| Many have pointed out that the "romantic" dialogue between Anakin Skywalker and Padme in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005) is unforgivably cheesy. Could their lovesick proclamations be improved by translating their words into Chinese and then back into English? Well as it turns out, that’s an easy thing to check.
Picture this. Anakin gazes deeply into Padme’s eyes, and blubbers "You are so beautiful," but on the bottom of the screen, the English subtitles clearly read "The beauty that you are like this."
Wha? The scene continues. Let’s follow along, ignoring the character’s actual spoken dialogue and focusing only on the subtitles. For best effect, read the following exchange out loud to the love of your life, with all the passion you can muster:
Padme: I let me become the beauty to your love.
Anakin: Not, I love you love deeper!
Padme: Your meaning is a love to tie up you!
Anakin: That is not my meaning.
Great stuff, eh? George Lucas can’t take credit for it, though. This exchange appears only on the hysterical poorly-translated pirate DVD known to fans as Star War the Third Gathers: Backstroke of the West. Yep, you guessed it – that’s what the title is translated into onscreen.
Shortly after Revenge of the Sith premiered, bootleg DVDs of Lucas’s epic began appearing in Chinatowns around the world. The discs offered Chinese subtitles, which were largely the point of the exercise considering the target audience, but the pirated media also offered an unexpected bonus – optional English subtitles. When curious English-speaking viewers tried them out, they got an unexpected laugh riot. The English soundtrack remained untouched, but the translations on the bottom of the screen had been turned into utter gibberish thanks to the dual translation process, which was probably done by computer and never proofread.
Anakin’s new name is "Allah Gold," described as a "Great hopeless situation warrier" (sic). Obi Wan’s vaguely Asian-sounding name must have given the translator difficulty, as it winds up translated as "Ratio Tile." Mace Windu received the impressive title of "Text How Big Teacher." General Grievous winds up with the comparatively mundane name "Space General," but Palpatine’s new handle is "Speaker D.", which I think lends the old guy some cool street cred. There are other linguistic peculiarities. The Jedi Council is bafflingly referred to as "The Presbyterian Church". The word "Elephant" pops up at random. So does the word "fuck." Sentence structure is so mangled that everybody speaks like Yoda, except for Yoda himself, who has never sounded so lucid. A panicky space pilot looks at the enemy craft behind him and gasps "He is in my behind!" Palpatine warns the heroes of Count Dooku’s fighting prowess by saying, "You two careful; he is A Big." From time to time, a completely original howler like "Giving first aid the already disheveled hair projection" will pop up.
I’m no stranger to awful subtitles or hilariously mistranslated Chinese bootlegs, but Backstroke of the West offers up something special – a popular English-language film rendered into a ridiculous Dadaist comedy. Even the opening text crawl is given a bad translation, leaving viewers to wonder why the bootlegger didn’t simply look slightly upwards and copy the words that were already on the screen.
Do we have room for a few more zingers? How about these:
"He big in nothing; important in Good Elephant."
"The front is a Lemon Avenue, flying straightly!"
"Send these troopseses only!"
"They want to know him at fuck."
"They are just a flock of to fish for fame its person."
When Obi Wan points out that he has the high ground, the subtitles announce "The geography that I stands compares you superior." When Grievous taunts Anakin, he calls him a "Smelly Boy." Best of all, when Vader lets loose with his hyper-cheesy "NOOOOOOOOOOO!" at the end, the subtitle reads "DO NOT WANT!"
A plethora of hilarious screenshots from this copyright-infringing calamity exist on the web, and finding them is as simple as typing "Backstroke of the West" into a search engine. In no time, you and your Star Wars-savvy friends will have a whole new supply of inside jokes to snicker at in public, while people stare at you quizzically.
Smelly Boy. |
Copyright ©2007 FFWD. All rights reserved.