January 4, 2007
This morning on my commute I read an interesting article in the Morning Post about how movie names are translated into Chinese for use on the mainland. There are both cultural and legal factors at work. As examples, it talks about a few of the foreign movies that have been submitted to the China State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) for permission to appear in Chinese theaters this year.
“The Host" is a Korean horror movie that has grossed record proceeds in Korea. The original title (in Korean?) was《魊》, but this is a rather obscure traditional character; the article even tells us its pinyin, in case we didn't know (we didn't; it's yù). Originally it was proposed to be translated as "怪物" ("Monster"), but there was an earlier HK movie with that title and SARFT rules forbid repeats so it was ultimately submitted as《汉江怪物》("Han River Monster").
Typically, American movies submit their movie with the title that was used in Taiwan and/or Hong Kong, but in some cases this is not feasible due to cultural and legal factors. Because Hong Kong audiences prefer movie titles with the characters 神 (holy/god/mystic) and 鬼 (ghost/spirit), the movie "Pirates of the Caribbean" was translated to《神鬼奇航》("The Haunted Ghost Ship"), and the upcoming "Night at the Museum" was translated to《博物馆惊魂夜》("Spooky Spirit Night at the Museum"). But SARFT's rules ask movies to avoid words like ghost, god, and demon, so the American comic blockbuster's name was pared back to《博物馆奇妙夜》("Fantastic Night at the Museum"; no problem for the directly translated "Pirates"). The article points out that this is actually closer to the original English name, which says nothing about ghosts, and is truer to the genre of the movie. Similarly, "The Devil Wears Prada" was originally translated as《穿普拉达的女魔头》("The Prada-wearing She-devil") but was submitted to SARFT as 《穿普拉达的女王》("The Prada-wearing Queen").
Sometimes, movies change their names to be more "socially responsible". For example, the newest James Bond flickr "Casino Royale" was changed to 《007大战皇家赌场》("007's War on(?) the Casino Royale") so that viewers would not misinterpret it as a movie about gambling. The British-South-African collaboration "Tsotsi" was originally 黑帮暴徒, but changed to 救赎 ("Ransom") because "Gang Thug" is too closely associated with violence.
The article ends with a paragraph about Transformers the movie retaining the Chinese name of the classic cartoon, 《变形金刚》. Harmless enough, it means something like "Shape-changing Titans".
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