Well, folks, it's happened again. Crappy literal translations from another script of a blockbuster has made its way into the theater, and people are fuming that such incompetence could be signed off on yet again. It’s been reported that Avengers: Age of Ultron is a nonsensical calamity of mistranslations that left many filmgoers disappointed. It turns out that the person responsible for these translations, Liu Dayong, is actually the mentor of Jia Xiuyan, the clumsy soul responsible for another Marvel Comics film translation, Guardians of the Galaxy (of Interplanetary Unusual Attacking Team as it’s known as in China), that received similar reports of particularly disgusting inaccuracies.
People are claiming that much of these appear to be just sent through a Baidu translator because they don't maintain the meaning of the English lines. One expletive probably uttered in the middle of a fight scene, "Son of a bitch," was translated into "My old familiar partner." Maybe it was an act of censorship, but they probably would have been better off going with "You son of a female dog." Another folly in the translation comes during a moment of battle advice from Captain America when he mentions "You get hurt, hurt 'em back. You get killed ... walk it off." This somehow mutated into "Run fast if someone tries to kill you." Does that sound like something a super hero would say? Seriously, where do they find these guys? It almost seems like this is a conspiracy to intentionally discourage imports from living up to their potential in the Chinese box office.
Reportedly, one filmgoer on Weibo wrote, "The woman in front of me almost cried and said let's go home, I can't put up with it." This has since been shared thousands of times over Chinese social media. Currently, theaters are in the process of re-subtitling this film hopefully without the use of a robot brain, incapable of deciphering the intricacies of the English language.
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Email: danielkippwhittaker@thebeijinger.com
Image: The Guardian
Thank you for the reply,
I am hoping to do an internship in Beijing for a couple of months and since I love going to the movies, but probably won't be proficient enough in Mandarin, it would be nice to see them in English. And since there is a certain movie coming out in december...
Thank you!
I have a question. Are all International films dubbed? Or are there any theaters that show the original versions?
No, in fact most these days will show the original versions, with Chinese subtitles.
Some cinemas will have both versions running, one original, one dubbed.
