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Funny English Movie Subtitles

From Hong Kong Martial Art Movies

Here are some chuckles for all you language lovers (or Martial Arts film lovers). My friend, Dave Hinckley, sent me these:

“I threat you! I challenge you meet me on the roof tonight for a duet!”

“I will kill you until you are dead from it!”

“The bullets inside are very hot. Why do I feel so cold?”

“I got knife scars more than the number of your leg’s hair!”

“I am damn unsatisfied to be killed in this way.”

“Fatty, you with your thick face have hurt my instep.”

“I’ll fire aimlessly if you don’t come out!”

“You are too useless. And now I must beat you.”

“Gun wounds again?”

“A normal person wouldn’t steal pituitaries.”

“You always use violence. I should’ve ordered glutinous rice chicken.”

“Take my advice, or I’ll spank you without pants.”

“Beware! Your bones are going to be disconnected.”

“Who gave you the nerve to get killed here?”

“Quiet or I’ll blow your throat up.”

“You daring lousy guy.”

“Beat him out of recognizable shape!”

“How can you use my intestines as a gift?”

“Damn, I’ll burn you into a BBQ chicken!”

“This will be of fine service for you, you bag of the scum. I am sure you will not mind that I remove your manhoods and leave them out on the dessert flour for your aunts to eat.”

“Yah-hah, evil spider woman! I have captured you by the short rabbits and can now deliver you violently to your gynecologist for a thorough extermination.”

“Greetings, large black person. Let us not forget to form a team up together and go into the country to inflict the pain of our karate feets on some @$$ of the giant lizard person.”

“Your spear is useless... You better use it for mixing excretory.”

“Now I feel flatulent, and you did it.”

“My innards have all been disturbed by him.”

“That may disarray my intestines.”

“I please your uterus. You kiss my toes. It’s fair.”

“This is the Martial Arts Competition, not a place for fighting!”

The following was also included in this email. I have edited it to remove names and email addresses.

One amusing title translation in a Japanese anime: The Japanese line was “The Creature Within,”and it was translated into “The Monster Inside the Guts.”

This reminds me of a copy of Star Wars III that we got from a friend, who bought it in Bali. It was translated into some Asian language, then back into English for the subtitles. The words that end up on the screen are hilarious. It’s as if they threw the whole movie into bablefish! Entertaining for that purpose only, but not good news for the world of closed captioning.

Also:

From IMDb’s news page... Lost in Translation

Efforts by overseas film distributors to cut costs by outsourcing subtitle translations to such countries as India and Malaysia have resulted in creating dialog that makes little sense to local audiences, according to today’s (Monday) London Times. The newspaper observed that translators with little understanding of the nuances of English are taking the place of British subtitlers, many with long careers in the business.

Kenn Nakata Steffenson, who translates English films into Danish and Japanese films into English, cited one film in which the line “Jim is a Vietnam vet” became “Jim is veterinarian from Vietnam” in the farmed-out Danish subtitles. In another film, the words “flying into an asteroid field” became “flying into a steroid field.” In yet another, “She died in a freak rugby accident” became “She died in a rugby match for people with deformities.”

In My Super Ex-Girlfriend, Uma Thurman’s line, “We have a zero-tolerance policy for sexual harassment” was translated into Taiwanese as “We hold the highest standards for sexual harassment.” The Times said that Mexican director Guillermo Del Toro was so upset with the English subtitles for his 2001 film The Devil’s Backbone that he himself worked on the subtitles for last year’s award-winning Pan’s Labyrinth.

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