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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?
I love engrish...I work at a computer shop and just about all the manuals for motherboards are in engrish.....even the installation cd's give error messages in engrish...."please insert by yourself the correct windows OS"...That is an actual message from an Amptron motherboard driver installation!
Read it here.
Now it's going to be a whole year of "You should make fun" and "we are not oaks we are hobiks."
Arrrrghhh!
Romana: "How did you know?" Doctor Who: "Ah, well, knowing is easy. Everyone does THAT ad nauseum. I just sort of hope"
The subtitles are too big.
If it's an asian video why aren't the subtitles in Japanese or Chinese?
The mistakes are just *too* conveniently embarrassing; "bring your pussy face to my ass", yeah right.
Real bad subtitles (and yes, I've seen many) are just corny; "Your kung fu is just kid stuff!"
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
The best Engrish in a manual I've seen was for an ABIT Socket 7 motherboard manual. I don't have it at hand, so I can't point to the precise one, but it is pre-super Socket 7. In the section on installing RAM, it says "All you have to do is insert RAM, without help from God. Isn't it wonderful?"
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."
I'm sure I would make tons of mistakes if someone asked me to transcribe some spoken Chinese in a movie to make subtitles. As for re-subbing it in English, well I know lots of Chinese films will still have Chinese subtitles for speakers of different dialects.
The problem is probably caused by not being able to spell very well, in combination not having much experience listening to English speakers.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Can someone explain how a film with English dialogue can have English subtitles?
Or how a 16:9 widescreen-format movie can require subtitles in the body of the movie instead of BELOW it?
I think it's a hoax.
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PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
Besides laughing myself unconscious reading Engrish.com, I was reminded of how frustrated I was as a kid playing the original Metal Gear, but being unable to get past the first stupid guard. He kept saying "I feel asleep", after which I would make a break for it and get caught. Little did I know, he meant to say, "I fell asleep". I was supposed to run past him before he said it. Stupid Engrish. All your base are belong to us, indeed.
Boom Shanka
your sister?! Bring your pussy face to my ass.
Sounds like how you would threaten an evil sysadmin:
RELEASE HIM OR I SHALL CUT YOU OFF ROOT!
I guess Gollum was a Unix sysadmin back in the day. Which would explain why he's a shruken, miserable little creature who hates sunlight.
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
(I wrote most of this up for the LOTR:TTT fake pirate DVD thread, but had problems posting. I meated it out to be on topic)
Movie Piracy, a quick primer.
There exist two distribution networks for movies. One is the classical movie theater => dvd/vhs => pay-per-view => premium cable => network model, where movies first go to bigger markets and eventually (or not) trickle down to the smaller, foreign markets. The other is a underground model that taps at each of these sources and offers world wide distribution within a week.
As a movie is produced, it goes through a couple basic steps: planning, filming, post production. One of the things studios use to view movies before they are completed is called a 'work reel'. It's a beta-version, if you will, of the movie, that studios show execs and backers before finishing the final copy. Pirate work reels are pretty rare, altough I recall 'Jay and Silent Bob' came out as a work reel.
When the movie is completed, a few things happen: studios organize early screenings for critics - this is where 'cams' (pirate copies recorded on a DV camera off the screen) sometimes come from. A lot of movie theaters have to get the prints in at least a day or two before the premiere (just in case), a lot of them will have screenings for cinema staff at that time. Or the staff will just watch a movie while no one is looking.
Most movie critics don't really want to be bothered to go to a cinema 5-10 times a week (or however many movies come out) so the studio sends them screeners. Screeners are usually VHS tapes, and the movies almost always have 'THIS MOVIE IS PROPERTY OF STUDIO XXX'. This is the source of a *lot* of movies, especially now that a lot of studios are releasing DVDs as screeners, knowing that a lot of reviewers prefer DVDs, hoping that it might get them a better rating.
Even if all these holes have been plugged, and security was tight enough that no copies were leaked out till opening day, you still have opening day. As soon as the movie hits nationwide distribution you will have a pirate copy. Wether it's a kid in the audience with a camera or an employee who stays late and make a telesync (camera on tripod set at screen, sound pumped directly - via cable - from the sound system) a copy will get out.
DVD's that come out early are usually leaked by magazine staff, or other reviewers, that get them in early. They can also be stolen out of a warehouse by staff there, whatever, there's a 100 different ways to get that DVD before it's offical release date.
A lot of the 'professional' pirates pirate for money. These aren't kids ripping MP3s, this isn't my friend making divxes from his DVDs so he can keep them online to watch at any time. As soon as the DV (usually, a cam is the first thing to come out) is made, it's passed on to someone who converts it to VCD and ftps it to Asia where it is translated, subbed and produced. I wouldn't be surprised if the turnaround on a VCD is under 36 hours. And the screeners and cams that warez-scene groups release? They get 'em off the streets in Asia.
Everyone here gets paid, from the guy with the DV camera, through the CD production plants, the vendor on the street and the corrupt cop who gets a little extra for not bugging the vendor. It's business, it's easy money. The supply chain is there, it's an industry. You can close down all the street vendors, go after all the factories. They'll do what multinational corporations do - move across borders, find new routes. The cost of destroying these operations far exceedes additional profits they will generate. Nobody in Asia's going to be paying $20-30 for a DVD 2 years after the movie was released in the states and no ammount of copy protection is going to stop it.
A major problem with this model is that quality suffers, as location is to real estate, speed is to piracy. The bigger the production, the more pressure pirates are to get the movie out. I've seen all sorts of crazy stuff, these subtitles aren't actually that bad (you can turn them off). Pirates sell cams on DVDs, voice-over translations on dubbed movies (movie dubbed to german and voice over in russian), 'home made' voice overs (is that a kettle whistle in the background?), mislabled movies (classic), movies on VHS recorded over other movies, etc.
The studios are in some kind of magical dreamland, thinking that they can force everyone to tap to their tune. They can't, it's not going to happen. Asia's market - 2.5-3 BILLION people - is huge compared to the US - 300 mln. Russia and eastern europe - where people are starting to afford the equipment and media - area always at least a few weeks behind. The premiere of LOTR:TTT in Warsaw was yesterday, only *six* weeks after the 'world wide premiere'. In that time, at least 3/4 of the die hard LOTR fans I know got the DVD screener (or divx made from it) and already saw it.
There needs to be a new distribution model, just like in the music industry. Studios want control? Fine, they'll always be able to control the theaters (too much money) but I can't imagine a model in which they will destroy piracy. Hell, the only reason pirate DVDs are making the rounds so early these days is because of the studio's greed, sucking up to reviewers and Academy members is a business decission. I think most people watch movies because it's convinient, especially the DVD/VHS crowd. Protection of this kind of content will only come about with restrictions that will reduce convinience, and it'll make less people watch movies. It's a no win situation, the studios should quit their bullshit politics and make movies people will want to see, movies that'll make people want to get out of the house and go to the movies, instead of most of what's comming out now.