I’m fascinated by Chinese culture. I sometimes wonder if I was Chinee in a previous life. There the spirituality, the bad ass kung fu movies, the food and, of course, the crazy, crazy film title translations.
If you aren’t familiar with this phenomena, this is an exerpt from an article at FilmThreat.com about it…
Sometimes you get the impression that whoever was responsible for giving a Western film its Chinese title had never seen the movie at all. “Deliverance”, understandably, is called “Four Brave Men Passing Though Rapids and Dangerous Shoals”, which fair rolls off the tongue, but “Blade Runner” becomes “Silver-Wing Killer” and “The Edge” reads more like a self-help title: “Be Extremely Antagonistic”.
Similarly to the phonetic translations of names, many titles do keep their meaning intact. “The Abyss” is “Bottomless Pit”; Spielberg’s “Always” is “Until Forever”; “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” is simplified into a two-word film review, “Horrible Show”.
A friend and fellow Rockets fan who runs the humor website TopFive.com compiled the beginnings of a list a few years back of some of his favorites. I can’t be 100% sure they are all real – it is a humor site after all. But, they sound it given the story above.
There are quite a few reference guides on line and they always make me laugh. Enjoy!