ネイティブが教える英会話のジェムスクール☆Teachers☆

Hey, all—

A new movie opened in Japan this weekend. I'd love to see it if I get some time. It's called The Big Short, and it just won an Oscar for its screenplay... but I can't watch The Big Short in Japan. In Japan, the movie's called... Money Short. The only trouble is, "money short" is nonsense English!

One of the oddest things about living in Japan is seeing English film titles get changed to different English titles for their Japanese release. Usually the Japanese titles are either worse, or complete nonsense. For example, The Martian, about a man trapped on Mars, was renamed... Odyssey. This title makes no sense—although Ulysses is stranded several times in the original Odyssey, the word "Odyssey" means "a very long journey." It's the opposite of being stuck in one place! Other current examples include:

—Point Break, which is called "X-Mission" here
—The Finest Hours, which is "The Blizzard" (the movie is about... a rescue at sea), and
—London Has Fallen, the sequel to Olympus Has Fallen. The new movie is called, "End of Kingdom" in Japan, because the original was called... "End of White House."

Now, the Japanese title is not always worse than the original. I will never forget how hard I laughed when I heard a deep-voiced narrator bellow the Japanese title of Fast Five: "WILD SPEED: MEGA MAX!!!" That title is so absurd, I have to love it.

Sometimes even when titles are translated into Japanese, the Japanese title is... odd. My favorite example is We Need to Talk About Kevin, which here is called, "少年は残酷な弓を射る." This means, "The Boy Wields a Cruel Bow," or maybe, "The Boy Is a Cruel Archer." This title is what we call "a little too on point."

Of course, other countries do this too. South Korea renamed In Bruges "Killer City," and cut about 20 minutes of the movie, so you never know what to expect overseas!

—Matthew