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Engrish LOTR: The Two Towers Captions

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the made-of-love dept.

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.)"

2 of 310 comments (clear)

  1. Maybe I'm not getting this... by nordicfrost · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

  2. 1962 Korean LOTR bootleg translation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting
    My brother-in-law's boss spends a lot of time on business in South Korea, and recently he was given an amazing gift by a friend there: his friend's dad's 1962 Korean translation of LOTR. What a hoot! Old Pa's English wasn't so good, and although he loved the book, he grossly misunderstood and mistranslated it. He actually sold about 100 copies to fellow students, although if there are any others extant, I'd be surprised. As the bootleg Korean version is only 250 pages long for the entire trilogy, obviously a great many scenes have left out. But a few new scenes were slipped in, as you shall see.

    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."