8mm Forum: Subtitles for Ken Films

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Posted by Hal Dickens (Member # 3661) on April 22, 2013, 08:28 PM:

The 8mm silent "I Was A Teenage Frankenstein" from Ken Films has two weird subtitle misspellings. "Experiment" is spelled "expirement" and "gorilla" is spelled "guerilla". Do you think that was deliberate or do you think the subtitler had a drinking problem?

Posted by Douglas Meltzer (Member # 28) on April 22, 2013, 09:42 PM:

Hal,

I'll have to look at that one again. Ken made the same "guerilla" mistake in Mighty Joe Young. They carried on this tradition in their sound cutdowns with narration that referred to characters by the wrong name (The Crimson Cult), or using the actor's actual name as opposed to the part they're playing (The Tall Men and again The Crimson Cult).

Doug

Posted by Hugh Thompson Scott (Member # 2922) on April 23, 2013, 03:27 AM:

They also made errors like giving out wrong info "The Raven was the secret of Dr Cravens' magic" in AIPs "The Raven" or telling
the viewer the action before it happens as in "War Gods of the Deep" at the films climax..Note also the spelling in "Jason" with
Colchis to "Kulkes" &"Kulkis", even referring to the High Priestess
Medea as some sort of Goddess! It certainly makes you wonder
what age group Columbia & Ken intended these films for.

Posted by Lee Mannering (Member # 728) on April 23, 2013, 06:50 AM:

Re recorded many of mine because of the bonkers voice overs [Roll Eyes]

and done many for other collectors as well.

Posted by Christian Bjorgen (Member # 1780) on April 23, 2013, 07:31 AM:

Could be worse! I've seen Norwegian subtitles that would make your eyes bleed, truly horrible. They actually translated the Star Wars character names in the 1997 DVDs *shrug*.

"Luke Skywalker" became "Lukas Himmelvandrer" (literal translation) for instance. [Roll Eyes]

Posted by Hugh Thompson Scott (Member # 2922) on April 23, 2013, 08:27 AM:

That's understandable for a country to try to translate into their
own language Chris, but for English speaking countries it's
unforgivable.

Posted by Winbert Hutahaean (Member # 58) on April 23, 2013, 08:35 AM:

Translating a name is very strange. We cannot literally translate Rod Stewart although "rod" does have a meaning in English.... [Big Grin]

Posted by Vidar Olavesen (Member # 3354) on April 23, 2013, 09:10 AM:

Rod Stewart? Stav StuingKunst in norwegian probably

Rod is a staff become Stav. Stew is a dish called Stuing and art is kunst ... I think I'll apply for a job at the translation studio :-)

Posted by Joerg Polzfusz (Member # 602) on April 23, 2013, 09:55 AM:

Translating names is nothing compared to what German synchronisation/translation has done to several films, e.g.:

Casablanca: All references to the Nazis have been removed, Victor László turned into Victor Larsen, a Norwegian physicist that is wanted for having discovered some "Delta"-rays, Captain Renault became "Monsieur Laporte from Interpol", ... .
Die hard: The German terrorists became Irish/... terrorists suddenly having English names (which causes problems in "Die hard 1" as Bruce writes down the original names and in "Die hard 3" as the plot now doesn't make sense any more).

What's even worse: Some films from the USA/UK/... get released in Germany with an English title. However that English title has nothing to do with their original title! E.g. the British movie "THE SWEENEY" (based on the TV-series "THE SWEENEY" which was aired as "Die Füchse"/"The foxes" on German TV) showed up as "THE CRIME" in German cinemas...

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