Movie Myths (aka Legends of Film, Hilarious)

Article posted Fri Apr 4 07:40:35 2003

This is the first in a series of short articles on myths about films and filmmaking.

Every now and then a list of wacky film titles makes the rounds. You know, the ones where a simple film title in English is retitled or butchered into ridiculous and contorted meanings in other languages. Maybe you got the list as a fax, or more likely a forwarded bit of e-mail office humor. In the November 15, 1999, edition of the New York Times, writer James Sterngold wrote about how American movie studios alter film titles for foreign markets. For example, he said, the Chinese re-titled some well-known films into ridiculous titles:

The Crying Game became

Oh No! My Girlfriend Has a Penis!

Leaving Las Vegas became

I’m Drunk and You’re a Prostitute

Babe became

The Happy Dumpling-To-Be Who Talks and Solves Agricultural Problems

The truth, of course, never stands in the way of a good story, and it turned out that the New York Times article included mostly fictional spoof film titles; a correction ran three weeks later. Another writer, at Reel Cinema Movie Reviews (http://www.geocities.com/smvgrey/Titlefun.html) also lists film titles and translations in various languages. He says they are genuine, including:

Nixon became

The Big Liar

Boogie Nights became

His Powerful Device Makes Him Famous

The Full Monty became

Six Naked Pigs

Army of Darkness became

Captain Supermarket

The Horse Whisperer became

Held by Wind in Montana

Girl, Interrupted became

17-year-old Girl’s Medical Chart

Some of these may be accurate; there’s no doubt that literal translations can produce strange and unintended meanings. But before we believe much of this, it’s important to remember that the film studios and distributors have a vested interest in making the films accessible to as many people as possible. Instead of creating these silly titles, translators are likely to go out of their way to avoid confusing alternatives.

Besides that, the translations we find so amusing may not be so ridiculous in the native language. After all, we are in fact reading a double translation—English to the foreign language, and that language back into English. It’s likely that the foreign language titles, even if rendered accurately, are not silly at all. It is then the opposite of what is usually claimed: it is not necessarily the English to foreign translation that is ridiculous, it is probably the foreign to English that is rendered strangely.

A similar mistranslation urban legend involves with the film The Madness of King George. As the snopes.com urban legends Web site (http://www.snopes2.com/) states, “1995 saw the release of the film The Madness of King George, a movie whose plot focused on the bizarre behavior of George III, the English monarch who was commonly said to have ‘gone mad’ after losing England’s North American colonies to the American Revolution.…Coincident with the film’s release came the rumor that its distributors had altered its title for the American market, changing The Madness of George III to The Madness of King George lest puzzled Americans think they had missed the first two entries of the series.” This rumor is not true; the title stayed the same from start to finish.

This sort of story isn’t new; it was even claimed that Steinbeck’s title “Grapes of Wrath” was translated into Japanese as “Angry Raisins.” And there’s the old urban legend that the Chevrolet vehicle named the “Nova” bombed in the Spanish-speaking markets because it was thought that the car wouldn’t run. (“No va” in Spanish means “doesn’t go.”)

Such examples are often tinged with xenophobia and a faint glee in pointing out the stupidity of foreigners (or of giant companies with little knowledge of local idiom). But be careful before you repeat (or forward) such lists as true; it may not be others who end up looking silly.