The 10 Worst Translated Movie Titles

It’s a danger well known to international brands, who have to be extremely careful so that their USA best selling cleaning product doesn’t translate as ‘dog dirt’ in Finnish or something.

However, movie makers are not so lucky and here are 10 of the worst translated movie titles :

1. Airplane : Translated into German as ‘The Unbelievable Trip In A Wacky Aeroplane’

2: Leon : How can anyone mistranslate this. It’s someone’s name. But the Chinese decided on ‘is Hit Man Is Not As Cold As He Thought’ instead.

3: Home Alone: This became ‘Mom, I Missed The Plane’ in France.

4: Lost In Translation : It was inevitable perhaps that this movie title has been mistranslated. The Portuguese called it ‘Meetings and Failures in Meetings’. Sounds fascinating. Sure to be a big hit.

5: You Only Live Twice: Personally, I think the Japanese translation : ’007 Dies Twice’ sounds a more interesting prospect.

6: Jaws : The French went for ‘The Teeth from the Sea’ for this ’70s classic.

7: Cruel Intentions : Became ‘Sex Intentions’ in France.

8: The Horse Whisperer: Ended up as ‘Held by Wind in Montana’ over in Japan.

9: The Matrix : This has got to be my favourite. The French called this sci-fi extravaganza ‘The Young People Who Traverse Dimensions While Wearing Sunglasses’, which is literal, if nothing else.

10: Pretty Woman : Can anyone confirm this one? Apparently, this was translated into ‘I Will Marry A Prostitute and Save Money’ in China.

Lies Your Parents Told You

I’m in my late thirties now and it has suddenly occurred to me just how strange my, and I presume your, parents were when I was younger.

I keep remembering all those weird lies they told me when I was a kid. So here’s a few of the best:

“If you swallow melon seeds, a melon will grow in your stomach” – Um, why did they tell me this. Did they have a deal with a local therapist? Who knows.

“If you swallow chewing gum, it will stick your insides together.” – This one used to terrify me.

[Said when I was pulling a strange expression] “If the wind changes, you’ll stay like that” – This didn’t even make sense at the time.

“If you sit too close to the television, you’ll go blind” – There were lots of other lies they told about things that would make me go blind, but this was the first.

“If you eat lots of carrots, you can see in the dark” – Um, not after sitting so close to the television, I can’t.

“If you’re bad, Santa Claus won’t bring you any presents” – This is actually true, right ?

“If you go out dressed like that, you’ll catch a cold” – The common cold is a virus. It has nothing to do with the weather.

There’s probably plenty more but those are the ones that have stayed with me all this time.