Spanish movie title translations: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love always having to check a title twice

I was surprised how well received was the post: "In the Spanish dub of Terminator he doesn't say "Hasta la vista, baby" but "sayonara baby", so here is my post about the madness and ridiculousness of the Spanish translations of movie titles and dubbing.

Being raised in Spain means that the first time I heard someone talking about DIE HARD, I thought....WHAT IS THIS MOVIE? Moments later a quick google search revealed that in fact they were talking about LA JUNGLA DE CRISTAL (the Glass Jungle¡¡). OH yeah, Bruce Willis indeed!

And this madness happens every single day.

Spain and latam

Despite Spain and Latin America share the same language, they have different dubs and they may have different translation for movie titles!

This post will be around Spain's translation. So, my LATAM friends, lo siento.

If you ever go to youtube's comments section in any The Simpsons clip they will be an absolute war going on between defenders of Latam dub and Spain's dub. It's a good way of learning Spanish swearing styles and insults.

Just leave the title as it is

Lots of movie titles are not translated, usually because they are names:

Iron man, Wonder Woman, Forrest Gump, Gladiator, Casablanca...

Sometimes they cannot find the words for it and just leave it in English:

Pulp fiction, Reservoir dogs, Inception, Whiplash, Toy Story....

Sometimes they create absolute confusion or laughs:

They didn't change Thor 2, but in Spanish it is pronounced "Tor Dos", whit means TURDS.

A great case was the movie 'Once', they didn't change the English title and left it as "ONCE" but "Once" in Spanish means ELEVEN. So, the movie poster said: How often do you find the right person?

Spanish answer: 'ONCE' = Eleven!

The translator is just a prick

There are cases that just create confusion....

'The good, the bad and the ugly' changes to 'The good, the ugly and the bad'. (el bueno, el feo y el malo).

'A fistfull a dollars', changed to 'FOR a fistful of dollars' and therefore, For a Few Dollars More was changed to 'The death had a price', which is ludicrous.

'Superbad' to 'Superhorny' and therefore "pineapple express" to " Superstoned" (superfumados).

They also thought BettleJuice was too complicated for a Spanish pronunciation so they went for the PHONETICAL TRANSCRIPTION and it was changed to "Bitelchús", although it sounds like Bee-Tell-Choose.

"The breakfast club" = "the club of the five" which also happened to be the same name as "The Famous five" book series.

METATRANSLATION

A curious case is the name of Sofia Coppolla's Lost in translation in Latam, which is Perdidos en Tokio (lost in Tokio), which is indeed a translation lost in translation.

The Leslie Nielsen madness

So, this is getting weird right. Leslie Nielsen starred in "Airplane!", the title in Spain was changed to... (sights) "Land as you can".

Since Leslie Nielsen starred in lots of comedy films afterward, they decided to put the " AS YOU CAN" in EVERY SINGLE LESLIE NIELSEN MOVIE!!!.

The naked gun = "Catch him as you can"

Spy hard = "Spy as you can"

Family plan = "Camp as you can"

2001: A Space Travesty= "Lift off as you can"

Kevin of the North = "Ski as you can"

And so on...

Fuck trilogies

A curious case is the Hangover. They changed it to "Big hangover in Las Vegas".... Well, is not bad per se but they didn't thought there could be a sequel, so the second movie had to be changed to "Big hangover 2: Now in Thailand". The third one was therefore changed to "Big Hangover 3" but they went further and tried a SE7EN with "R3SACON" (BIG HANGOV3R) .... awful.

It doesn't matter, we prefer the English title

There are some cases where people prefer the original English title or its literal translation:

Scarface was translated to "The price of the power"... it didn't stick as people prefer calling it 'Scarface'.

Same goes with Groundhog day, which people referred as 'El dia de la marmota (groundhog day)' despite the movie's title being "Trapped in time".

I don't like the title lets change it

Sometimes there is nothing you can do and despite the literal translator being way way easier they just change it.... for the sake of it.

'Jaws' = Shark (Tiburon)

'Point break= 'They call him Bodhi ( Le llaman Bodhi)

'Sunset Blvd.' = "The twilight of the Gods", this is absultely amazing.

'Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind"= " Forget about me!"

'The fast and the furious"= 'Full gas"

Trains, planes and automobiles = "Better alone than with the wrong company"

Sound of music = "Smiles and tears"

Rosemary´s baby" = " The devil's seed"

The notebook = "Noah's diary"

"Hacksaw ridge" = "Until the last man"

Carlito's way= "Trapped by his past"

Unbreakable = "The protected"

Coming to America= "Zamunda's prince"

Beverly Hills cop= "Superdetective in Hollywood"

My favourite one:

Dr. Strangelove or: 'How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb'= 'Red telephone? We flight to Moscow.'

And the best one:

Ice princess= "Dreaming, dreaming I succeeded at skating" (yeah, it rimes)

Let's make it easier and let's make it more difficult

The translator may think...wow this title is too much, let's shorten it.

"Crouching tiger, hidden dragon"= "Tiger and dragon" (Tigre y Dragon)

But with "Snatch" they added words and resulted in "Snatch, pigs and diamonds".... but they left SNATCH in English in the title (Snatch, cerdos y diamantes).

Alien to "Alien: The Eighth passenger" (spoiler in the title, nice!)

Police academy to "Crazy police academy"

Translator: Let me be funny

You may know Almodovar's "all about my mother" (Todo sobre mi madre) right?. The translator thought, this is my time to shine!

By changing MADRE (mom) to DESMADRE (mess/crazy situation, party) .... you've got "all about my crazy party".

And that's the title for "Get him to the Greek".

Similar happened to "knocked up" which was translated as "Embarrassing mess" (lio embarazoso), the played around with Emabarazada (pregnant) and Embarazoso (embarrassing).

We fd up

Well... Vantage Point (2008), Shoot ‘Em Up (2007), Another Stakeout (1993), Liberty Stands Still (2002) and Pressure Point (1997)....all have the same name in Spanish (En el punto de mira)... "In target".

So... I hope you like it and let me know if you now more horrible cases like these. I'll let fr other post how 'Takeshi's castle" what horribly changed to a probably racist by today's standard "Yellow Humor".

Thanks for reading.

Submitted April 24, 2021 at 07:05PM by elferrydavid https://ift.tt/3vjLq9s