We know that movie titles often differ quite a lot to their original source once they’ve been translated; but sometimes the reason why this happens is not clear. Sure, we know that some movie titles may need to be localized, but this is not always the case.
Below we’ve shown some examples of famous movies which, when translated, have some interesting titles.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was translated to If You Leave Me, I Delete You, which was actually a pretty good indication of what occurs in the 108-minute movie. It was simply called Forget Me in Spain!
The British film titled The Full Monty told the story of six laid-off steel workers who, in an effort to make ends meet, form a male striptease act. In China, this was translated to Six Naked Pigs! The Chinese translation seems rather peculiar because the term Full Monty is a British slang-phrase meaning everything which is necessary.
The movie titled Grease, was of course a classic, and the title was left as-is in many countries. However, the Mexicans wanted a word that would really capture the true meaning of the word, so it was translated to Vaselina - meaning Vaseline!
The movie titled Being John Malkovich is a movie about a puppeteer who’s discovered a hole which acts as a portal to John Malkovich’s head. This title was translated in Japanese to The Hole of Malkovich, and in Latin-America the translation became Who wants to be John Malkovich?
Knocked Up is a movie about a woman who falls pregnant after a one-night stand: in Chinese it was literally translated to One Night Big Belly. In Russian it became A Little Bit Pregnant; in Brazil it became Slightly Pregnant and then in Italy it went the whole way and became Very Pregnant! Well, at least she was always pregnant!
Macaulay Culkin’s Home Alone was probably his most famous movie. Now we’re not sure why, but for some reason Home Alone was translated in Spanish to My Poor Little Angel; to Mom, I Missed the Plane in Canadian-French, and in Italian it became Mamma Ho Perso L’Aereo.
As Good As It Gets starring Helen Hunt and Jack Nicholson was translated to Mr. Cat Poop in Chinese – no one is able to explain the reasoning behind this one!
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