Well Wings of Desire’s German name is Der Himmel über Berlin which translates to something like The Skies over Berlin but Wim Wenders thought that it sounded too much like a war film so he came up with Wings of Desire, he also said that he thinks that it is the best title for the film.
Werner Herzog? Maybe you mean Wim Wenders..
I seem to have gotten my German directors starting with W mixed up, I’m surprised I didn’t say Wolfgang Becker.
Anyway, American translations cannot match against Italian ones.
“Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind”, here in Italy is translated to the Italian for “If you leave me, I delete you”.
Could you ever do something worst?
At least Criterion corrected the grave error of mistranslation to the point of miscommunication with The Bicycle THIEVES. Calling it The Bicycle Thief almost completely changes the meaning of the film.
Bowman, that’s the case with every film title .
A Jackie Chan film translated to English as Wheels On Meals instead of vice versa.
How about Cinemateque Francaise titling “Two Rode Together” as “Two Rode To Get Her”…this was back in the messy old days with reels lying about everywhere…nonetheless, a wonderfully classic misunderstanding.
“mistransalted” ? Deliberate transposition of letters to go with topic, or just a happy, if coincidental, typo?
Love that “Two Rode To Get Her” story!
When George Lucas did ‘Dune’ he mistakenly mistranslated the title as Star Wars
Kindergarten Cop was mistranslated in Japan as Demon King of Children.
In spanish
Pulp Fiction – Tiempos Violentos (Violent times)
Bad Taste – Picadillo (Meat cut in pieces)
Evil Dead – El despertar del diablo (the awakening of the devil)
There will be blood – Petroleo Sangriento (Bloody Oil)
No country for old man – Sin lugar para los debiles (No place for the weak)
and the list continues…..
I’m not sure literal translation is what is always called for. What is the French word for “Jaws”? Apparently, the French publishers thought “The Teeth of the Sea” was an improvement.
Similarly, a title like “Wayne’s World” may make perfect sense in America, where just about every potential viewer knows the Wayne character from Saturday Night Live. In Italy, perhaps, it’s a different story, so they went with “Insanity in the Head.”
A French film professor told me once that “The 400 Blows” would have been more appropriately translated as “Raising Hell,” as the “400 blows” is a French idiom meaning roughly the same. Never double-checked this, but I thought it was interesting!
One that comes to mind is Chabrol’s “Merci pour le chocolat” > “Nightcap.”
Also, “The Nightmare Before Christmas” into French and back becomes “The Strange Christmas of Mr. Jack”, which, while not wholly inappropriate, has always amused me for some reason.
@ Juliet – that’s about right – “Faire les quatre cents coups” is an idiom that’s quite hard to capture in English, but if you take ‘coup’ here to mean trick/prank/stunt or something (just not ‘blow’!) it gives a better idea – the notion of “raising hell”, or living a life full of incident as a result of your anarchic approach and actions. Which I guess is what young Antoine does in the film.
Les Enfants du Paradis is more accurately translated as Children of the Gods, a reference to theatergoers in the cheapest seats, rather than as Children of Paradise.
ELGZ, The original title of “Band of Outsiders” is not “Band Apart” (which is English), but “Bande À Part” (French meaning roughly “band of outsiders”, altho also part of the expression “faire bande à part” meaning “marching to a different drummer”).
JULIET, yeah, “Les Quatre Cent Coups” comes from the expression “faire les quatre cent coups” = “to sow one’s oats” or “to sow one’s wild oats”. So an acceptable translation could have been “The Wild Oats”.
But surely both Truffaut and the English translators liked the fact that “coups”/“blows” means “hard knocks”.
Werner Herzog’s The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser’s German title is Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle which, as I’m sure many of you know translates to Every Man for Himself and God Against All.
Apparently in China, the movie Babe was translated as The Happy Dumpling-to-be Who Talks And Solves Agricultural Problems, and Revenge of the Sith became The Backstroke of the West.
This is hilarious.
In Italy, I’ve read, Herbie, the Love Bug became Il Maggiolino Tutto Matto, or The Totally Crazy Beetle and that Groundhog Day in Israel was Waking Up Yesterday Morning.
I don’t have any titles, but I think it’s rather comical that the person who started the thread didn’t do their homework. The sad thing is there are too many threads on “Auteurs” that resemble general laziness in research, i.e. clone topics
‘Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind’ in spain is ‘olvidate de mi’ (forget about me)
‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ in latin america is ‘el extraño mundo de jack’ (Jack’s strange world)
’Wayne’s world’ in latin america is ‘El mundo segun Wayne’ (the world according to Wayne)
‘Big trouble in little china’ in latin america is ‘rescate en el barrio chino’ (rescue at chinatown)
‘The living daylights’ in spain is ‘alta tension’ (high tension) and in latin america is ‘su nombre es peligro’ (his name is danger)
‘Once upon a time in the west’ in spain is ‘hasta que llegó su hora’ (until his time arrived)
‘For a few dollars more’ in spain is ‘la muerte tenia un precio’ (death had a price)
‘Jaws’ is called in spain and latinamerica ‘Tiburon’ (shark)
Heh, some other funny ones:
The James Bond film You Only Live Twice was translated into Japanese as 007 Dies Twice. The title sort of ruins the film, no?
Lost In Translation became Meetings and Failures in Meetings. Boy…sounds fascinating…
Though not as amusing as everyone else’s comments, I feel La Grande Illusion’s English title should be The Great Illusion, not The Grand Illusion. You still get the same basic meaning, but it seems to me that the word “great” better conveys the idea. Plus, the film is set during “The Great War”!
wonder6789, I was refering to Band of Outsiders’ literal English title, I find it ridiculous when generally French film titles are refered to in English in their French form, and the opposite with Russian, Swedish, Danish films, etc. An example of this is Jacques Becker’s Touchez pas au grisbi and Piliat’s À nos amours.
And Croonie, I don’t have time to look at all the thousandths of topics in this site, unlike a twit like yourself. The only thing that is comical is you putting Alexandre Aja, Neil Marshall, and Guy Ritchie in your auteurs list.
ELGZ, in France, “No Country For Old Men” is refered to as “No Country For Old Men”; “There Will Be Blood” is refered to as “There Will Be Blood”; “Pulp Fiction” is refered to as “Pulp Fiction”; “Lost in Translation” is refered to as “Lost in Translation”.
The French can handle it. Why is “Bande À Part” too hard to handle for a cultivated American, and what does that say about American levels of education and cultural autism?
Wonder6789, that doesn’t say anything about the “American levels of education and cultural autism”. If that remark was intended for an offense, it was a cheap shot.
It’s a question of how you want to refer the film’s title as, for example À bout de souffle or Breathless, but I’m talking about the literal translations. À nos amours and Touchez pas au grisbi are perfect examples of films whose titles are ridicilous to leave in their original form without a translation, I might say the same about the American films you mentioned in France.
Bande À Part in English will be Band Apart or A Band Apart (for the declarative), that was my point.
I will ask you this, how do you refer to Tolstoy’s War & Peace, in it’s French translation or as Voyna i Mir?
ELGZ, I refer to “La Dolce Vita” (“the sweet life”) as “La Dolce Vita”, to “Ikiru” (“to live”) as “Ikiru”, to “Ugetsu Monogatan” (“tales of the pale moon after the rain”) as “Ugetsu”.
I believe it makes sense to use the title’s original language when its words are either catchy and/or somewhat familiar.
“À Nos Amours” or “Bande À Part” seem to me to fall into that category.
In the case of “War and Peace”, it’s a very easily translatable title in any language, so it would be pedantic to use the actual Russian words. But that could change.
When it first came out in France in the 70’s, “Star Wars” was titled “La Guerre des Étoiles”. When it was rereleased 25 years later, it was as “Star Wars”, because the new generation of French kids knew the words ‘star’ and ‘wars’, and it was rightly considered catchier (2 sillables instead of 5, the inner rhyme of ‘ar’, the multiple associations of ‘star’) than the clumsy litteral translation.
De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves. Until Criterion’s recent release, it was referred to as The Bicycle Thief. Makes a big difference when you think about it.
ELGZ
US Title – Real Title
Winter Light – The Comminucants
High and Low – Heaven and Hell
Band of Outsiders – Band Apart
Run Lola Run – Lola Runs
Show Me Love – Fucking Amal
any others that were not intended by the filmmakers to be translated different from their original into English?