I just found out the other day that in Hungarian, Alien is not simply called “Alien” or any of a number of equivalent words in Hungarian. Instead it is called (translated back into English of course):
The Eighth Passenger: Death
or Death, the eighth passenger
WTF?
Now, of course certain movie titles include a play on words that don’t work in the target language. For example, Legally Blonde went by the title “Doctor Susie” in Hungary. Then again, “Chasing Amy” somehow got the moniker “Comic Strip.” Maybe I could understand that. “The Sweetest Thing” becomes “Sweet little nothing.” (It works better colloquially that way.) “Snatch” becomes “Bluff,” etc…
But the “Alien” translation really boggles my mind.
Any other examples you foreign dopers got? Or odd translations of foreign movies into English? We can even make a game out of it. You provide the translated title, we guess the original English title.
There is a list of fake ones on the internet. Here are some real ones:
Fargo": “Ice Blood Cruel and Sudden”
“The Grapes of Wrath”: “Angry Flowers”
“Frankenstein”: “The Silent Strange Man”
“Gone With the Wind”: “The Confused World of a Beautiful Woman”
“Trainspotting”: “Dreaming of Trains”
“Clueless”: “Clever Women’s Power Manager”
“Boogie Nights”: “Fanatical Dance Night”
“Hamlet”: “The Story of the King’s Son Who Kills for Revenge”
“Scream”: “Deprive Life Crazy Shout”
“Psycho”: Literally, “Sight Fear Touch Heart,” which, Allanson writes, idiomatically means “see it and become scared.”
I can’t believe this guy thought some of these were real though some are probably right:
Interesting that the Polish translation of Alien, “The Eighth Passenger of the Nostromo,” is similar to the Hungarian. Must be some sort of connection there.
Actually, I think that title for Alien is pretty cool. Better than “Alien.”
I looked at the fake list, I know some of the Chinese ones are right (English Patient, As Good as it Gets) but the ones that are wrong… Borderline offensive, in addition to being totally transparent, how gullible is this guy?
Alien: the eight passenger
Snatch: Pigs and diamonds
Police Academy: Crazy Police Academy
After that, any “police academy” tipe of movie became Crazy Academy of …, for example:
Hot Shots: Crazy Police Academy of Pilots
Top Secret: Crazy Police Academy of Spies
and so it goes.
Very rearly do they give them a title that is a translation of the original title. It is VEERY annoying when trying to locate a movie at blockbuster, since I know the original title, and they only have the listings by the title in spanish.
I think they also do this in France. In Paris I walked into “Leon” thinking it would be a french flick, but it turned out to be the “directors cut” version of “The Professional” which I had already seen (big dissapointment)
Here’s some Israeli ones from the top of my head -
“Love in the Sky” - Top Gun
“Dying to Live” - Die Hard
“The Gun Died of Laughter” - the Naked Gun (and of course, every subsequent Leslie Nielsen movei also “died of laughter”)
“Cheap Literature” - Pulp Fiction
“Winds of Desire” - Legends of the Fall
“Fatal Memory” - Total Recall (about half of the lower-profile thrillers which show up in Israel somehow have either “Fatal” or “Lethal” added to them)
And of course, “The Eighth Passenger”. Not to mention “The Return of the Eighth Passenger”.
I just had a thought - how many of the languages mentioned above actually have a word for “alien”, as in extraterrestrial? As far as I can recall, I don’t think the Israeli term (Chaizar - “strangelife”) even existed before the mid-80’s, a good five years after Ridley Scotts flick came out. Could “the Eighth Passenger” simply be the appointed word for languages that couldn’t translate the name?
There is a word in spanish for extraterrestrial, namely “extraterrestre”, but they already used it for E.T., which in spanish was ET, El Extraterrestre, so I guess they went that way to avoid confusion. Some use “alienigena” but it is an anglicism.
By the way, The Professional: The Perfect Murderer
Not Another Teen Movie: “It Is Not Another American Movie” (I like that one)
A Beautiful Mind: A Brilliant Mind (why they thought it is better to be brilliant than beautiful, I don’t know.)
I am wondering where they come up with the translations? Is it done in the US or in the destination countries? Who comes up with these titles?? I think in Spain they use translations that are closer to the originals, but in Mexico they change things completely.
Most of the Japanese titles are just phonetic renderings of the English, but occasionally they get changed.
Girl, Interrupted – 17-Year-Old Girl’s Medical Chart
Dr. Strangelove – The Doctor’s Strange Love (somebody missed something there)
Stripes – Paradise Army
Dirty Harry – Dirty Harry
Magnum Force, Sudden Impact, etc. – Dirty Harry 2,3,4…
The one that always baffled me was The Karate Kid, which was renamed Best Kid. They took out the one word that was already in Japanese.
One case where maybe they should have changed the name in Japan was for Bagger Vance. Japanese doesn’t have the “a as in bag” sound, so every time the movie was mentioned on TV, it sounded like they were calling it Bugger Vance.
You see, there’s a special kind of love that exists between a man and his caddy…
In Spain, it’s just called Pulp Fiction – but Jimmie demands to know whether his garage has a sign saying “Warehouse of Dead Blacks.” Somehow that line loses something in translation.
Heh, my favorite title translation here in Sweden is of an old black and white monster movie. I can not recall the english title for it but it was about giant ants who attack the united states. Anyway in here in Sweden the title became (Literal translation) “Spiders attacking!”
