibilities:
- Chinese doesn’t have singular and plural forms of words. So while there may be words for “guardian”, it may be that that term is almost always used as a singular so people would interpret “Guardian of the Galaxy” as being about an individual rather than a team.
- All of the common terms for a team of guardians are specific to the entity being guarded. “Emperor-Safety-Team” or something. In English, words are largely just arbitrary sounds, but in Chinese words are explicitly built up from smaller concepts, so it’s easy to end up with words that are very specific.
- Potentially, the Chinese don’t have any emphasis on defense as a positive or respectable thing. Naming something “guardians” might be like naming something “Space Hippies”. There may be some appeal to a minority of the market, but not to the larger part of the market.