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Film Titles in other languages

Paul L

Paul L

coffee lounge for me
Probably only obvious where you have a physical disc and can see the file name - has anything amused you? I saw Jaws a while ago for the first time in a couple of decades and my mate’s disc was an apparently English Blu-Ray but the filename on the disc was Les Dents de la Mer, didn’t quite have the same zing to it...
 
The cop drama Spiral is called "Engrenages" in the original French, which is "Enmeshings". I don't know why they didn't go with that, it's a better title.
More amusing is the subtitles - I once watched "The Navigators" which is a drama set in the railway in Sheffield. There's a section where one character grabs another and tells him "You can shove your union agreement up your f***ing ar**", which was rendered in French subtitles as "Absolutely no way!" This is remarkable because the French are very fond of telling opponents exactly where they can shove it, using exactly the same expression.
 
stevec67 said:
The cop drama Spiral is called "Engrenages" in the original French, which is "Enmeshings". I don't know why they didn't go with that, it's a better title.
More amusing is the subtitles - I once watched "The Navigators" which is a drama set in the railway in Sheffield. There's a section where one character grabs another and tells him "You can shove your union agreement up your f***ing ar**", which was rendered in French subtitles as "Absolutely no way!" This is remarkable because the French are very fond of telling opponents exactly where they can shove it, using exactly the same expression.
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In the current series of ‘Engrenages’, Laure was checking the inside of a building but found nothing. When she came out, a colleague asked her if she’d found anything. “Nada”, she replied, which the subtitle translated as “nowt”! By ‘eck, lad!

Mick
 
Paul L said:
[...]Les Dents de la Mer, didn’t quite have the same zing to it...
Click to expand...
With the picture it rather makes sense:
2.jpg
 
One example of a naff translation - in German - is Flammendes Inferno for the 1974 blockbuster The Towering Inferno.

The latter isn't brilliant either, come to think of it.
 
As a student, early '91, not that long after the Wall fell, I was in Berlin and the new hot film was to be Sleeping with the Enemy.

I recall seeing the poster - Julia Roberts on a billboard under a railway bridge nr Alexanderplatz - I recall, mentally translating and then giggling helplessly - the German title: 'The Beast in My Bed'.

Not quite the same thing, at all...
 
I remember A Hard Day’s Night became Quatre Garçons Dans le Vent in French. I think that’s a colloquialism for Four Trendy Boys, but I can’t imagine John Lennon rushing home to write a song with either title if Ringo had come up with it.
 
Marchbanks said:
I remember A Hard Day’s Night became Quatre Garçons Dans le Vent in French. I think that’s a colloquialism for Four Trendy Boys, but I can’t imagine John Lennon rushing home to write a song with either title if Ringo had come up with it.
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Surely that's 'Four Boys With Wind'?
 
In Germany, the 1994 film Shallow Grave was re-titled Kleine Morde unter Freunden, "A little murder between/among friends", which I thought caught the mood of the film better than the English original.
 
Ah fair play, as ever we are never too old to learn. Peter Benchley wrote it didn’t he? Which then puzzles me unless it was in french first. Not taking an English standpoint by the way, I expect there are a few translations from one language to another that cause amusement, much like the old car naming mistakes. I couldn’t believe that in 2020 Audi chose “e-tron” which I believe is up there with the MR2 classic error.
 
Since office hours in 80s (West) Germany their country were not 9 to 5, the German distributors of the film decided that the Dolly Parton film of that name should have a more suitable title. AIUI, they chose something that translates to "Why Don' We Kill the Boss?" The film tanked as everyone was looking for "9 to 5" to hit the Kinos.
 
Here in Sweden even Swedish films can have an English title. Not only that, French movies often has the title translated to English!?!

If an English language film HAS the title in Swedish, it's probably something completely different. 'American Graffitti' became 'Sista natten med gänget'' (Last Night With The Gang), 'North By Nortwest' is 'I sista minuten' (In the Last Minute) etc, etc.

About English films in Germay, they are 'spoken over' in German. Fine. If it stars, let's say, Armnold Swartzeneger, let him do the German? No, he speaks a silly Austrian accent, can't do that. As if his English accent is so uber cool...
 
@Seeker_UK IMDB says the Spanish and French releases followed the same theme: Como Eliminar seu Chefe and Comment se débarrasser de son patron ("How to get rid of your boss"), although the German title is more direct in saying "kill" (umbringen): Warum eigentlich... bringen wir den Chef nicht um? / "Why don't we just.. kill the boss?". (Randomly - when I lived in Germany, I used to go to the Cinema Kino to watch foreign, or rather English-language, films; then I came home to Ireland, and for a while I was able to go to the Kino Cinema to watch foreign films...)

On an English-to-English one, I recently discovered that the Disney animated film Zootropolis (UK) was originally released in the US as Zootopia. This was more than just a title-card and poster: because it's the name of the fictional city, it features in the film quite a bit, and so dialogue had to be re-recorded and any scenes with the other name visible had to be re-rendered. (Disney claimed they wanted to give the European market a more culturally-relevant name, which is nonsense given what it cost: it's probably due to a couple of large European businesses already trading under the "Zootopia" name, and this was a cheaper way out of the mess for Disney than trying to defend itself against charges of trademark infringement later).
 
Some good stuff and I should have guessed it would already be out there. Thanks for posting!
 
Funny, maybe; true? unfortunately not quite. IMDB, which is usually definitive about this kind of thing, disagrees on many of the more outlandish ones - the Argentinian release of Grease was titled "Grease: el Compaditro". "Compaditro" is an Argentine word for the kind of young macho man that Travolta plays in this. And The Matrix was called Matrix in France.

The Chinese ones in particular appear to be either complete inventions (probably some other site's jokes then taken as fact by this list compiler, as often happens), or taken from pirate releases. The Sixth Sense was released in Taiwan, but as "the Sixth Sense"

That said, the German titles are correct, so it just goes to show you can't tell the truth from a joke sometimes..
 
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