The Cinematical Ass-Kicking Chinese Movie Title Contest

by Kim Voynar May 10th 2006 // 10:08AM

Filed under: Action, Comedy, Drama, Romance, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Site Announcements, Family Films, Tom Cruise, Johnny Depp, Contests, Comic/Superhero/Geek, Remakes and Sequels

Over at Film Threat, Shane Burridge has a rather entertaining piece up on the perplexing way that American movie titles are renamed in Chinese. Burridge breaks it down thusly: when renaming American films with Chinese names, translators tend to use one of these methods:

  • The "come up with a name that reflects the DVD cover" method, by which Finding Nemo became The Big Fish Is Going to Eat the Little Fish;
  • The "sounds kinda like this" method, by which Titanic morphed into Tai Tan Ne Ke;
  • The "enhanced translation" path, which leads to, say, Mr. Bean becoming Stupid Mr. Bean;
  • The "did the translator actually watch this film?" method, in which Deliverance somehow became Four Brave Men Passing Through Rapids and Dangerous Shoals;
  • And, of course, the ever-reliable literal translation, such as The Little Mermaid becoming The Romance of Human and Mermaid.

Not only is Burridge's piece a funny read (the bit about the Ass-Kicking Ketchup almost made me snort peppermint tea out my nose -- in a very lady-like way, of course), it's inspired us here at Cinematical to give you yet another reason to win a snazzy, spiffy Cinematical t-shirt. Here's all you gotta do: Come up with the best Chinese translation of any of the following summer movie titles, using any one of the methods listed above to create your translation:

Leave your best entries in the comments. If your brain juices are really flowing and you feel super-creative and inspired, you can enter more than one, but we'll only pick one winner. You have until 11:59PM EDT on Thursday, May 11 to submit your entry. Winner will be announced by Monday. Ready ... set ... GO!

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