Lost In Translation / Film

• Star Wars:
  • The Italian dubbing of the whole franchise is completely crazy; it changes many character names (Han Solo -> Ian Solo, Leia -> Leila, Darth Vader -> Lord Fener, R2D2 -> C1P8, C3PO -> D3BO) and even borders on Completely Different Title, with The Empire Strikes Back becoming L'Impero Colpisce Ancora (The Empire Strikes Again), but most of all it seems to be fond of just replacing random words with something completely unrelated; as an example, not only the Death Star became "Morte Nera" ("Black Death"), but during its firing sequence the "primary ignition" became "ignizione preliminare" ("preliminary ignition"), which doesn't make any sense even considering lip synch (which would actually have worked better with "primaria", the correct translation for "primary").
  • This trope is the reason for the infamous "Do Not Want" from a Chinese bootleg of Revenge of the Sith: there is no Chinese equivalent to the English Big "NO!", and the only form of "no" that can be used in that language is as an adverb.
• Some Finnish subtitles for Star Wars translated a Stormtrooper's line "Maybe it's another drill" as "Ehkä se on pora". Technically, it's a pretty correct translation - except that "pora" is the Finnish word for the hole-making tool.
• Older or cheaply subtitled Bollywood movies often forgot subtitling the songs. As these often introduce, develop and resolve plot points or whole subplots, viewers not fluent in Hindi are left wondering just why there is suddenly a happily ever after.
• Lost in Translation:
  • Appropriately enough, this trope is played with several times in the film. The director of a TV ad says a minute's worth of Japanese to Bob, which the translator renders in English as two sentences. The scene is especially hilarious if you find out what the director really says; the translation is technically correct, but a lot of emotional and cultural context is lost.
  • Also a "meta" example: The movie was released in Israel and Chile with the title "Lost in Tokyo". So the meaning of the title Lost In Translation was, well, lost in translation.
• Intentionally used in the movie Whisper of the Heart with Shizuku's various attempts to translate the song Country Roads into Japanese, a task she finds especially difficult since she's a city girl without any notion of what life in her own countryside is like. (She translates "Mountain Mama" to "My mother the mountain" at one point) Eventually she decides to ditch the country homecoming theme entirely and write something new that speaks from her own heart.
• In the movie The Great Raid, the "translated" Filipino lines makes sense in the context of the scene. Several, however, were clearly erroneous. One of the more poignant examples was a Filipino driver asking for payment being subtitled as him saying that there was only limited room for refugees in the vehicle.
• In the Norwegian subtitles for Independence Day "Oh my god, there's nothing left" is translated as "Oh my god, there's nothing to the left"
• Used in-universe in Charlie Wilson's War, when Gust tries to explain the animosity between Tajiks and Pashtuns by telling a derogatory Pashtu joke. Nobody laughs.
  Gust Avrokatos: "Well, they say when a Tajik wants to make love to a woman, his first choice is always a Pashtun man. [beat] It's funnier in the original Pashtu."
• In the Italian version of Back to the Future, for some reason unknown to mankind the Flux Capacitor got mistranslated as "flusso canalizzatore", which roughly means "channeling flux" and has almost nothing to do with the original name; however, in the third movie, Doc's letter talks about the broken "condensatore di flusso", which is an exact translation of "flux capacitor"; the Italian audience was never able to understand what this "condensatore di flusso" was and why would it be of any importance.
  • The (European) Spanish version names it "condensador de fluzo" in every moment despite fluzo meaning absolutely nothing in Spanish. Many people that saw the movies as children feel a bit disappointed when they realize the mythical, quasi-magical "condensador de fluzo" was just a "condensador de flujo" or flux capacitor.
  • The flux capacitor seems to give a lot of translators grief. In the German version it was called "Fluxkompensator" (flux compensator), where the right translation would've been all of two letters different: "Fluxkondensator."
  • In the first film, Marty comments that he knows the plot line of an old Jackie Gleason film. When asked how, as it's a new show, he explains he saw it on a re-run. When dubbed in Italian - as Italy in the 80s had not taken up the practice of re-running old shows - he instead said that he had seen it on VHS.
• Used for laughs in the Russian movie The Diamond Arm (Brilliantovaya ruka). The (supposedly) Turkish speech of Istanbul residents is dubbed until they start to get...emotional. Then the interpreter explains that "Cue untranslatable play on words based on traditional idiomatic expressions."
• Whoever wrote the Russian dub of Death Becomes Her misheard Lisle's impression of Greta Garbo's famous quote "I vont to be alone-ya" as "I vont to be a lawyer."
• In the Norwegian dub of The Lion King "meerkat" is translated to "marekatt", the Norwegian word for Guenon. So Timon was essentially called a monkey until the release of the third movie...
• The translated Norwegian title of Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen was inexplicably translated into Transformers: The Defeated Strike Back (with "Defeated" being plural, rather than the singular "Fallen").
  • Ditto the Swedish version; Transformers: De Besegrades Hämnd (Transformers: Revenge Of The Defeated)
  • The Danish version decided that "The Fallen" was plural, thus sorta assuming that these "fallen" were a group, instead of the name of the film's Big Bad.
  • The Finnish title, Transformers: Kaatuneiden Kosto, is also implying that there are multiple "fallen".
  • The Polish version got the word "Fallen" right, but plural instead of singular: ''Transformers: Zemsta Upad³ych" (should be "Zemsta Upad³ego").
  • The Russian version also assumed "the Fallen" applied to multiple fallen characters and named the movie Месть падших instead of the singular (and capitalized) "Падшего". The character Fallen was simply transliterated as "Фолен", losing all meaning.
  • The Spanish and Mexican versions got the name Transformers: La venganza de los caídos; which as you may guess is plural, so yeah everyone thought it was about the Decepticons and not that other guy.
  • According to the Brazilian dubbing director, where the title is "Transformers: A Vingança dos Derrotados", meaning the same as the previous examples, it was a deliberate choice to translate the word "fallen" as if it was referencing the Decepticons rather than the Fallen himself.
• Similarly to the above, the Finnish title of the movie The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is Hyvät, pahat ja rumat (implying that the movie isn't so much about three persons, one of whom is considered good, the second bad and the last ugly, but several of each.) It's also sort of Hilarious in Hindsight since the movie names that refer to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, like The Good, The Bad, The Weird (Hyvä, paha ja outo) are translated right.
• In the Schwarzenegger classic Total Recall (1990), there's the scene where the bad guys are trying to track Arnie's character with a radio-beacon he carries in his head. One guy has the tracking device and tells the others "I have a lock" (meaning, a lock on the beacon). In the German version, this becomes "Ich habe ein Schloss" - meaning either "I have a door-lock" or "I have a castle", since the word has two meanings in German, none of them meaning that sort of lock.
• The Swedish subtitles for the Bond movie "A View to a Kill" contains a real gem. As the bad guys are flying in their blimp over San Francisco (with the obligatory view of the Golden Gate bridge) they comment: "What a view." "To a kill." In the Swedish subtitles it goes: "What a view." "Yeah, Tokyo."
• Italian titles of foreign movies sometimes get either way too literal (the Italian title of Vertigo is La Donna Che Visse Due Volte, The Woman Who Lived Twice) or misleading; The Evil Dead (1981) is called La Casa (The House), the Prom Night movies (the original and the remake) are called Non Entrate In Quella Casa (Don't Go In That House, knockoff of the terrible Italian title for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), Non Aprite Quella Porta, Don't Open That Door), despite there not being any dangerous house in the movie, and Che La Fine Abbia Inizio (Let The End Begin). And these are just a few examples! But the most annoying is the trend started with the italian title of Runaway Bride, Se Scappi Ti Sposo (If You Run Away I'll Marry You) which brought many variations of If You ___I/I'll ____ You slapped on as titles, including the egregious case of titling Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Se Mi Lasci Ti Cancello (If You Leave Me I'll Erase You).
• German titles try to drop a clever pun or phrase in the title, but often are hit-or-miss among German-speaking audiences:
  • Miss: Big Hero 6 was "Baymax: Riesiges Rohuwabohu", which means something like "Baymax: Giant Chaos-Bot" or "Baymax: Giant Robo-Mess". "Rohuwabohu" is a pun on "Tohuwabohu", a German term for "chaos" or "disorder"^note  derived from the Hebrew "tohu wa bohu," used in Genesis 1:2 to refer to the Earth's desolate, chaotic state before God intervenes , but little kids aren't likely to get that.
  • Hit: DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story became Voll der Nüsse which literally means "Full of the Nuts" but is more accurately translated as "In the Nuts".
  • Miss: Airplane! is Die unglaubliche Reise in einem verrückten Flugzeug or "The Unbelievable Trip in a Wacky Airplane". Good luck making references to the film title in Germany.
• In Mexico, the movie Outlander, for some incomprehensible reason has been titled La Tierra Media y El Tesoro del Dragon Solitario (Middle Earth and the Treasure of the Lonely Dragon), there seems to have been no translation attempt going on at all for the title, which could have easily been translated as Extranjero.
• In Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in Malaysia, the part where Quirrell bursts in and announces "THERE'S A TROLL IN THE DUNGEON!" has "troll" translated in the Malay subtitles as "orang kerdil" - "tiny person".
• The Return of the Living Dead falls victim to this, as the funniest line in the movie ("You mean the movie lied!?", spoken in shock by Frank after finding out that Removing the Head or Destroying the Brain doesn't kill the zombies) is translated in the Italian dub as "Continua a muoversi!"^note "It's continuing to move!" Frank's mouth moved enough in that one line for a literal translation^note "Poi il film ha mentito!?" to fit almost perfectly.
• Pan's Labyrinth runs into this in an early scene. When the Captain welcomes Ofelia and her pregnant mother to his villa, he greets them with "bienvenidos." This instantly tells the Spanish-speaking audience who he's really greeting, since normally when greeting a group of women one would say "bienvenidas." Unfortunately, since both words mean "welcome," the implications couldn't be communicated through the subtitles. The director was aware of this, and the Captain checks Carmen's pregnant belly before greeting them.
• Frozen:
  • One of the lines in "Love is an Open Door" is "We finish each other's - sandwiches!" However, the wordplay of "sentences" vs. "sandwiches" isn't really translatable into other languages - for instance, in the French translation, the line ends up being something like "How a stranger finishes - all your sentences?" and completely ignores the "sandwiches" bit.
  • "Fixer Upper" is a hard song to translate as many languages don't have a similar phrase. Various dubs had to work around it.
• The Marx Brothers movies were famous in Spain for having literal translations, making every other pun and joke a complete Non Sequitur. They were still funny, mind you, but it was a different kind of humor.
• In The Ten Commandments, when Bithia adopts Moses, she says, "Because I drew you from the water, you shall be called 'Moses.'" This makes no sense in English. In Hebrew, she calls him Moshe (the Hebrew equivalent of Moses), because she mishituhu (which translates to, "I drew him out") from the water.
• The Argentinian film The Secret in Their Eyes is called "El Secreto de sus ojos", seems like a perfectly accurate translation if it wasn't for the fact that "Sus ojos" could refer to the eyes of a single person as well as those of many, losing the double entendre that referred either to the eyes of the suspect or the eyes or Prosecutor Irene.
• Airplane!: The iconic combo "Surely you can't be serious!/I am serious, and don't call me Shirley!" is nowhere in the European Spanish version, because the dubbers could not find a way to adapt the joke into Spanish. Nielsen's line was changed to a boring "I am serious. I will repeat it if you want." At least in the Latin American Spanish version, they change it into "God, you can't be serious!/I am serious, and I am not God!"
• 7 Dwarves - Men Alone in the Woods: Foreign viewers might not understand why the castle is formed like a giant lock^note In german the words for lock and castle are identical..
• The Japanese version of Mad Max: Fury Road uses standard Japanese in place of all the future-slang - for example, "you a blackthumb?" is translated as "you a mechanic?".
• The Greek dub for Aladdin, while an example of Superlative Dubbing for the most part (thanks to a famous clown actor playing the Genie), ruined the "Doubting Thomas" pun by making it "Κύριε Μουστάφα Αμφιβάλογλου" (for an English equivalent, there's "Mr. Mustafa Doubtingman").
• Used as a plot point in Men in Black. The Arquillian prince is dying and leaves a cryptic clue, "The galaxy is on Orion's belt". The prince didn't know the English word for "collar" and was trying to say that the Galaxy was the little trinket on his cat's collar, the cat being named Orion.
• The Swedish film Varn!ng för Jönssonligan (an adaptation of Olsenbandens sidste bedrifter) had a generally good fan subtitling, translating Swedish idioms to their English equivalent and occasionally leaving comments in the subtitle file providing details on what exactly was changed. But the translator still made one blunder: toward the end of the film, one of the protagonists suddenly responds to the villain's speech about what would happen if he were arrested with the phrase "Whatever - good sauces cook'emselves", a literal translation of the idiom the character was using pulled through the Accent Adaptation.^{To elaborate}The original phrase was "Bra sås reder sig själv", literally "Good sauce takes care of itself". This is a humorous twist on the idiom "Bra karl reder sig själv," "Good man takes care of himself". By the time of the fan sub's release, all forms of the idiom had fallen out of use. The subber later released an updated version of the subtitles where the same line is rendered as "Whatever - good folks would help themselves back up."
• In foreign language dubs of Dumbo, the translation is lost when Mrs. Jumbo names her son "Jumbo Jr." and the other elephants rename him "Dumbo" when his ears are revealed. As a result, the Italian dub has Mrs. Jumbo name her baby "Dumbo Jumbo" from the beginning. The French 1980 and Brazilian 1941 dubs also have her name him "Dumbo", except the other elephants call him other appropriately matching names ("Dum-pas-beau" in French, and "Bobo" in Brazilian).
• None of the Godzilla movies have ever managed to successfully translate Mothra's famous theme song into English due to the pronunciation differences between English and Japanese. Since the Japanese syllabary system doesn't have blended consonant sounds or dental fricatives (blended consonants in non-Japanese loanwords are usually separated into two syllables), "Mothra" is pronounced "Mosura" in Japanese—and it has three syllables instead of two. Unfortunately, this means that the English pronunciation doesn't fit with the melody of the Japanese lyrics.
  "Mosura-ya, Mosura..."

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