Film titles in foreign language movies
Living in another country has made me aware a small annoyance. I noticed when I go to rent a DVD at the local video store, I often give people the English Title translated into Polish for example (I live in Krakow). The movie in English will be something like “What about Mary?” I will translate this to Polish: “A co z Marysią?” However, the video store clerk will look at me like; I have no idea what movie you are talking about. Finally we will find the Polish title. In this case it was “Sposób na blondynkę” or in English, “How to win a blond” (literally translated “Way on blond”).
It seems that at least in Polish, I do not know about other foreign languages the people who translate the movies rarely if ever give an exact translation on the English title. Rather what they do is try to think what the movie is about and give a few word captions about the content of the movie instead of the original title. The reason I do not like this is not only is it harder to find the movie, but there is a reason the movie has the title. It is usually metaphoric or abstract, rather than so concrete. I am curious if this is the case in other languages, like Spanish or French.
6 responses to Movie titles in foreign languages
Your post brought to mind my astonishment at the Polish title of a popular American TV series in the late 70′s. I remember in Poland its title was something on the order of “Pagoda dla Bogaty” which I think translates as “Weather for the Rich.”
The reason this is done is because literal translation into Polish often don’t make much sense in Poland or the title sounds very childish. So the Poles come up with a name that better suits them. If you told the clerk “What about Mary?” in Polish he will reply “What do you want from her?”.
The best example is Mr Bean’s series. We couldn’t name this goofy character a Mister so we called him Johnny Bean, but in Polish so it was “Jas Bean”. The name Jas is persistent in most of our jokes about a small boy that does something funny. Once it was Jas Bean we translated the word bean into “fasola”. And so Mr.Bean is “Jas Fasola”. Something completely unrelated at first.
This is also common practice in Spain. I recall a Milos Foreman film from many years ago, called “Taking Off” which was called “Juventud sin esperanza” (Youth with no hope – or hopeless youth) which was kind of funny because the film (brilliant, by the way) was rather more about hopeless grownups and how their kids handled their way out of a pointless lifestyle. There are endless examples of names that have nothing to do with the original title nor with the actual film!! although occasionally you come across some very good translations. The trend now is to keep as close to the original name as possible, I think.
Far worse than changing the title is the fact that films here are dubbed. This has kept Spaniards from hearing any foreign languages (except through music) until they began to travel abroad in the seventies. Spanish people find learning other languages very hard. I have lived and taught EFL students all over the world, and currently own a small language school in Madrid and I often debate with my students about this matter – I honestly think dubbing has something to do with it.
Interesting blog, by the way. I write in English and Spanish on my blog in an effort to prove that bilingual education is possible and gratifying.
In Spain, english to spanish translation.
Jaws = Shark
Knight Rider = The Fantastic Car
Inner Space = The Prodigious Chip
German titles
Die Hard – Die Slow (Stirb langsam)
Rebel without a Cause – They know not, what they do ( … denn sie wissen nicht, was sie tun)
Grosse Point Blank – A man, a murder (Ein Mann, ein Mord)
English to Russian translations in movies and DVDs
I just came back to live in Moscow after spending eleven years in the states. I had to leave an enormous DVD collection over there. I have a massive pain in the “you-know-where” of restoring that collection. It seems as though translating movie titles is the same everywhere: they try to summarize the movie in a few words instead of a title translation. It’s tough.
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