# 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:** 3
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2014, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636/41 "2014-05-19T00:38:30Z")
> [@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. Like every other national cinema, there is good and bad. A few Bollywood films have some level of subtlety and are perfectly watchable to any American. But others have a cult following because they are so cheesy that they are fun to watch-- just like any American cult movie. ---
**Author:** ![Sicks\_Ate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/258eb7/32.png) [@Sicks\_Ate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sicks_Ate)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2014, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636/42 "2014-05-19T00:45:44Z")
> [@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. > [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > 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. > [@even\_sven](#): > > Like every other national cinema, there is good and bad. A few Bollywood films have some level of subtlety and are perfectly watchable to any American. But others have a cult following because they are so cheesy that they are fun to watch-- just like any American cult movie. I ran across this scene quite by accident last summer. I absolutely love it and watch it on a (possibly) disturbingly regular basis. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/5pER2p6J-OM/maxresdefault.jpg "Ruk Ruk Ruk- Vijaypath | Tabu and Ajay Devgn | Aisha Chinai | Anu Malik") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pER2p6J-OM) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2014, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636/43 "2014-05-19T00:56:08Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > I don’t think that’s what the filmmaker intended. It’s a French film, I think the director thought it would make her look cool, but to me, it made her look stupid. I think it’s because that’s how a lot of Americans, including me, see cigarette smoking and cigarette smokers … not a cool thing, but a signifier of stupidity. And we’re the country that got the world hooked on it, too . . . ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2014, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636/44 "2014-05-19T04:34:36Z")
I’ll throw in another genre of Japanese film I just don’t get – Japanese porn. Are the women crying constantly supposed to be sexy? Is crying their version of moaning with pleasure? Are they all crying to indicate initial reluctance and disgust – I dunno, maybe by the end they’re “won over” by their man, but I’ve never got that far. It looks too much like rape to me. I’d have to say Japanese porn really stands out from all the other types I’ve seen. All the others are pretty similar, with the major differences being in how good the actors look and how good the cameras and lighting are. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2014, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636/45 "2014-05-19T04:39:54Z")
> [@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. Or that [the Wild West](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheWildWest) was a media (dime-novel) invention from the beginning. > [@](#): > > The real Old West was nothing like The Theme Park Version (which was originally the creation of 19th-century “dime novels”). There weren’t any huge shootouts, quickdraw duels were rare, and not exclusive to desert-like “western” areas. Plus, since many guns were very inaccurate in those days, they sometimes tended to happen in significantly closer quarters than they do in fiction. The average Western town had 1.5 murders per year, and most of those weren’t done with guns. You were much more likely to die from diseases like cholera, dysentery, and tuberculosis, or in an accident like being dragged by your own horse than being shot by bandits or getting scalped by Indians. The Wild West was not so wild — it was boring, in fact. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2014, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636/46 "2014-05-19T04:41:23Z")
> [@Boyo\_Jim](#): > > I’ll throw in another genre of Japanese film I just don’t get – Japanese porn. Are the women crying constantly supposed to be sexy? Is crying their version of moaning with pleasure? Are they all crying to indicate initial reluctance and disgust – I dunno, maybe by the end they’re “won over” by their man, but I’ve never got that far. It looks too much like rape to me. [Seems to be an old tradition.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dream_of_the_Fisherman%27s_Wife) ---
**Author:** ![Vicullum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/6de8d8/32.png) [@Vicullum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Vicullum)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2014, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636/47 "2014-05-19T05:23:23Z")
> [@nevadaexile](#): > > For me: > > [ol] > > [li] **Humor rarely translates between cultures** - With the exception of English/Irish comedies, here in the US most foreign comedy films do very poorly as their humor really seen as being “funny” by Americans[/li][/ol] Depends on the type. Humor that relies on puns / wordplay / witticisms / colloquial expressions are probably the hardest to cross cultures, as most of what made it funny is lost in the translation. Slapstick or pantomime works much better. I’ve read Mr. Bean is pretty popular in a lot of countries just for this reason. ---
**Author:** ![Vicullum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/6de8d8/32.png) [@Vicullum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Vicullum)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2014, 5:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636/48 "2014-05-19T05:30:47Z")
> [@Boyo\_Jim](#): > > I’ll throw in another genre of Japanese film I just don’t get – Japanese porn. Are the women crying constantly supposed to be sexy? Is crying their version of moaning with pleasure? Are they all crying to indicate initial reluctance and disgust – I dunno, maybe by the end they’re “won over” by their man, but I’ve never got that far. It looks too much like rape to me. This [blog post](http://supacat.tumblr.com/post/33332873/sex-and-flirting-in-japan-originally-from-lj-user) sheds some light on the subject: > [@](#): > > The biggest difference is that sex in Japan is not a mutual sharing experience with both partners spontaneously doing whatever they feel like or enjoy whenever they feel like doing it. Sex has rules and sex has roles just as every social interaction in Japan has rules and roles. There is an active partner and a passive partner. Active means moving; passive means unmoving. In heterosexual sex, the active partner is always male, and the passive partner is always female. So there is an active partner and a passive partner, which causes various flow on effects. > You can’t have “Whoo-hoo! Go for it!” sex because both partners are constrained by their roles. The passive partner (obviously) because she can’t move, and the active partner because he has to take care of the passive partner, instructing her on what to do and exerting himself so that she has a good time. > Japanese guys are generally more stressed out by sex than western guys and that is because they are responsible for the sex; as the active male, the sex is their burden, they have to do everything, it’s all up to them. Sex equates not only (sometimes not even primarily) with ‘fun’ or ‘pleasure’, it also equates with ‘work’ and ‘obligation’. > I also can’t emphasise enough just how passive the passive partner is. The way a woman kisses is by submissively opening her mouth, not moving her tongue unless she is cued to do so; if she’s really feminine she won’t open her mouth at all, until she’s told to. Sometimes women will move around a (very) little during sex, but mostly not at all. The slang term for a woman who lies completely still in bed is maguro (tuna). For me, with my western sensibilities and preconceptions, calling someone a ‘tuna’ in bed sounds like an insult, conjuring up images of cold dead fish, but in Japan that word has a very positive connotation. Tuna’s an expensive delicacy. ---
**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 19, 2014, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636/49 "2014-05-19T05:49:10Z")
> [@Vicullum](#): > > This [blog post](http://supacat.tumblr.com/post/33332873/sex-and-flirting-in-japan-originally-from-lj-user) sheds some light on the subject: Perhaps not coincidentally, Japan is experiencing a severe problem with negative population growth. ---
**Author:** ![furryman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/furryman/32/99_2.png) [@furryman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furryman)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2014, 7:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636/50 "2014-05-19T07:24:53Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > 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. I’ve wondered why Tarantino stuck Hatto Hanso in Kill Bill. Not only is he an obscure historical character, but Sonny Chibi has played him in several other films. Talk about obscure references! ---
**Author:** ![Penfeather](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penfeather/32/384_2.png) [@Penfeather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Penfeather)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2014, 10:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636/51 "2014-05-19T10:11:44Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > I wonder what the movie title for “Superman” was. If only the Germans had a word for Superman. ---
**Author:** ![Isamu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/7c8e57/32.png) [@Isamu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isamu)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2014, 11:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636/52 "2014-05-19T11:03:05Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > I think it’s because that’s how a lot of Americans, including me, see cigarette smoking and cigarette smokers … not a cool thing, but a signifier of stupidity. I don’t think smoking has a correlation with intelligence. Actually, I’m sure it doesn’t. Smoking cigarettes is something that many western countries have decided not to approve of anymore (weed is still cool though). Smoking might currently have a correlation with lower socio-economic conditions. It certainly has a correlation with countries in terms of how it is viewed differently. How do you think it’s correlated to stupidity, exactly? ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2014, 11:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636/53 "2014-05-19T11:25:35Z")
> [@Vicullum](#): > > This [blog post](http://supacat.tumblr.com/post/33332873/sex-and-flirting-in-japan-originally-from-lj-user) sheds some light on the subject: Interesting as it is, it says absolutely noting about crying. In fact it suggests the opposite is the ideal – which seems to be a woman lying as still and quiet as a warm corpse. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2014, 11:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636/54 "2014-05-19T11:58:39Z")
> [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](#): > > I like the French title for “Jaws,” it has elegance. I might agree if you bothered to mention what it was. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2014, 12:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636/55 "2014-05-19T12:14:53Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > 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_. And until I saw that title translated into English just now it had never once striked me as \*profoundly \*stupid. So, thanks for that :). [QUOTE=Lobohan] Couple that with giant monsters and robots fighting all the time, Battle Royales just make sense. [/QUOTE] I still think they ought to let foul tempered wandering swordsmen deal with the issue organically. Possibly with a [reed-that-goes-pok](http://www.tindaraorchids.com/images/supplies/11010a.jpg) as a performance enhancer to trigger their latent instant kill abilities. ---
**Author:** ![zweisamkeit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zweisamkeit/32/4360_2.png) [@zweisamkeit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zweisamkeit)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2014, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636/56 "2014-05-19T12:44:05Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > I might agree if you bothered to mention what it was. He probably didn’t mention it because it was written 10 posts earlier, in post 28 (though I personally think it’s helpful to quote a small segment or include the posters name in bold if I know there are posts between the one I’m referring to and my own). ---
**Author:** ![Vicullum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/6de8d8/32.png) [@Vicullum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Vicullum)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2014, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636/57 "2014-05-19T13:37:03Z")
Speaking of wacky titles, when The Crying Game was released in Hong Kong they chose something much more literal: ["‘Oh No! My Girlfriend Has a Penis!’’](http://www.nytimes.com/1998/11/15/weekinreview/november-8-14-lost-and-gained-in-the-translation.html) Talk about spoilers! ---
**Author:** ![JustinC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justinc/32/8083_2.png) [@JustinC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JustinC)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2014, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636/58 "2014-05-19T13:58:53Z")
> [@Vicullum](#): > > Speaking of wacky titles, when The Crying Game was released in Hong Kong they chose something much more literal: ["‘Oh No! My Girlfriend Has a Penis!’’](http://www.nytimes.com/1998/11/15/weekinreview/november-8-14-lost-and-gained-in-the-translation.html) Talk about spoilers! Hey, shouldn’t you post a **Spoiler Alert** or something? Sheesh. ---
**Author:** ![Kenm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bc79bd/32.png) [@Kenm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kenm)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2014, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636/59 "2014-05-19T14:08:50Z")
> [@Claverhouse](#): > > **Rachen** amongst **[others](http://www.dict.cc/english-german/jaws.html)**. Good heavens! Kiefer Sutherland is Jaws Sutherland! ---
**Author:** ![OneCentStamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/13edae/32.png) [@OneCentStamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneCentStamp)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2014, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636/60 "2014-05-19T14:26:30Z")
> [@Penfeather](#): > > If only the Germans had a word for Superman. This made me laugh out loud at my desk. Uber-funny. 😛 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-dont-translate-between-cultures-the-movies/688636.md?page=4)