No new art today but a question for all of you guys from USA, Great Britain and other english speaking countries: WHY THOSE STUPID MOVIE TITLES ?
In France, when an american (or english) movie is released, the distributors have 3 options for the title:
1- They give a french title, which can be a direct translation (Le roi lion for The lion king), an approximate translation (40 ans, toujours puceau for The 40 year old virgin, not so far) or give a completly different name (Rendez-vous l'été prochain for Jack goes boating, nothing in common).
2- They keep the original title (the best option, in my opinion).
3- They give a new name, but in english.
And this 3rd one is a wonderful nonsense stupidity.
I let you discover the exemples above, it speaks for itself. It seems that in France, we can only understand films with VERY simple english words like TRIP, VERY or BAD. I know that our average skills in english are not very high in France (and me too) but I'm not sure we are that dumb... It's perfectly ridiculous.
The funny thing to notice is that the english movie The boat that rocked, called in France Good morning england, has another name in USA: Pirate radio. I guess the french distributors are not the only ones who think their local audience is dumb...
I'm curious to know what you think about that guys!
In France, when an american (or english) movie is released, the distributors have 3 options for the title:
1- They give a french title, which can be a direct translation (Le roi lion for The lion king), an approximate translation (40 ans, toujours puceau for The 40 year old virgin, not so far) or give a completly different name (Rendez-vous l'été prochain for Jack goes boating, nothing in common).
2- They keep the original title (the best option, in my opinion).
3- They give a new name, but in english.
And this 3rd one is a wonderful nonsense stupidity.
I let you discover the exemples above, it speaks for itself. It seems that in France, we can only understand films with VERY simple english words like TRIP, VERY or BAD. I know that our average skills in english are not very high in France (and me too) but I'm not sure we are that dumb... It's perfectly ridiculous.
The funny thing to notice is that the english movie The boat that rocked, called in France Good morning england, has another name in USA: Pirate radio. I guess the french distributors are not the only ones who think their local audience is dumb...
I'm curious to know what you think about that guys!
Wow, this is horrible. Why do most of the different titles have the word 'bad' in them? Why is so horrible!!?
RépondreSupprimerOUF! And I was thinking that only my country (Poland that is) is so creative when it comes to translating the titles. the two greatest translations were "a robot-killer" for "Terminator" and "Rotating sex" for "Dirty Dancing" :)
RépondreSupprimerit's not just a French thing
RépondreSupprimerit also happens in movie titles translation in Israel
and i bet if you check... in almost all the none English speaking countries they change the tittle to some thing horribly distressing
in Israel they changed the name of "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs"
to "Rain of Falafel"
you can't compete with that atrocity
that's hilarious! Most of those films are awful anyway.
RépondreSupprimerOuais, c'est complètement absurde. Et le pire, comme tu l'as dit, c'est que le titre a souvent du coup rien à voir et pire encore, il peut rapproche parfois du titre d'un autre film.
RépondreSupprimerJ'ose espérer que ce n'est qu'une tendance qui dure un peu mais qui passera.
So, it's a global problem! I really thought it's only happened in Latin America. But not only a problem of movies from english speaking countries: I can mention the most recently: l'illusionniste in Brazil is O Mágico (The Magician). C'mon! These two words are completly different in my country! Damn!
RépondreSupprimerhaha !! american trip !! :)
RépondreSupprimerThose titles are horrible!
RépondreSupprimerWell, as David said, in Brazil we have our atrocities... One of them is that most movies have something with 'love' in the title, even if it's not a romantic movie at all. But, besides that, we have some titles that really push the envelope on nonsense, such as some of Kevin Smith, like:
RépondreSupprimer'Jay and Silent Bob strike back' is, around here, something like 'The Empire of BS strikes back'. Genious!
That's pretty funny. As ridiculous as it is, it's great for a laugh.
RépondreSupprimeraaaaaaaahh les "very bad quelque chose", les "amercian bidule" et les "machin chose trip" c'est qd meme quelque chose, hein ! tout ca pour surfer sur un nom qui rappelle qq chose, un succes, qui n'a souvent pas grand chose a voir avec le nouveau film. tiens, "very cold trip" sort en ce moment... beeeurgh.
RépondreSupprimerah, y'a aussi les "truc school" qui font bien marrer.
dans ta categorie 1, des titres dont la traduction n'a RIEN a voir, y'a aussi ce truc de choisir un titre qui en rappelle un autre. la serie des "coup de foudre a quelque part" ou "un amour a quelque part", c'est bien cinglé dans le genre.
mon preferé du monde, c'est sur du chuck norris !
RépondreSupprimer"an eye for an eye" (1981) est traduit par "dent pour dent". va savoir pourquoi. mais ce qui est legendary, c'est que 2 ans, plus tard, ils traduisent "Lone Wolf McQuade" par "oeil pour oeil"...
Tu oublies les pauvres québecois qui doivent vivre avec "Tuer Bill", "Danse Lascive", "ça va clencher!" ou "Ferrovipathes"... traduction ici :
RépondreSupprimerhttp://www.topito.com/top-des-titres-de-films-mal-traduits
I think every country suffers from bad translations.
RépondreSupprimerHere in Argentina, Liniers, a cartoonist who used to be really funny and now kinda sucks, made a character called "El señor que traduce los nombres de las peliculas" (the man who translates the names of the movies)
http://www.friki.net/fotos/45762-liniers-el-senor-que-traduce-los-nombres-de-las-peliculas.html
"SexFriends" is by far my favorite! XD
RépondreSupprimerHello, firstly I love your drawings. I'm from Brazil, and here the translations of titles of movies are: The right to love (A Single Man) Eleven Men and a Secret (Ocean's Eleven) Groom Neurotic Wife irritable (Annie Hall) Anyway, if I were to write all errors, I would be writing one day. (sorry for English)
RépondreSupprimerThe sad thing is that untold hours and money are wasted on these stupid decisions that some stuffed shirts are convinced are necessary!
RépondreSupprimerGreat Trip! - I mean - Great Post!
y a une emission sur le site d'arret sur images (site payant) qui s'interroge la dessus. En fait c'est une strategie commerciale des diffuseurs francais . En gros , les enormes succes commerciaux des comedies ricaines et ptet un peu plus precisement des teen movies (exemple phare "american pie") influencent les choix. Genre ils vont mettre des mots qui vont rappeler indirectement ces films . Autre truc a noter c'est les affiches qui changent par rapport aux versions originales , prend get him to the greek, y a du nichon en plus sur la version fr de l'affiche. grosso modo on essaie d'utiliser des recettes de coms vieilles de 15 ans en ayant oubliant que les ados qui ont aimé ces films ont grandi...On prend donc en effet le public pour un con
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