History BlindIdiotTranslation / FIlm

* Hungarian mistranslation again, this time in the movie ''Film/{{Mallrats}}''. The translator evidently DidNotDoTheResearch on any of the MarvelComics characters that get mentioned during the film, because then, [[Comicbook/FantasticFour The Thing]] and DoctorDoom wouldn't have been called "Dolog" and "Doktor Végzet" respectively (which are actually correct translations, but the names are "Lény" and "Fátum Doktor" in the comics), nor would the Franchise/{{X-Men}} have become "X Emberek" ("X People", whereas the comics leave it as X-Men), and most importantly, the Comicbook/IncredibleHulk wouldn't be "Hihetetlen Hajós" ("the Unbelievable Seaman").

** In the Italian dub of all the BackToTheFuture movies, the Flux Capacitor is always translated as "flusso canalizzatore", literally "Canalizer Flux" or "Channelizer Flux."

* One infamous Russian translation of the ''BackToTheFuture 2'' scene with the multiple "You are FIRED!" faxes goes "You were burned". [[BurnNotice Marty is a spy?]]

* The swedish version of ''Fist of Fury'' is quite badly translated. Notable is the line "This time you're eating paper, but the next time you'll be eating glass" which becomes "Den här gången äter ni papper, men nästa gång blir det '''glass'''". "Glass" is the swedish word for ice-cream...

** The Japanese subtitles [[http://www.seatofkings.net/jtranslation.html were also pretty infamous.]] Fan complaints resulted in the translator being replaced for the next movie.

* ''Battle Royale'' is quite notorious for having a few bootlegs with bad subtitles. People in North America have often had to turn to bootlegs since the film doesn't have a US distributor. The most notorious boot is a Korean DVD with some hilariously bad translation errors. Some priceless examples include "That were my friends!!!", "Anyone who sees this must be scribble", "That knife I stabed with you, sometimes I think I threw it away, but now it's my treasure" and lots more.

* In the Swedish DVD bonous material for Film/TheLordOfTheRings the camera showed one of the staff at the Weta Workshop creating a chainmail prop for the movie and commenting "This is chainmail." This was translated in the subtitles as "Detta är ett kedjebrev" meaning "This is a chain letter" instead of correct "Denna är en ringbrynja".

* The Hungarian dub of ''Franchise/JurassicPark'' reinterpreted John Hammond's "People are dying!" line as "And can people die?", making it seem like he thought that the previously discussed lysine-dependency of the cloned dinosaurs could somehow have an effect on humans. And while not as frustrating as this, Gennaro's famous "Are these characters... auto-erotica?" (he was trying to say "animatronic") line was changed to "Are these characters... androids?", which isn't a terrible mistake, but it kills the joke.

* When the remade versions of the ''StarWars'' films were shown in Norway, the subtitles were really badly translated. The most widely known example is that the word "lightsabre" was translated as "lettsabel", which does, in fact, mean "light sabre", as in the opposite of a heavy sabre. In ''AttackOfTheClones'', "you will be invincible" was translated as "you will be invisible". The very same movie had the phrase "Let the execution begin" end up as "Let the excursion begin".
** In the first French dub of StarWars, [[TheDragon Darth Vader]] is refered to as "Dark Invader." Obviously the translators caught on to this and edited it to "[[{{GratuitousEnglish}} Dark]] Vador" [[DubNameChange rather than use the original name]]. Much later, the original name was ''finally'' used in the French-Canadian dub of ''Episode III'', which ironically had Blind Idiot Translations of its own ("thousands of star systems of the Republic" translated to "thousands of galaxy of the Republic").

* ''[[Disney/OneHundredAndOneDalmatians 102Dalmatians]]'': Cruella De Vil's probation officer's suggestion of her working with something on the sewers was translated for Brazilian audiences as suggesting Cruella would work with seamstresses. This movie might be sequel to one that described Cruella as a big name in the fashion industry but still, to mistake sewers with sewing...

* ''102Dalmatians'': Cruella De Vil's probation officer's suggestion of her working with something on the sewers was translated for Brazilian audiences as suggesting Cruella would work with seamstresses. This movie might be sequel to one that described Cruella as a big name in the fashion industry but still, to mistake sewers with sewing...

* In the English subs for JeanLucGodard's ''Une Femme est une femme'', the French words ''verre'' and ''vert'' were confused by the translator, so "a glass of coffee" becomes "green coffee." (The French sometimes order coffee in a glass when they're in a hurry -- it cools quicker.)

* Two gems from the finnish translations of Batman DVD Extras:
** BatmanForever: The Riddler is referred to as "Jokeri". This Batman enthusiast was very upset.
** Batman & Robin: "My writers created Bane, I had little bit to do with it, mostly as a guy who was in the room with them" becomes [[CrowningMomentOfFunny "They created Bane to resemble an average roommate."]]

* Yet another Swedish example: The Swedish subtitles for ''Kick-Ass'' translate "coke" (as in the slang word for "cocaine") as "cola", leading to some hilarious scenes of big bad criminals worrying about someone stealing their pop.

* The swedish version of ''Fist of Fury'' is quite badly translated. Notable is the line "This time you're eating paper, but the next time you'll be eating glass" which becomes "Den här gången äter ni papper, men nästa gång blir det '''glass'''". "Glass" is the swedish word for ice-cream...

** (We interrupt this unbroken paragraph to note irony): they translated it right. Unfortunately the play on words didn't go with. "lightcycle" was originally one of many test program's to check the LEDs (or earlier incandescent bulbs) on old computers. It would cycle through the lights. The word for the trail-wall leaving laser motorbikes was a pun on this program name. Presumably had there been a command for initiating machine learning the solar sailer demo Flynn hijacked might have been a locomotive instead, playing off of "train."

* The Latin American translation for ''HaryPotter/HarryPotterAndThePhilosophersStone'' is RIDDLED with awful translation errors which confuse viewers to the point they don't understand the movie at all. For instance, they translated the movie directly from the British version but they kept the American title, so while the movie is titled "The Philosopher's Stone", the titular item is referred throughout the movie as "The Sorcerer's Stone".

** Batman & Robin: "My writers created Bane, I had little bit to do with it, mostly as a guy who was in the room with them" becomes [[HilarityEnsues "They created Bane to resemble an average roommate."]]

* Journey 2: The Mysterious Island was directly translated as Viaje 2: La Isla Misteriosa in the Latin American version, while still technically correct, it completely misses the [[Letters2Numbers Letters 2 Numbers]] factor, as the "two-to" homonym doesn't hold true in Spanish.

* A few years ago, a major restoration of ''Metropolis'' was released to DVD. In the restoration all the intertitles and in-film text was translated from German to English, including the shot of Freder reading from the "Boot of Revelations". Nice job, Kino.

* The latin american translation for ''HarryPotter'' and the Philosopher's Stone is RIDDLED with awful translation errors which confuse viewers to the point they don't understand the movie at all. For instance, they translated the movie directly from the british version but they kept the american title, so while the movie is titled "The Philosopher's Stone", the titular item is referred throughout the movie as "The Sorcerer's Stone".

* In the Swedish DVD bonous material for [[Film/TheLordOfTheRings TheLordOfTheRings]] the camera showed one of the staff at the Weta Workshop creating a chainmail prop for the movie and commenting "This is chainmail." This was translated in the subtitles as "Detta är ett kedjebrev" meaning "This is a chain letter" instead of correct "Denna är en ringbrynja".

->Jack: We must eat ''Soyabean Cake!''
->Phone operator: I'm about die, Jack, but the Terrorists is are to blow up about the whole plane! We is about to only 3 seconds to do this.
->Jack: Dial up now the agency, for we are about to blow up teh 'Soyabean cake'!

->€rs ''onboard''").

->Phone operator: I'm about die, Jack, but the Terrorists is are to blow up about the whole plane! We is about to only 3 seconds to do this.
->Jack: Dial up now the agency, for we are about to blow up teh 'Soyabean cake'!
* ''FugitiveAlien''
** Several dials/meters on the ''Bacchus 3'' are labeled hilarious things, such as: Space Speed, Cabin Air Presser, Tenperature, Sunny Side, and Other Side.
** Or the members of the ''Bacchus 3'' wearing jumpsuits emblazoned with the badge "Security Guard".
** The computer actually shows ''a shipping manifest''.
* Found in the Danish extended version DVD of the ''{{Terminator}} 2: Judgement Day'' film. When Sarah Connor is about to smash the Terminator's chip John stops her, saying that they need the Terminator's help. The word "need" can be translated into Danish in different ways, depending on whether the need is practical or mental. The translator chose the word implying mental need, which then implied that John's need of the Terminator is of sexual nature.
** When the T1000 disguised as Sarah Connor calls to John, and John realizes it's actually the 1000 he calls onto the actual Sarah to 'SHOOT!' The Dutch subtitles of some versions of the movie translated it as 'damn it!'
* Found in ''Good Morning People'', a student film shown at 2008 Asian American Showcase. Most of the spoken lines were in Japanese, with subtitles translating it literally, keeping the Japanese grammar and sentence construction intact.
* When the remade versions of the ''StarWars'' films were shown in Norway, the subtitles were really badly translated. The most widely known example is that the word "lightsabre" was translated as "lettsabel", which does, in fact, mean "light sabre", as in the opposite of a heavy sabre. In ''AttackOfTheClones'', "you will be invincible" was translated as "you will be invisible". The very same movie had the phrase "Let the execution begin" end up as "Let the excursion begin".
** In the first French dub of StarWars, [[TheDragon Darth Vader]] is refered to as "Dark Invader." Obviously the translators caught on to this and edited it to "[[{{GratuitousEnglish}} Dark]] Vador" [[DubNameChange rather than use the original name]]. Much later, the original name was ''finally'' used in the French-Canadian dub of ''Episode III'', which ironically had Blind Idiot Translations of its own ("thousands of star systems of the Republic" translated to "thousands of galaxy of the Republic").
** [[MemeticMutation "DO NOT WANT!"]]
* One infamous Russian translation of the ''BackToTheFuture 2'' scene with the multiple "You are FIRED!" faxes goes "You were burned". [[BurnNotice Marty is a spy?]]
** And exactly the same mistake was made in Russian translation of ''RoboCop''. Making Robocop shooting the bad guy rather... nonsensical.
** In the Italian dub of all the BackToTheFuture movies, the Flux Capacitor is always translated as "flusso canalizzatore", literally "Canalizer Flux" or "Channelizer Flux."
* Another Russian gem, this time from a forgettable romantic comedy: TheScarletLetter gets translated as "Scarlett's Letter". You know, as in the thing you mail. Which renders the subsequent appearance of the red letter "A" nonsensical.
* One of the early Russian dubs of ''Star Wars: A New Hope'' gave us a character called "Obi-Odin" (Russian for Obi-1). Guess who was that.
** To be fair, it's a made-up name alongside named like R2-D2 and C-3PO. It's not much of a stretch to assume (just based on hearing it) that "Wan" is "One", especially since they mention clones at some point.
* Another famous Norwegian translation mistake is the line "It's not a motorcycle, it's a chopper" from ''PulpFiction'', translated as "It's not a motorcycle, it's a helicopter" in Norwegian.
* Then there is [[StarWars Star War]]: [[http://winterson.com/2009/01/episode-iii-backstroke-of-west-redux.html Backstroke of the West]], a bootleg version of {{Revenge of the Sith}}, translated to Chinese, with English subtitles. But in writing the subtitles, they didn't write it in the original English - [[RecursiveTranslation No, they retranslated the Chinese back into English.]] [[HilarityEnsues Hilarity ensued]]. BigNo? [[MemeticMutation Do Not Want!]]
--> '''It's over Anakin! [[IHaveTheHighGround The Geography I stands compares you superior!]]'''''
** Especially funny in every instance involving elephants. And using the F-word as a replacement for "work" or "do."
--> '''Do you fuck on I?'''''
** Other gems involve translating 'Jedi Council' as 'Presbyterian Church' and one of the RedShirt pilots in the opening sequence getting the line "He is in my behind!"
* A few years ago, a major restoration of ''Metropolis'' was released to DVD. In the restoration all the intertitles and in-film text was translated from German to English, including the shot of Freder reading from the "Boot of Revelations". Nice job, Kino.
* ''Film/ShootEmUp''. When Mr. Hertz first meets hooker Monica Belucci's character he insults her in Italian, orginially using a phrase that had been translated via Babelfish. A rather confused Monica had to provide a more accurate version.
* ''Space Cowboys'' gave us:
--> '''[[ClintEastwood Frank Corvin]]:''' "Let me tell you something, my dear. Those instructions were written by a fellow in Japan when they made this damn thing. They were probably translated by some gringo who was an expatriate American that couldn't get a job in this country. And then the Japanese guy probably translated him just to double check on him. You don't need these instructions. Not at all. Tear them up."
* A few further gems from Norwegian: "Lettsverd", from StarWars: Episode IV. It means "Light-sword", as in the opposite of "heavy". Then there's the Light Cycle Grid from {{TRON}}, which became "Lyssyklusmatrisen", "Light cycle matrix" - as in "something which repeats itself", rather than "bike".
** (We interrupt this unbroken paragraph to note irony): they translated it right. Unfortunately the play on words didn't go with. "lightcycle" was originally one of many test program's to check the LEDs (or earlier incandescent bulbs) on old computers. It would cycle through the lights. The word for the trail-wall leaving laser motorbikes was a pun on this program name. Presumably had there been a command for initiating machine learning the solar sailer demo Flynn hijacked might have been a locomotive instead, playing off of "train."
* Sometimes, editors get too eager, leading "Fuck you, you motherfucking fuckers!" to be translated into Norwegian as "No lyt dykk roa dykk ned, gutar" - "You might want to calm down, boys". In Friends, "make-up sex" was translated into "sminkesex", leading viewers confused as to what rouge and lipstick have to do with sex. In one movie, the reassuring "I'll be right behind you, watching your back" becomes a moderately creepy "I'm standing behind you, looking at your back". "The Yellow Brick Road" became "That Road Which Is Paved With Yellow Cobblings". "One day, you will be invincible" became "One day, you will be invi''s''ible". However, probably one of the worst was from Apollo13 - "Go for launch!" became "Gå til lunsj", meaning... "Go to lunch".
* On [[http://www.discshop.se/shop/coverview.php?id=47061&side=back the back of the Swedish DVD]] of the ''SinCity'' film, it says that the film is based on the work of "comedy book author" Frank Miller, an obvious failure to get what "comic book" means. (For the record, the correct Swedish word for "comic" is ''serie'', literally "series".)
* During one of the audio commentaries on ''PiratesOfTheCaribbean'', there's a discussion about the sores on Jack Sparrow's face. In the Swedish DVD translation, however, "the scab" is translated into "strejkbrytaren", i.e. strike-breaker. Technically a correct translation, but completely nonsensical in context.
* In the Japanese edition of ''SukebanDeka: Codename = Asamiya Saki'' (otherwise known in the West as ''Yo-Yo Girl Cop''), the English subtitles seem to have been generated by attempting to translate the individual words directly into English, including the names, causing it to veer between this trope and a TranslationTrainWreck. The seemingly meaningless phrase "of temple" keeps recurring in the dialogue -- baffling, until you realise this was a translation of Asamiya, the heroine's family name.
* Finnish TV subtitles for ''{{Shaft}}'' once had a very literal translation for "Shaft is a bad motha".
* Similarly, the legendary mistranslation of "Must be another drill" in the Finnish TV broadcast of ''StarWars'' as "Ehkä se on pora," referring to the hole-making tool rather than a training routine.
** In the trench run sequence, "Switch all power to front deflector screens" became "Switch front projection (monitor) screens to full power".
** Also, instead of the usual existing translations for blasters and the Force, there was whammers and the Might. That was a conscious (and bad) choice by the translator, though.
* In one of the JamesBond movies, the Silicon Valley is mentioned. The German dub confused it with silicone.
** The German word for silicone is Silikon while the German word for silicon is Silizium. As you may expect these words are often mixed up in translations.
* The Brazilian dub of ''TropicThunder'' turns "I am a lead farmer" into "I'm the leader of the farm".
* The official theatrical Swedish subtitling for Transformers 2 consistently translated "the sliver" (as in the small shart of the Allspark) to "silvret", meaning "the silver".
* The Norwegian movie subtitles for the [=LotR=] movies were so hilariously bad that they were changed in the DVD versions. Not because they were {{Blind Idiot Translation}}s, but because they were so archaic that the audience quite simply started laughing. Elrond's "Kast den inn i eldmørja!" ("Cast it into the fire!", but really leaning more towards "Cast it into the sea of flames-infernal!") and Théoden's "Mitt kjøde er knust" ("My body is broken", but really more like "My corpus is undone") are both still buzzwords.
** The Return of the King, airing on Norwegian television a while back, had subtitles that made several ''really'' ridiculous mistakes, like having Gollum consistently refer to Frodo as "Husband" rather than "Master", or Sam's whole "I can't carry it for you but I can carry you!"-scene being translated into "Så la oss dra av sted med den, en gang for alle! Jeg kan ikke bære den til deg, men jeg kan bære deg!" ... Which, incidentally, means "Then let us '''get going with it''', once and for all! I can't carry it '''to''' you, but I can carry you!"
** The Japanese subtitles [[http://www.seatofkings.net/jtranslation.html were also pretty infamous.]] Fan complaints resulted in the translator being replaced for the next movie.
* ''Battle Royale'' is quite notorious for having a few bootlegs with bad subtitles. People in North America have often had to turn to bootlegs since the film doesn't have a US distributor. The most notorious boot is a Korean DVD with some hilariously bad translation errors. Some priceless examples include "That were my friends!!!", "Anyone who sees this must be scribble", "That knife I stabed with you, sometimes I think I threw it away, but now it's my treasure" and lots more.
* The English language track in ''Drunken Master'' contains a threat "I'll see you sink in hellfire!" that probably sounds more menacing in the original Chinese.
* Many years ago, a short press article on the poor quality of Polish film translations had two outrageous examples: a phrase "The computer is down" was translated into "The computer is in the basement", and W.C. Fields was changed into "Toilet Pastures".
* The otherwise decent Québec translation of ''ChildrenOfMen'' had a silly case of this with the subtitles. Early on, one of the governement's propaganda spot flash "Only Britain Soldiers On", the translator interpreted the line strangely literally and translated it as "Seul L'Angleterre a des soldats à bord" ("Only Britain has soldiers ''onboard''").

* Russian bootleg translation of ''Beowulf'' (1999) was titled "Biovolk", i.e., "Biological Wolf".

* This happens in-universe with the 2009 Japanese film, ''Film/FishStory.'' An English-language novel is translated into Japanese by someone with no grasp of the language, and as a result, his word-by-word translation borders on TranslationTrainWreck. The original opening phrase of the book is, "My own solitary fish story may scare a whale in its size and ferocity." The translation ends up, "The story of my solitude. If my solitude were a fish, it'd be so enormous, so militant, a whale would get out of there."

* In the Swedish DVD bonous material for [[Film/TheLordOfTheRings TheLordOfTheRings]] the camera showed one of the staff at the Weta Workshop creating a chainmail prop for the movie and commenting "This is chainmail." This was translated in the subtitles as "Detta är ett kedjebrev" meaning "This is a chain letter" instead of correct "Denna är en ringbrynja".

[[folder:The pictures moving around (Film)]]

* In the Swedish DVD bonous material for [[Film/TheLordOfTheRings TheLordOfTheRings]] the camera showed one of the staff at the Weta Workshop creating a chainmail prop for the movie and commenting "This is chainmail." This was translated in the subtitles as "Detta är ett kedjebrev" meaning "This is a chain letter" instead of correct "Denna är en ringbrynja".
[[/folder]]