Germany:
“Airplane” = The Incredible Journey On A Crazy Airplane
Then there’s The Incredible Journey On A Crazy Spaceship (original “Airplane II: The Sequel”)
and The Outragious Journey On A Crazy Bus (original: “The Big Bus”, in no way related to the other movies)
But one scene in the first movie is even funnier than the original in the German dubbed version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEkI0cH_rK4
(The 2 black guys speak a thick Bavarian dialect, which is the closest thing in Germany to Hillbilly slang. The subtitles say something completely different)
Brazilian translation studios have a fair bit of those:
| Portuguese | Literal translation | Original title |
|---|---|---|
| O Poderoso Chefão | The Powerful Big Boss | The Godfather |
| A Noviça Rebelde | The Rebellious Novice | The Sound of Music |
| Noivo Neurótico, Noiva Nervosa | Neurotic Fiancé, Nervous Fiancée | Annie Hall |
| O Tiro Que Não Saiu Pela Culatra | The Shot that Didn’t Backfire | Parenthood |
Those four are representative examples because they don’t just adapt the original title; they do it without regard of what the original title is conveying, just to throw it into a “this is a movie title!” template.
Is Poderoso Chefão used to mean the leader of a gang/crime family in Portuguese?
Not really - it’s no fixed expression for those; the only word there that can refer to mafia is “chefe” (boss, chief; “chefão” is its augmentative). But even then, “chefe” can be also used for company bosses, video game bosses, restaurant chefs etc., it doesn’t evoke mafia imagery at all unless you specify “chefe da máfia” (mafia boss) or similar.
I’ve seen a few people using “capo” (an Italianism) for that, but I don’t know how widespread this is.
In the case of The Godfather I get why they changed it - as “padrinho” won’t deliver the same reference to the Italian-American mafia as “godfather” does. However “poderoso chefão” doesn’t do it either, you need a very specific context to interpret “chefe” as “chefe da máfia”, and the augmentative even hides it further.
They had better choices - like calling it “Don Corleone”. Just the “don” plus the promotional images are enough to convey “this is a mafia boss, you simply don’t fuck with him”.
But by far among those four the one that I hate the most is A Noviça Rebelde. Because the literal translation of the original (O Som da Música) sound more aesthetic IMO than it. And it changes the focus from Maria’s connection with music to her rebelliousness.
Not that bad, but there was a serious lack of creativity:
The Shining - Hotel of Evil
House on the Haunted Hill - House of Evil
Oh, I have a doozy for ya. I’ve got a beauty!
THELMA & LOUISE
in theaters in Mexico, back in the early 90s
was
(wait for it…)
UN FINAL INESPERADO (AN UNEXPECTED ENDING)
Seriously… how dumb do you think your audiences are if you feel the need to hold their hand and spoon-feed them like this? This is taken to a level that doesn’t make sense anymore, the so-called “solution” is so much worse than the perceived “problem”.
Swedish translators have largely stopped translating titles as the population nowadays are essentially all competent enough English speakers. But back in the day, there were some… let’s say questionable choices. Sadly many of them are based on word play and translate poorly back to English. Superman III was translated into an absolutely atrocious Kryptonite pun, for example. I wish I could do it justice.
It Could Happen To You being translated as Cop gives waitress a $2 million tip is one of my other favourites - just a mundane summary of the plot with zero zest or punch.
It was also decided for some reason to name the entire Mel Brooks catalogue as Springtime for X after The Producers was first translated as Springtime for Hitler (which at least makes sense - that is part of the movie!). I think the worst offender is Springtime for the History of the World part 1 (History of the World part 1) - but they’re all bad.
There was also a trend for a while to randomly add sub-titles to movies - such as Crocodile Dundee: a big game hunter in New York.
Finally, it amused me greatly that The Sound of Music was translated as Sound of Music - still in English, just dropping the article.
I have a friend who is Swedish, and my all time favorite isn’t a movie, but a comic book. Batman translated into Läderlappen. So after some discussion about that period in time and how things were being translated I asked, well then what did Robin translate to, and he looked at me and said “Robin”. I almost fell out of my chair. So he brought me a copy of Läderlappen and Robin. I love it.
That’s so funny. I just though Läderlappen just sounds like german for “leather rag” and google does in fact translates it to “The Leather patch”.
I wonder what their thought process was in coming up with leather patch for batman.
So “läderlapp” is an old Swedish slang or colloquialism for bat. Back in the 50s when Batman was first brought to Sweden English literacy was a lot worse than it is now, and translating titles and names were much more common. A direct translation of Batman would be “fladdermusmannen” - which is a very unwieldy name - so they settled for a then-more-common slang for “the bat”. It does sound a little better, though it would have been best to just do what finally happened from the 80s and let Batman remain untranslated.
Oh yeah the whole of Mel Brooks are being translated as “La folle histoire de…” (The crazy story of…) Because I guess the first one was Mel Brooks History of the world (the words for history and story are the same in french)
Which reminds me that Die Hard was translated as “Piège de Crystal” (Crystal Trap) which isn’t per se a bad title, but then every movie that had a hero against people taking something over became “Piège …” Literally dozens of Piège movie that have nothing to do with Die Hard
That’s so funny, Sweden had a similar thing going with Goldie Hawn movies! After The Girl From Petrovka was translated literally (“Tjejen från Petrovka”), the next 8 out of 11 Goldie Hawn movies had their titles changed and translated as “Tjejen som…”(The girl who…) despite having nothing else in common apart from being comedies.
