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I love catching these little translation flubs. Japanese movie and TV subtitles seem to have quite a few, probably because of the aforementioned time pressure.
by laurieg 2y ago
I love catching these little translation flubs. Japanese movie and TV subtitles seem to have quite a few, probably because of the aforementioned time pressure. For example, I saw Oppenheimer in the theater and "crown" had been mistranslated as "clown".
Perhaps my favorite subtitle mistake of all time is in the subtitles of Brooklyn 99. One of the characters talks about getting someone a "boogie board" (a small surfboard) as a present. This is translated as "electronic memo pad". I couldn't work out how that had happened until I googled "boogie board" and half of the results are for an electronic writing pad with that name.
- lmm 2y agoYou might enjoy the notorious Star War the Third Gathers: Backstroke of the West. At turns ludicrous and oddly poetic.
- jhbadger 2y agoI remember reading a French translation of John Crowley's AEgypt and there was a part where a building on a college campus is described as looking like "a Christian Science church" (referring to Mary Baker Eddy's movement that built round churches with domes especially in the 19th century). The French translator, perhaps unfamiliar with that mostly American religion, translated it as looking like a "church of Scientology" -- a very different reference!