Friday, September 08, 2006
English Movie Titles in Chinese
Hover over any underlined Chinese character to see the pinyin tooltip(note: if you are reading this in an RSS reader, you probably won't be able to see the pinyin tooltips, in which case you should click on the link to the original post.)
Many times during my 3 years in China, I've found myself in the DVD shop, wanting to ask for a certain film, but not knowing the Chinese name for it. Some of the translations are a far cry from what you would expect. I find a good way to find out the Chinese title is to do a Google search for "Movie Title 电影" (e.g - Star Wars 电影). You'll know which is the movie title because they are always enclosed in 《》 signs - 《星球大战》 (Star Wars).
Here's a random selection of movie titles in Chinese. Some are more bizzare than others:
Spiderman 《蜘蛛侠》 - (Spider Hero)
Dodgeball 《疯狂躲避求》 - (Crazy Dodge Ball)
Lord of the Rings 《魔戒》 - (Evil Ring)
Misery 《危情十日》 - (Perilous 10 Days)
Old School 《男子单身俱乐部》 - (Men's Singles Club)
The Matrix 《黑客帝国》 - (Hacker's Empire)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest 《飞越疯人院》 - (Fly Over the Mental Institution)
Snakes on a Plane 《空中蛇灾》 - (Midair Snake Disaster)
Donnie Darko 《死亡幻觉》 - (Death Hallucinations)
Finding Neverland 《寻找梦幻岛》 - (Looking for Illusion Island)
Gone with the Wind 《乱世佳人》 - (Turbulent Times Beautiful Woman)
Interesting, no?
Some films have a second title, when the translation is ambiguous. This will be written under the main title, with the words 又名：(another name)
Hope you enjoy looking for interesting film titles. Let me know if you've seen any good ones.
Many times during my 3 years in China, I've found myself in the DVD shop, wanting to ask for a certain film, but not knowing the Chinese name for it. Some of the translations are a far cry from what you would expect. I find a good way to find out the Chinese title is to do a Google search for "Movie Title 电影" (e.g - Star Wars 电影). You'll know which is the movie title because they are always enclosed in 《》 signs - 《星球大战》 (Star Wars).
Here's a random selection of movie titles in Chinese. Some are more bizzare than others:
Spiderman 《蜘蛛侠》 - (Spider Hero)
Dodgeball 《疯狂躲避求》 - (Crazy Dodge Ball)
Lord of the Rings 《魔戒》 - (Evil Ring)
Misery 《危情十日》 - (Perilous 10 Days)
Old School 《男子单身俱乐部》 - (Men's Singles Club)
The Matrix 《黑客帝国》 - (Hacker's Empire)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest 《飞越疯人院》 - (Fly Over the Mental Institution)
Snakes on a Plane 《空中蛇灾》 - (Midair Snake Disaster)
Donnie Darko 《死亡幻觉》 - (Death Hallucinations)
Finding Neverland 《寻找梦幻岛》 - (Looking for Illusion Island)
Gone with the Wind 《乱世佳人》 - (Turbulent Times Beautiful Woman)
Interesting, no?
Some films have a second title, when the translation is ambiguous. This will be written under the main title, with the words 又名：(another name)
Hope you enjoy looking for interesting film titles. Let me know if you've seen any good ones.
Tags:
Labels: Movies
posted by Dan at 5:57 PM
2 comments
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2 Comments:
I am a Chinese girl.I am curiosity about your blog.So i added your blog to mine.Haha.Nice to meet you.I will come here frequently.
http://blog.sina.com.cn/m/linyanlin
What about 飘 as the title for "Gone With the Wind." I can't tell you how many Chinese people have just beamed at the cleverness of that single word translation. They don't usually like it when I say, "Ya, it gets that whole 'floating in the wind' idea but what about the 'gone' part?"
Anyway, fascinating stuff you have here. I'm curious how you got those cool hover tooltips. I'd post my email so you can tell me, but I'm afraid of spam. Here use this if you want http://laowaichinese.net/contact/
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