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February 06, 2009 03:25 AM

Why the movie titles, when translated to Spanish are not the literal translation?

Even Spain and Latin America get different title names for the same movie.
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February 06, 2009 10:33 AM
The issue is language, not the movies themselves. Language varies even within a single group, which is why titles for the same movie may vary, say, between Puerto Rico, Mexico and Spain. If the title has any kind of idiom in it, then it is much much worse to translate right.

This is not a new phenomenom, Italians for years used to say "traduttore traditore," or "translator, traitor"' because it is close to impossible to get a faithful translation of a literary piece of work. I have read a few times the same book in both Spanish and English and it really annoys me when I immediately spot things that the translator screwed up. On the other hand, I am also awed when there's this rare translator that really nails it for good.

There is a translation of 100 Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I can't remember who did the translation) to English that is so beautiful that I couldn't find a single thing out of place. It was the first time that I did not feel at a loss for reading something that wasn't in its original language.

Universities know this. The version of the Divine Comedy (Dante Alighieri) that we used at my school had more footnotes than text, in an attempt to rescue what was lost in the translation process. It was awkward but very entertaining.

For the movies, the most obvious example from my childhood was Star Wars; in most Spanish-speaking countries was released as La Guerra de las Galaxias, or The War of the Galaxies. Most of the sitcoms got butchered really bad, but Star Wars takes the cake.


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February 06, 2009 03:38 AM
My guess would have to be that the people that are doing the translation don't understand either the language they are translating in to or from. As I understand there are two ways to translate. one is to do a word for word translation witch doesn't work right every time. the other way is to translate it in to what the words mean witch can work out a lot better because it can make more seance most of the time. Hope that helps

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February 06, 2009 03:56 AM
I agree with you, but the translations are not even close. For example, "The Silence of the Lambs" was translated as "El silencio de los inocentes" which means "The silence of the innocents"...
Another one: "Jaws" means "Mandibulas" and was translated as "Tiburon"=Shark; I know, a shark has Jaws... it just doesn't make any sense

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February 06, 2009 04:51 AM
They even do it in English speaking country's. I'm in Australia and out titles aren't always the same as the US. I heard that in some county's they called "Super Bad" "Super Cool"

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February 06, 2009 04:24 AM
Often times this has to do with marketing. Just because a title makes sense in one country doesn't mean the literal translation will make sense in another country. Keeping this in mind many movie studios will go with different titles depending on what the local marketing companies suggest.

To see some other interesting translation issues check out this site:

http://www.thethinkingblog.com/2007/09/13-unfortunate-translations-that-harmed.html

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