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Thread: Terrible (yet hilarious) english subtitles for movies

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    Senior Member Ghaleon's Avatar
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    Default Terrible (yet hilarious) english subtitles for movies

    Terrible (yet funny) english subs for movies.

    Here are some. I got them from this site. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DoNotWant

    - A Chinese bootleg of Revenge of the Sith, whose title the bootleggers translated as "Backstroke of the West". Perhaps even funnier, Anakin's announcement that he has been made a full Jedi knight is translated as "I was just made by the Presbyterian church."

    - The HK subs of One Piece contained such infamous lines as "he smelted the edge .. on the goog", "turn the ship around like letter U!", "he dive like crazy beef", "the cords from your bingy", and "what shall we do? we can't break through the Hymen this way".

    - In the Chinese bootleg sub of Mobile Suit Gundam, the subtitlers had no idea what was going on, and seemed to have thrown in subtitles from an office drama. The second most hilarious thing about this was that the subtitles, completely inappropriate as they were, still synched to the voices. The most was Garma Zarbi plunging to his death at the helm of a burning bomber, shouting out "Merry Christmas!"

    - X Men 2 bootleg which, apart from the usual narrative chaos, did something terrible to the character's names. Scott became Ratio Graph, enemy of the villainous Striker Graph, Logan became Root, and Wolverine was rendered as Gold Silver Wolf.

    - Hong Kong subs of Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger The Movie: Full Blast Action rendered a villainess' "Scorpion Whip" attack as "Scorpion Penis".

    - The bootleg of the Ninja Sentai Kakuranger movie translates "Kakurangers" as "Cuckoo Rangers" and contains the line "Go to Sam Hill, Cuckoo Rangers!"

    - There's a store that sells anime DVDs that had Japanese subtitles translated to Chinese and then translated to English. They have never, ever correctly spelled a character name, sometimes just giving up and giving them a random English name instead. Hayate, the male love interest of Pretear, started out being called Sarah, then Jingje, then finally Hayate.

    - A Taiwanese bootleg of Ghost In The Shell: Solid State Society included a line: "Even electronic brain pancake crystal elderly."

    So have any of you encontered hilarious or terrible english subtitles in movies?
    Last edited by Ghaleon; 02-17-09 at 02:45 AM.

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    Senior Member KeongJai's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ganryu View Post
    Terrible (yet funny) english subs for movies.

    - A Chinese bootleg of Revenge of the Sith, whose title the bootleggers translated as "Backstroke of the West". Perhaps even funnier, Anakin's announcement that he has been made a full Jedi knight is translated as "I was just made by the Presbyterian church."
    that email was doing the rounds when starwars3 came out. It was funny how they interpreted the Jedi Order as the Presbyterian Church the whole time.

    I think it was translated from english to chinese by someone who didn't understand english, and then back into english by someone else who didn't understand chinese. I remember one where he's supposed to say "hello everyone" but the subtitle was "everyone is good"

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    Senior Member sniffles's Avatar
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    I have a Chinese DVD of the Japanese anime series Vision of Escaflowne that I recall having some really odd English subtitles, though I can't remember anything specific now. I suspect it was translated from Japanese into Chinese and then into English. Definitely a case of "lost in translation."

    But you can get those sorts of errors even with languages that are closer than English and Chinese. When Monty Python and the Holy Grail was translated into French, the French translators apparently didn't understand that one portion of the movie was being facetious. When characters were supposed to be shouting out names of things that will float in water, they were actually shouting ridiculous things like "rocks" and "churches". So the French translators ruined the joke by changing all the dialogue to things that would float in water.

    It got even worse when translated into Japanese.
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    Senior Member Ghaleon's Avatar
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    These messed up english subtitles always make me crack up LOL. I think i have the same version of Escaflowne as you do from Hong Kong.

    I remember one where he's supposed to say "hello everyone" but the subtitle was "everyone is good"
    That's a classic lol. I still can't get over "Backstroke of the West".

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    Senior Member Guo Xiang's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by KeongJai View Post
    that email was doing the rounds when starwars3 came out. It was funny how they interpreted the Jedi Order as the Presbyterian Church the whole time.

    I think it was translated from english to chinese by someone who didn't understand english, and then back into english by someone else who didn't understand chinese. I remember one where he's supposed to say "hello everyone" but the subtitle was "everyone is good"
    Quote Originally Posted by Ganryu View Post
    These messed up english subtitles always make me crack up LOL. I think i have the same version of Escaflowne as you do from Hong Kong.



    That's a classic lol. I still can't get over "Backstroke of the West".
    I saw that before and it's like my favourite... the ultimate classic!

    That's what happen when one translates English to Mandarin (or vice versa) too literally/word-by-word.
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    Senior Member charbydis's Avatar
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    I was watching "The Forbidden Kingdom" on a DVD and the english subtitles for the chinese language cracked me up so bad.
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    $this->handle_bbcode_img_match('http://img172.imageshack.us/img172/9532/vs1jx1.jpg')


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    Anyone seen Kung Pow? That's a great parody of this phenomenon.

    Some of them are downright hilarious. Especially the swearing. I didn't know that "Your mom" could be translated to "fcuk you".
    ok

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    Senior Member Dagger Lee's Avatar
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    I heard the HK bootleg DVD set for Kamen Rider Blade addresses Kamen Rider Leangle as... SUPERMARKET LEANGLE Sure makes me glad there are free fansubs out there for these.

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    Member xianzai's Avatar
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    The subs for the HK movie Tiger on the Beat 2 translate the spoken English profanity "F*ck you!" to "Fart you!" so there's a scene where the subtitles are like:

    "Fart you!"
    "No, fart you!"

    But I really like it when the translators are too literal or use out of date terms. In HK films from the 80's-90's one would often see the phrase "take it as peanut" to refer to a matter of small importance, and Triad members would refer to themselves as "rascals."

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    Senior Member rosely's Avatar
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    In my country we have unlimited supply of this bad subtitles phenomenon where we got pirated movies sell everywhere on the street and is subtitled to the local language.

    What this pirate syndicate do, they just do literal translation word for word. Extremely funny and incomprehensible.

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    Senior Member Melanie's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ghaleon View Post
    Terrible (yet funny) english subs for movies.

    Here are some. I got them from this site. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DoNotWant

    - A Chinese bootleg of Revenge of the Sith, whose title the bootleggers translated as "Backstroke of the West". Perhaps even funnier, Anakin's announcement that he has been made a full Jedi knight is translated as "I was just made by the Presbyterian church."

    - The HK subs of One Piece contained such infamous lines as "he smelted the edge .. on the goog", "turn the ship around like letter U!", "he dive like crazy beef", "the cords from your bingy", and "what shall we do? we can't break through the Hymen this way".

    - In the Chinese bootleg sub of Mobile Suit Gundam, the subtitlers had no idea what was going on, and seemed to have thrown in subtitles from an office drama. The second most hilarious thing about this was that the subtitles, completely inappropriate as they were, still synched to the voices. The most was Garma Zarbi plunging to his death at the helm of a burning bomber, shouting out "Merry Christmas!"

    - X Men 2 bootleg which, apart from the usual narrative chaos, did something terrible to the character's names. Scott became Ratio Graph, enemy of the villainous Striker Graph, Logan became Root, and Wolverine was rendered as Gold Silver Wolf.

    - Hong Kong subs of Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger The Movie: Full Blast Action rendered a villainess' "Scorpion Whip" attack as "Scorpion Penis".

    - The bootleg of the Ninja Sentai Kakuranger movie translates "Kakurangers" as "Cuckoo Rangers" and contains the line "Go to Sam Hill, Cuckoo Rangers!"

    - There's a store that sells anime DVDs that had Japanese subtitles translated to Chinese and then translated to English. They have never, ever correctly spelled a character name, sometimes just giving up and giving them a random English name instead. Hayate, the male love interest of Pretear, started out being called Sarah, then Jingje, then finally Hayate.

    - A Taiwanese bootleg of Ghost In The Shell: Solid State Society included a line: "Even electronic brain pancake crystal elderly."

    So have any of you encontered hilarious or terrible english subtitles in movies?
    OMG! My ribs still hurt from the uncontrollable laughing. Thank you for posting this! I can't decide which horrible translation above is my favorite because they are all so ridiculously funny!

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    Senior Member NuDaFu's Avatar
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    ^same.

    Quote Originally Posted by Ghaleon
    The most was Garma Zarbi plunging to his death at the helm of a burning bomber, shouting out "Merry Christmas!"


    Quote Originally Posted by skylee View Post
    $this->handle_bbcode_img_match('http://img172.imageshack.us/img172/9532/vs1jx1.jpg')

    *in a stitch from laughing too hard*

    Well, I got an OFFICIAL version of Rurouni Kenshin TV series where the English translator seemed to have either got bored, changed people, had vocab amnesia, because during the significant Shishio arc, every 2nd word was a profanity. The translator seemed to think combats stirred up views/interests into each other's sexual conduct, including maternal relationships in the same context (is that obtusely funny enough for anyone?).
    Last edited by NuDaFu; 11-04-11 at 07:48 AM.

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