Day 22: Superagente salvaje y el reino de la calavera de cristal
BARCELONA, Spain -- At this time of year, Spain seemingly trades its native population for the entire population of Western Europe: while Spaniards head for Ireland in August (I have firsthand knowledge that Ireland is brimming with Spaniards in August), the Germans, French, English, Italians and let's not forget Americans wander through the Alhambra with their screaming children, or sport blistering sunburns on the Costa Brava, or walk up and down the Ramblas in Barcelona ordering pitchers of sangría and marveling at the human statues while their pockets are picked. It's a strange little turnabout, but such is July/August in Europe.
Anyway, with all these multilingual tourists to please, the Spanish movie theaters have a full slate of ok-to-terrible American movies on hand, all dubbed into Spanish, and with titles translated for the most part faithfully. Still, I get a kick out of the translated titles, as they're not exact word-for-word translations, rather they shoot for a nice approximation of the overall feeling of the movie. I've already mentioned Dos colgaos muy fumaos: fuga de Guantánamo (Harold and Kumar: Escape from Guantanamo), which is maybe the best translation I've ever seen for an American movie. Here's hoping that the first Harold and Kumar installment was translated as Harold y Kumar: La película más tonta que has visto nunca (Harold and Kumar: The Dumbest Movie You've Ever Seen).
Here are some other translations of American movie titles currently in the theaters, and my re-translation of the Spanish translation back into English:
Anyway, with all these multilingual tourists to please, the Spanish movie theaters have a full slate of ok-to-terrible American movies on hand, all dubbed into Spanish, and with titles translated for the most part faithfully. Still, I get a kick out of the translated titles, as they're not exact word-for-word translations, rather they shoot for a nice approximation of the overall feeling of the movie. I've already mentioned Dos colgaos muy fumaos: fuga de Guantánamo (Harold and Kumar: Escape from Guantanamo), which is maybe the best translation I've ever seen for an American movie. Here's hoping that the first Harold and Kumar installment was translated as Harold y Kumar: La película más tonta que has visto nunca (Harold and Kumar: The Dumbest Movie You've Ever Seen).
Here are some other translations of American movie titles currently in the theaters, and my re-translation of the Spanish translation back into English:
- Forgetting Sarah Marshall = Paso de ti = Forget About You
- Into the Wild = Hacia rutas salvajes = Toward Wild Routes
- Inspector Gadget = Superagente 86 = Superagent 86 (huh?)
- X-Files: I Want to Believe = X-Files: Creer es la clave = X-Files: Believing is the Key
- Made of Honor = La Boda de Mi Novia = My Girlfriend's Wedding (again, huh?)
- Sex in the City = Sexo en Nueva York = Sex in New York (self-explanatory. As if there's only one City, right? As I've always said, The City varies depending on where you live. I mean, for some Michiganders, Kalamazoo is probably "The City")
- Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull = Indiana Jones y el reino de la calavera de cristal = Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (and we have our winner!)
posted by SJB at 4:12 AM
2 Comments:
thanks for your informative travelogue---many years ago my local movie theatre (when there were such things)translated the french "shoot the piano player" (tirez sur le pianiste) as "don't shoot the piano player." it probably seemed much more appropriate.
---and what is it with these gold and silver painted human statues? they're everywhere.
I don't know, but on the Ramblas they're getting more and more creative: Edward Scissorhands, a woman covered in fruit, a guy with an inside-out umbrella frozen in a wind storm... it's not just gold and silver paint anymore!
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