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Engrish LOTR: The Two Towers Captions
Cyclometh writes "Someone has put together a set of screengrabs from an Asian bootleg of LOTR:TTT, which are totally hysterical. The subtitles are apparently the genuine article, which definitely should bring the phrase caveat emptor to mind for anyone who buys bootleg DVDs. For a definition of Engrish, see here (apparently it's a no-smorking zone.)"
But the text doesn't seem to be a real subtitle. It's too large to be a standard DVD caption text. Futhermore, I can understand that funny mistakes occur when you translate e.g. Japanese into English, but when transcribing English? You'd have to be a complete moron...
Or am I just not getting the humour?
1) "Hobbit" is translated either as "baby ghost" or "barefoot ghost"
2) "the Shire" is translated as "Baby Ghost Prefect"
3) "orc" is translated by a Korean slang term used in WWII as a pejorative for Japanese soldiers
4) when the hobbits bathe in the house at Crickhollow, the translator added a scene involving a bathtub farting contest (won by Sam)
5)another addition by the translator has Sam expressing regret that his long quest will keep him out of Rosie's bed for many months
6) in this version, when Frodo puts on the Ring at Weathertop, he shoots lightning bolts out of it to chase away the Nazgul; there is no Morgul-knife and no wounding
7)the Balrog is simply referred to as "the enemy of God"
8) best of all, Frodo and Gollum battle Sauron face to face in the Chamber of Fire, with Frodo pushing the other two into the Cracks of Doom when Sauron is being distracted by the crazed Smeagol. The Ring then passes to Aragorn, who as King can weild it for good, and one of the things he does with it is make "fruitful the wombs of barren women."
I told my bro-in-law to try and get that copy translated fully; it could be funnier than "Bored of the Rings."
At the risk of /.ing myself, I'll say that I have a really excellent bootleg of the Two Towers on my computer:
/.ers, bring it on...high traffic hasn't crashed my dual-1.25 GHz Power Mac G4 yet, and it won't do it this time!
ftp://louise.dhs.org/Movies/Two%20Towers.mpg
It's ripped from four VCDs I got from a friend of a friend, originally ripped from the DVD given to the people who review movies for the Oscars.
Okay,
I found the meaning of life the other day, but I had write-only access.
These subtitles are well done, but I think I have to cry fake. They are the wrong shape, they're in English (why would a Chinaman be any better at reading English than speaking it?) and we all know how "amusing" people who can't talk proper are.
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That means people were PAID for this and EVERYONE who sees the movie in our country watches it like this.
--- Frantisek Fuka (Yes, that's my real name and you have no idea how it's pronounced)
... sources tell me that bootleg DVDs go for ~USD 2.50 a pop in the streets (and malls) of Hongkong. For the price of a happy meal for brand new, just-in-theaters movies (Chicago, The Recruit, etc) I'd take my chances.
This of course bodes well for that company that's bringing the self-desctructable DVDs to market... if you would risk $3/disk for a bootleg that may not contain a viewable version of the movie, why not pay say $4 for a one-time use disk of the real thing?