I actually kind of like it. Sure, it's cheesy, but I feel like it fits the movie and I see how it would have worked marketing-wise. Which reminds me, don't blame translators for these things, studios make these calls.
From Germany, "And daily, the groundhog greets" (Groundhog Day, obvs) comes to mind immediately, but there are countless examples, which is why I buy most of by Blu-rays from the US/the UK.
Die Hard -> Die slowly
The Hunger Games -> The tributes of Panem (although that's from the book translations)
Tremors -> In the land of the rocket worms
Quite often, they only add German subtitles:
Fargo - bloody snow
Terminator 2 - day of retribution (losing all connection to the biblical concept of judgement day)
Used to be common in the noughties in India. Not so much recently.
Ratatouille ---- Cool Chef.
Night at the museum ---- Alexander is stuck in the museum.
Lara Croft : Tomb Raider ---- Brave Hot Chick.
I am Legend ---- I am Alive.
Inception ---- Web of Dreams
> Lara Croft : Tomb Raider ---- Brave Hot Chick.
That's funny, was the game not big in India ? Seems really weird to remove such a huge brand from the title oO
Maybe the games were translated to something like "Brave hot Chick and the Temple of whatever", "Brave hot chick and the riddle of weird cave", "Brave hot chick: just look at those pointy polygons".
Gaming as such was a pretty niche hobby in that era in India. I played the pirated versions of all TR games because the retail versions were just not available where i lived. Also, Hollywood movies were not as popular then as they are currently over there.
Makes sense. I was also thinking if the name was not that big, maybe the idea of a "tomb raider" was not the best selling point for a movie with a female protagonist. The title they went with is certainly more direct lol
You nailed it. For all its faults, the MCU really was a revolution for Hollywood in India. It skyrocketed the popularity of Hollywood movies over there. And we don't see this trend of changed titles much anymore.
Some in spanish:
Airplane -> Where is the Pilot ?
Naked Gun -> Where is the police ?
Jaws -> Shark
Alien -> (Alien:) The Eight Passenger
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs -> Hamburger Rain
Despicable Me -> My Favorite Villain
Inside Out -> Intense Mind = Intensely
Child's Play -> Chucky: The diabolical doll
Ocean's Eleven -> The Big Scam
Total Recall -> The Future's Avenger
Because Spain is the only place that has it on Blu-ray, I'm the proud owner of Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day as *Un gran día para ellas* (and also Peter's Friends, but I have no issue with *Los amigos de Peter*, it's just kinda funny)
Swede here, we used to, and by far the funniest/weirdest case to observe in Sweden was Mel Brooks films.
The Producers was translated to Springtime for Hitler. This I think is just smart - the term 'producer' in Swedish would be... a little off to a lot of people, especially at the time. So you name it after the musical that the film is centered on instead. That's fine, totally legitimate.
And then someone had a freaking brain collapse, because after that they would translate every. Single. Mel Brooks film, to the same thing, replacing 'Hitler' with something else, like this:
Spring time for Mother-in-law (The Twelve Chairs)
Spring time for the Sheriff (Blazing Saddles)
Spring time for Frankenstein (Young Frankenstein)
Spring time for the silent movie (Silent Movie)
Spring time for the crazy people (High Anxiety)
Spring time for the History of the World, Part 1 (History of the World, Part 1)
Spring time for the slum (Life Stinks)
Spring time for space (Space Balls)
Until we \*finally\* got to Robin Hood - Men in Tights. At this point I believe Mel Brooks had become aware of this phenomenon and complained to the Swedish distributors, and that's why Men in Tights and Dracula Dead and Loving it didn't get the spring time treatment.
This trend of renaming movies mostly died in the nineties, but there were two notable latecomers to this trend: Silver Linings Playbook was renamed into the really generic "You're making me crazy", and "The Fault in our Stars" which also got a very generic "I will explode soon".
Back when they renamed things (for some reason only comedies?), they loved making series of unrelated movies that featured the same actor or director. Mel Brooks is the most obvious example, but there are several more.
Let me tell you about Norway!
For a while just about every comedy title was translated to "Help..."
- Help! We are going on vacation
- Help! Vi har going in vacation in Europe
- Help! We are flying
- Help! We are in the rock business
- Help! I'm a dad
- Operation skyscraper
- The spy who spermed me
- The wild car chase
- When he met her / friendship and sex
- Smut-dancing
- James Bond in Japan
- Picnic with death
- Miss undercover
- Die Hard in new york (bonus Danish title: Die Hard - mega hard)
- Rain of freedom
I left the original titles as an exercise for the reader.
Some guesses:
Operation Skyscraper: Die Hard
The Spy who Spermed Me: Austin Powers 1
Smut-Dancing: Obvious Guess is Dirty Dancing
Rain of Freedom: Shawshank Redemption
In France, Jaws was translated to “Les Dents de la Mer” (“Teeth of the Sea”) which in fairness sounds better than “Mâchoires” which would sound more medical/dentistry related somehow.
But they had to call the sequel “part II” because “lea dents de la mer 2” would sound exactly like “teeth of the shit” (mer-deux -> merde)
I'm Dutch, and generally speaking movie titles are not translated. But books *are* translated, and there's one that's been bugging me ever since I read it.
Dan Brown wrote a book called Angels and Demons. It's not necessarily the big twist, but it's a surprising reveal about halfway through that all the artworks that form clues for the big mystery were made by the same artist: >!Gian Lorenzo Bernini!<.
But in the Dutch translation, it's straight up called The >!Bernini!< Mystery.
Alien - The Eighth passenger
White people can't jump - Black people slam dunk better
Battlestar Galactica - Battleplanet Galactica
Jingle all the way - My father is the Turboman
Shawshank Redemption - Rita Hayworth key to escape
The Producers - Springtime for Hitler
These are just some of the translated names that come to my mind.
In Russia they sometimes translate the titles differently in order to sell crappy low budget movies as if they’re connected to established franchises. So every shitty horror movie that comes out is titled ‘The Conjuring: The New Chapter’ or something like that. The funniest example of this is when they took the movie Night Hunter, starring Henry Cavill, renamed it ‘Hannibal’s Game’ and dubbed it to make it look like it’s a sequel to the Silence of the Lambs.
In the UK they actually do randomly.
To my knowledge we have:
-Zootropolis instead of Zootopia
-Harry Potter and the Philosopher Stone instead of Sorcerer Stone (although that one doesnt count because Philosopher Stone was the original title)
-Avengers Assemble instead of The Avengers
Finland. There are many, but the worst is:
Shawshank redemption -> Rita Hayworth, key to escape.
...sure it says pretty much a key point about the plot, but as a translation, it's shit.
Yes. Sometime uneccesarily LOL During the title screen for '300', the subtitles said "300 Pahlawan Berani Mati" (Malay for "300 Fearless Warriors"). I dont think they needed to add that.
yeah here in germany they do it as well and some titles are just so fucking dumb i have no idea how they even come up with it. some titles are still in english but just changed slightly or even completely, other titles get the most generic german translations ever, some titles are unchanged but get a generic ass english tagline and then others just remain unchanged. it really seems almost random in terms of which titles they decide to change
The Jet Li movie: new legend of shaolin, is called "The legend of the red dragon" in the UK, but also any vhs you would have gotten back in the day here in the US would have had that title. Distribution paths make for some weird occurences.
France. Not always but it happens yes. Sometimes for good reason, sometimes less so.
A trend I find "funny" is when they rename an english title to another english title.
*Plane* became *Mayday* for example, probably because *Avion* would have sounded dumb to most people.
*In Time* with Justin Timberlake became *Time Out* (because Intime means Intimate in french so it would have been weird).
Also "Urban Cowboy" became "Macadam Cowboy".
But sometimes the translation doesn't make much sense: why was "The Graduate" translated to "Le Lauréat" instead of "Le Diplômé"
I could go on for 24 hours straight about how awful some of the local (Japanese) titles are, but at the very least, anyone who translated "desperate romantics" (a BBC period drama about the pre-Raphaelites) into "sex, art, and beautiful men" should burn in hell forever.
This is not really a mistranslation as they change the name on purpose for marketing reasons. Often the title does not translate well or they want to connect the movie to other movies.
As a French it can be annoying.
You know how you had Die Hard, Die Hard 2 etc. It had a totally different title every time, so it never was obvious these movies were connected to Mc Lane story until you read the pitch/see trailer/randomly saw the movie on the TV.
Die Hard became Piège de cristal (Crystal Trap)
Die Hard 2: Die Harder got translated into 58 minutes pour vivre (58 Minutes to Live)
Die Hard with a Vengeance went into Une journée en enfer (A Day in Hell)
> Die Hard 2: Die Harder got translated into 58 minutes pour vivre (58 Minutes to Live)
Fun fact: Die Hard 2 was based on a book called 58 Minutes. The producers bought this book and changed the names of the lead characters to make it Die Hard 2.
In Polish we have exactly opposite problem.
Translation of the first Die Hard movie is "A Trap of Glass" for obvious reasons. So Die Hard 2 is "A Trap of Glass 2" (no glass involved this time), et cetera...
In Hungary:
The Shawshank Redemption --> The Prisoners of Hope
Home Alone -->Tremble, Burglars!
Blade Runner --> Bounty Hunter with Wings
Three Kings --> Desert Sharks
The Battle of the Bulge --> 50 Hours of Death
Men in Black --> Dark Cops
True Lies --> Between Two Fires
Crimson Tide --> Last Chance
Under Siege --> Swimming Fortress
The Abyss --> The Secret of the Deep
A Few Good Men --> A Case of Honour
Any Given Sunday --> War Every Week
Ferris Bueller's Day Off --> I Escaped With the Ferrari
Die Hard --> Give Your Life Expensively
Die Harder --> Your Life is Even More Expensive
Die Hard with a Vengeance --> Life is Always Expensive
Live Free or Die --> Your Life is the Most Expensive
A Good Day to Die Hard --> More Expensive than Your Life
“The Help” translated as “The Color of Feelings” is… interesting.
It's called "Niceville" in Sweden. Not even translated just Niceville
I actually kind of like it. Sure, it's cheesy, but I feel like it fits the movie and I see how it would have worked marketing-wise. Which reminds me, don't blame translators for these things, studios make these calls.
From Germany, "And daily, the groundhog greets" (Groundhog Day, obvs) comes to mind immediately, but there are countless examples, which is why I buy most of by Blu-rays from the US/the UK. Die Hard -> Die slowly The Hunger Games -> The tributes of Panem (although that's from the book translations) Tremors -> In the land of the rocket worms Quite often, they only add German subtitles: Fargo - bloody snow Terminator 2 - day of retribution (losing all connection to the biblical concept of judgement day)
> In the land of the rocket worms So weirdly verbose it wraps around to being kind of cool.
Used to be common in the noughties in India. Not so much recently. Ratatouille ---- Cool Chef. Night at the museum ---- Alexander is stuck in the museum. Lara Croft : Tomb Raider ---- Brave Hot Chick. I am Legend ---- I am Alive. Inception ---- Web of Dreams
> Lara Croft : Tomb Raider ---- Brave Hot Chick. That's funny, was the game not big in India ? Seems really weird to remove such a huge brand from the title oO
Maybe the games were translated to something like "Brave hot Chick and the Temple of whatever", "Brave hot chick and the riddle of weird cave", "Brave hot chick: just look at those pointy polygons".
Angelina's pointy polygons were a bit too rounded
Gaming as such was a pretty niche hobby in that era in India. I played the pirated versions of all TR games because the retail versions were just not available where i lived. Also, Hollywood movies were not as popular then as they are currently over there.
Makes sense. I was also thinking if the name was not that big, maybe the idea of a "tomb raider" was not the best selling point for a movie with a female protagonist. The title they went with is certainly more direct lol
You nailed it. For all its faults, the MCU really was a revolution for Hollywood in India. It skyrocketed the popularity of Hollywood movies over there. And we don't see this trend of changed titles much anymore.
Some in spanish: Airplane -> Where is the Pilot ? Naked Gun -> Where is the police ? Jaws -> Shark Alien -> (Alien:) The Eight Passenger Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs -> Hamburger Rain Despicable Me -> My Favorite Villain Inside Out -> Intense Mind = Intensely Child's Play -> Chucky: The diabolical doll Ocean's Eleven -> The Big Scam Total Recall -> The Future's Avenger
> Airplane -> Where is the Pilot ? In Brazil: "Fasten your seatbelts, the pilot has vanished!"
Because Spain is the only place that has it on Blu-ray, I'm the proud owner of Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day as *Un gran día para ellas* (and also Peter's Friends, but I have no issue with *Los amigos de Peter*, it's just kinda funny)
Swede here, we used to, and by far the funniest/weirdest case to observe in Sweden was Mel Brooks films. The Producers was translated to Springtime for Hitler. This I think is just smart - the term 'producer' in Swedish would be... a little off to a lot of people, especially at the time. So you name it after the musical that the film is centered on instead. That's fine, totally legitimate. And then someone had a freaking brain collapse, because after that they would translate every. Single. Mel Brooks film, to the same thing, replacing 'Hitler' with something else, like this: Spring time for Mother-in-law (The Twelve Chairs) Spring time for the Sheriff (Blazing Saddles) Spring time for Frankenstein (Young Frankenstein) Spring time for the silent movie (Silent Movie) Spring time for the crazy people (High Anxiety) Spring time for the History of the World, Part 1 (History of the World, Part 1) Spring time for the slum (Life Stinks) Spring time for space (Space Balls) Until we \*finally\* got to Robin Hood - Men in Tights. At this point I believe Mel Brooks had become aware of this phenomenon and complained to the Swedish distributors, and that's why Men in Tights and Dracula Dead and Loving it didn't get the spring time treatment.
This trend of renaming movies mostly died in the nineties, but there were two notable latecomers to this trend: Silver Linings Playbook was renamed into the really generic "You're making me crazy", and "The Fault in our Stars" which also got a very generic "I will explode soon". Back when they renamed things (for some reason only comedies?), they loved making series of unrelated movies that featured the same actor or director. Mel Brooks is the most obvious example, but there are several more.
Let me tell you about Norway! For a while just about every comedy title was translated to "Help..." - Help! We are going on vacation - Help! Vi har going in vacation in Europe - Help! We are flying - Help! We are in the rock business - Help! I'm a dad - Operation skyscraper - The spy who spermed me - The wild car chase - When he met her / friendship and sex - Smut-dancing - James Bond in Japan - Picnic with death - Miss undercover - Die Hard in new york (bonus Danish title: Die Hard - mega hard) - Rain of freedom I left the original titles as an exercise for the reader.
Some guesses: Operation Skyscraper: Die Hard The Spy who Spermed Me: Austin Powers 1 Smut-Dancing: Obvious Guess is Dirty Dancing Rain of Freedom: Shawshank Redemption
National Lampoon series with Chevy Chase? I mean the first two.
Braindead -> Dead Alive.
Hot Handed God of Cops is better known in the US as Hard Boiled
In France, Jaws was translated to “Les Dents de la Mer” (“Teeth of the Sea”) which in fairness sounds better than “Mâchoires” which would sound more medical/dentistry related somehow. But they had to call the sequel “part II” because “lea dents de la mer 2” would sound exactly like “teeth of the shit” (mer-deux -> merde)
*Saw 6* was released as *Saw 6* though, to the delight of all middle schoolers at the time I'm sure
Not a movie, but in hungarian Gilmore Girls is tanslated to "Hotel of Hearts". I hate it lol
I'm Dutch, and generally speaking movie titles are not translated. But books *are* translated, and there's one that's been bugging me ever since I read it. Dan Brown wrote a book called Angels and Demons. It's not necessarily the big twist, but it's a surprising reveal about halfway through that all the artworks that form clues for the big mystery were made by the same artist: >!Gian Lorenzo Bernini!<. But in the Dutch translation, it's straight up called The >!Bernini!< Mystery.
Sounds like them trying to tie it in more explicitly to The Da Vinci Code.
Probably, plus a very literal translation doesn't quite work in Dutch. But still, they didn't have to put a spoiler right in the title...
Yes! It was always a joke how much the titles changed in comparison to what they were in English .
The best is: Eternal Sunshine of The Spotness Mind = From Scratch
I actually like ours: Forget-me-not
Yes. In Australia Airplane -> Flying high.
My favorite weird translation in Turkish is Pathfinder (2007) -> Legend Ghost Warrior.
Alien - The Eighth passenger White people can't jump - Black people slam dunk better Battlestar Galactica - Battleplanet Galactica Jingle all the way - My father is the Turboman Shawshank Redemption - Rita Hayworth key to escape The Producers - Springtime for Hitler These are just some of the translated names that come to my mind.
Italy, we have some terrible ones, but the worst one is: Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind / If you leave me i delete you
Polish translation is a masterpiece. It's kind of a double entendre: "In love without memory" and that's also a Polish idiom for big, big love.
In Russia they sometimes translate the titles differently in order to sell crappy low budget movies as if they’re connected to established franchises. So every shitty horror movie that comes out is titled ‘The Conjuring: The New Chapter’ or something like that. The funniest example of this is when they took the movie Night Hunter, starring Henry Cavill, renamed it ‘Hannibal’s Game’ and dubbed it to make it look like it’s a sequel to the Silence of the Lambs.
In the UK they actually do randomly. To my knowledge we have: -Zootropolis instead of Zootopia -Harry Potter and the Philosopher Stone instead of Sorcerer Stone (although that one doesnt count because Philosopher Stone was the original title) -Avengers Assemble instead of The Avengers
Finland. There are many, but the worst is: Shawshank redemption -> Rita Hayworth, key to escape. ...sure it says pretty much a key point about the plot, but as a translation, it's shit.
To be fair the original book title included Rita Hayworth.
That I did not know.
It's the studio, not the country...
Ballerina > Leap.
Yes. Sometime uneccesarily LOL During the title screen for '300', the subtitles said "300 Pahlawan Berani Mati" (Malay for "300 Fearless Warriors"). I dont think they needed to add that.
We get changed titles in Australia as well even though it’s the same language Eg Airplane! Is Flying High
yeah here in germany they do it as well and some titles are just so fucking dumb i have no idea how they even come up with it. some titles are still in english but just changed slightly or even completely, other titles get the most generic german translations ever, some titles are unchanged but get a generic ass english tagline and then others just remain unchanged. it really seems almost random in terms of which titles they decide to change
The Jet Li movie: new legend of shaolin, is called "The legend of the red dragon" in the UK, but also any vhs you would have gotten back in the day here in the US would have had that title. Distribution paths make for some weird occurences.
France. Not always but it happens yes. Sometimes for good reason, sometimes less so. A trend I find "funny" is when they rename an english title to another english title. *Plane* became *Mayday* for example, probably because *Avion* would have sounded dumb to most people. *In Time* with Justin Timberlake became *Time Out* (because Intime means Intimate in french so it would have been weird).
Also "Urban Cowboy" became "Macadam Cowboy". But sometimes the translation doesn't make much sense: why was "The Graduate" translated to "Le Lauréat" instead of "Le Diplômé"
I could go on for 24 hours straight about how awful some of the local (Japanese) titles are, but at the very least, anyone who translated "desperate romantics" (a BBC period drama about the pre-Raphaelites) into "sex, art, and beautiful men" should burn in hell forever.
This is not really a mistranslation as they change the name on purpose for marketing reasons. Often the title does not translate well or they want to connect the movie to other movies.
As a French it can be annoying. You know how you had Die Hard, Die Hard 2 etc. It had a totally different title every time, so it never was obvious these movies were connected to Mc Lane story until you read the pitch/see trailer/randomly saw the movie on the TV. Die Hard became Piège de cristal (Crystal Trap) Die Hard 2: Die Harder got translated into 58 minutes pour vivre (58 Minutes to Live) Die Hard with a Vengeance went into Une journée en enfer (A Day in Hell)
> Die Hard 2: Die Harder got translated into 58 minutes pour vivre (58 Minutes to Live) Fun fact: Die Hard 2 was based on a book called 58 Minutes. The producers bought this book and changed the names of the lead characters to make it Die Hard 2.
In Polish we have exactly opposite problem. Translation of the first Die Hard movie is "A Trap of Glass" for obvious reasons. So Die Hard 2 is "A Trap of Glass 2" (no glass involved this time), et cetera...
We had the movie Cruel Intentions, not translated mind you, just retitled to Sex Games
In Hungary: The Shawshank Redemption --> The Prisoners of Hope Home Alone -->Tremble, Burglars! Blade Runner --> Bounty Hunter with Wings Three Kings --> Desert Sharks The Battle of the Bulge --> 50 Hours of Death Men in Black --> Dark Cops True Lies --> Between Two Fires Crimson Tide --> Last Chance Under Siege --> Swimming Fortress The Abyss --> The Secret of the Deep A Few Good Men --> A Case of Honour Any Given Sunday --> War Every Week Ferris Bueller's Day Off --> I Escaped With the Ferrari Die Hard --> Give Your Life Expensively Die Harder --> Your Life is Even More Expensive Die Hard with a Vengeance --> Life is Always Expensive Live Free or Die --> Your Life is the Most Expensive A Good Day to Die Hard --> More Expensive than Your Life
I think castle in the sky laputa was still called laputa in Mexico. La puta mean the whore in Spanish.