# Things That Don't Translate Between Cultures: the Movies **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 17, 2014, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636 "2014-05-17T15:43:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2014, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636/21 "2014-05-18T18:36:29Z")
> [@DocCathode](#): > > I believe this. I have a record Sing Mit Von Vilden Vesten (my spelling is likely wrong). It is all your favorite cowboy songs, sung in German. My favorite is Geister riders In Der Sky. I originally bought the record for my dad, who was really into unusual music. He was not surprised by the existence of the record and noted that Germans used to really love American Westerns. Now I’m wondering if the German in _The Three Amigos_ was a deliberate reference to this bit of cultural trivia, or just a coincidence. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Butterfly\_s\_Ghost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_butterfly_s_ghost/32/3462_2.png) [@The\_Butterfly\_s\_Ghost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Butterfly_s_Ghost)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2014, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636/22 "2014-05-18T18:46:06Z")
> [@Sr\_Siete](#): > > Heh. In Spain it was just titled “Shark” (Tiburón) because… well, because we are probably simpler than the Germans. Actually, the german title not “Summer of the White Death”\* it’s “Der weiße Hai” - “The White Shark”. So you’re not simpler, we’re just a tad more precise than you. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Claverhouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/13edae/32.png) [@Claverhouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Claverhouse)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2014, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636/23 "2014-05-18T19:01:14Z")
> [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](#): > > When “Jaws” came out in '75, the Germans had to call it “Summer of the White Death,” because they have no word for “jaws” :dubious: (it’s what I heard). I always wondered if that affected ticket sales–terrible title. **Rachen** amongst **[others](http://www.dict.cc/english-german/jaws.html)**. It is unlikely any language would not have a word for prominent parts of the anatomy. Otherwise going to the doctor would be as futile as when Victorian women refused from delicacy to say what was wrong with them. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2014, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636/24 "2014-05-18T20:32:12Z")
> [@furryman](#): > > I’ve heard that Bollywood movies have become cult movies here. I can’t understand why. I’ve watched clips of two releases. I personally found them way over the top and I doubt I could watch more than ten minutes of them. YMMV. Well I’ve not watched a lot of Bollywood movies: I’ve tried to watch one or two, they are far too boring … but I understand it, they consist almost entirely of singing and dancing and some stagey fake fighting. They are heavily censored as I understand it, sort of like broadcast television during the sixties or movies during the Hays Code era. So they seem very limited by current American standards, you know “family films.” I don’t understand their cult status, but I imagine there is a Rule 34 for movies … somebody will make a cult film out of ANYTHING. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2014, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636/25 "2014-05-18T20:33:34Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > Sometimes its subtle things. I once saw an Ingmar Bergman movie where, at the end, one character was at the bottom of a apartment stairway going through some sort of emotional turmoil and pouring his heart out to another character. In the middle, the lights went out. We were trying to figure out why the second character had turned out the lights at that moment. > > It was pointed out that lights in apartment stairways in Sweden were on timers and shut off by themselves. As 1970s Americans, we never heard of such a thing. > > Another difference was the movie **[Burke and Wills](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088866/)**. It’s a historical film set in Australia. Americans complained when some critic spoiled the ending, but no Australian ever would, since the story is part of the national culture. It’d be like complaining about revealing the ending of a biography of Lincoln. Those are GREAT examples of what I’m talking about. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2014, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636/26 "2014-05-18T20:37:57Z")
> [@Claverhouse](#): > > Agree on Bollywood. Like running one’s finger on the underside of an unglazed pot. > > American Comic Book films seem beyond retarded, Superman, Batman et al, with magical thinking galore. > > American fictive films with a scientific story are actually even stupider than that. Comic book films strike me of a modern supernatural mythos, maybe not quite religioius but definitely the story of beings that are far beyond human in their powers but have human feeling, motivations. Think of the gods on Mount Olympus with their petty jealousies and concerns with human affairs. Thor would be an example of an actual ancient mythic character who made the jump to comics almost completely intact. That said, I don’t care for comic book films because there’s just something lacking in them … I’m not sure what. I enjoyed the recent “Avengers” movie as a CGI spectacle, but I didn’t give a hoot about any of the characters and didn’t believe for a nanosecond that the plot would go anywhere surprising. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2014, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636/27 "2014-05-18T20:42:04Z")
> [@grude](#): > > I remember reading somewhere that some non-American audiences were absolutely baffled and bored by the then prodigious output of westerns from US cinema. They didn’t understand the cultural obsession the US had with them and the character archetypes within. Well they did get kind of sickeningly omnipresent in the 50s and 60s. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2014, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636/28 "2014-05-18T21:50:01Z")
> [@The\_Butterfly\_s\_Ghost](#): > > Actually, the german title not “Summer of the White Death”\* it’s “Der weiße Hai” - “The White Shark”. So you’re not simpler, we’re just a tad more precise than you. 😉 France, on the other hand, retitled the movie _[Les Dents de la Mer](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_sJq42pXCZlI/TBqU6jBQCRI/AAAAAAAAB94/HnsdSz3jWzg/s1600/jaws+french+-+les_dents_de_la_mer.jpg)_ ie _The Teeth of the Sea_. ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2014, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636/29 "2014-05-18T21:50:56Z")
> [@Claverhouse](#): > > **Rachen** amongst **[others](http://www.dict.cc/english-german/jaws.html)**. It is unlikely any language would not have a word for prominent parts of the anatomy. On the contrary, it is quite common for languages to have different ways of naming parts of the body, such that a body part name in one language has no exact correspondence in another language. For example, Hungarian has no common word for the specific part of the body that we in English call a “hand”; Hungarians use only the word “kéz” for the entire arm, including the hand. (It’s similar in Russian.) So perhaps there really was no good translation of “jaws” into German. If I remember tomorrow I’ll ask some of my colleagues, who are native speakers. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2014, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636/30 "2014-05-18T21:59:51Z")
An example that changed its meaning with time rather than place. Back in 1975 when Frank asked Janet if she had a tattoo in _The Rocky Horror Picture Show_ it was an outrageous suggestion. Nowadays, of course, women are getting tattooed more often then men. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2014, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636/31 "2014-05-18T22:12:46Z")
> [@Claverhouse](#): > > American Comic Book films seem beyond retarded, Superman, Batman et al, with magical thinking galore. > > American fictive films with a scientific story are actually even stupider than that. Every time I see the previews of these types of movies I feel the urge to beam an apology into space. ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2014, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636/32 "2014-05-18T22:31:32Z")
> [@Sr\_Siete](#): > > I always assumed that all those ghostly little girls killing people around are messing with their heads. Couple that with giant monsters and robots fighting all the time, Battle Royales just make sense. ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2014, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636/33 "2014-05-18T22:32:35Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > Every time I see the previews of these types of movies I feel the urge to beam an apology into space. Superman is \*from \*space! ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2014, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636/34 "2014-05-18T22:46:03Z")
> [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](#): > > When “Jaws” came out in '75, the Germans had to call it “Summer of the White Death,” because they have no word for “jaws” :dubious: (it’s what I heard). I always wondered if that affected ticket sales–terrible title. I wonder what the movie title for “Superman” was. ---
**Author:** ![FordPrefect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e99b99/32.png) [@FordPrefect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FordPrefect)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2014, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636/35 "2014-05-18T22:46:16Z")
> [@Miss\_Mapp](#): > > I’m reminded of a time. way back when we were in grad school, when a friend and I watched the French film _Jules et Jim_ for the first time. For no reason that we could fathom, Jeanne Moreau’s character suddenly drove her car into a pond. > > My bewildered friend said, “These are people with sensibilities far removed from our own.” I still quote her on that whenever we’re watching a film where a character does something abrupt and strange. I am going to use that line from now on too. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Rick\_Kitchen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rick_kitchen/32/522_2.png) [@Rick\_Kitchen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick_Kitchen)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2014, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636/36 "2014-05-18T22:51:55Z")
Karl May is the best-selling German author of all time, and his genre was largely Westerns. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2014, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636/37 "2014-05-18T23:16:17Z")
I don’t know if this counts, but I remember watching Yuen Woo Ping’s The Iron Monkey and being a bit amused when the hero of the story meets this young boy(who’s also one of the main characters) named Wong Fei-Hong. What most western viewers probably didn’t realize is that Wong Fei-Hong was a real historical figure. He was a Chinese folk hero, so The Iron Monkey would be a little analogous to a Western in which the hero runs into a ten year old kid named Wyatt Earp. In fact, there were a number of movies made about Wong Fei-Hong, with probably Jackie Chan’s Drunken Master movies and Jet Li’s Once Upon a Time in China series. ---
**Author:** ![burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/burpo_the_wonder_mutt/32/365_2.png) [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burpo_the_wonder_mutt)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2014, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636/38 "2014-05-18T23:29:29Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > I wonder what the movie title for “Superman” was. I Googled “german superman movie poster” and, lo and behold, a whole passel of German Superman movie posters came up–all said “Superman.” I like the French title for “Jaws,” it has elegance. I also Googled “german jaws movie poster” and they all said, “Der weiße Hai.” I wonder if those were re-issue posters after the movie took off for the stratosphere? Or maybe someone got the drop on a newspaper reporter back in 1975? Inconceivable! :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Flywheel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Flywheel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flywheel)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2014, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636/39 "2014-05-19T00:06:15Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > I wonder what the movie title for “Superman” was. And what do they call Stephen Sondheim’s _A Little Night Music_? ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2014, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636/40 "2014-05-19T00:29:39Z")
> [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](#): > > I Googled “german superman movie poster” and, lo and behold, a whole passel of German Superman movie posters came up–all said “Superman.” > > I like the French title for “Jaws,” it has elegance. > > I also Googled “german jaws movie poster” and they all said, “Der weiße Hai.” I wonder if those were re-issue posters after the movie took off for the stratosphere? > > Or maybe someone got the drop on a newspaper reporter back in 1975? Inconceivable! :rolleyes: What!? They actually called it Übermensch! I asked because I thought they’d change it due to the Nazi use of the term “Superman”. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636.md?page=3)