Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Do Engrish Titles Only Sometimes Get Corrected For America?
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Knoepfchen
 Posts: 698 |
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Actually, the original Japanese title (Ginga Eiyū Densetsu) is a lot closer to the English one. The German Heldensagen vom Kosmosinsel would translate to "Heroic Legends of/from the Cosmos Island". It's also grammatically incorrect, like most German used in the show for place names and such. Given the superb quality of the series, it doesn't bother me one bit, but I'm still glad the English title is the one that caught on. I would have had a hard time advertising the upcoming novel translations to my German friends. |
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Hameyadea
 Posts: 3679 |
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Aria the Scarlet Ammo. She isn't the bullets.
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Animegomaniac
Posts: 4104 |
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Cat Planet Cuties or Bombshells From the Sky or "Come, Let's Play". 1) They're not all cats, 2) They're not all from space and as for the third one, it's too vague. My Roommate is a Cat Girl Alien... I'd watch that.
Lost Universe. Do they know what the universe is and why it can't be lost? Reminds me of all those times where "hoshi" gets translated as star when it should be planet or planet when it should be star. Midori Days. Ok, this is a strange case. I think it's suppose to be a pun- "Green" days and it's the girl's name- so they left out the preposition but it is in the Japanese title. It really should be Days of Midori. And it's "of" rather than "with" because it's a strange sort of show. Heaven's Lost Property; Making the Angeloids the Lost Property of the title was a good move as it reinforces their position in Synapse. The problem is making "Sora" into Heaven. Oh right, that reminds me of Sola/Sora. Ok, it's supposed to be "Sky" and that would be Sora. But it was licensed as Sola. To make the whole issue mindboggling, "Sola. Copyright Sora production committee" actually appears at the end of each episode. |
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gravediggernalk
 Space Cowboy Posts: 246 Location: Alabama |
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"Eotena Onslaught" will forever be better than "Attack on Titan."
- Both were made up by people that didn't/shouldn't have had any say so in the matter. - "Eotena Onslaught" has a meaning similiar to "Shingeki no Kyojin," while "Attack on Titan" has an opposite meaning. - Eoten, Eotena, etc... adds an unfamiliarity to what it's supposed to be (since most aren't familiar with the word to begin with), which fits with the story. Titan, on the other hand, is a common English term for anything large: Titan Sports, Titan Towers, Clash of the Titans, etc... Titan is generic and overused. Besides that, I'm so used to most Engrish that I've started to filter it out without noticing. |
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jutsuri
Posts: 49 |
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Does it count if the spelling is correct but the pronunciation is off? Eureka 7 drove me crazy for that very reason.
I just kept wishing someone had heard the word pronounced properly and suggested using 'yuu' (ユー) instead of 'eu' (エウ) when they were going over things with the voice actors. |
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gravediggernalk
Space Cowboy Posts: 246 Location: Alabama |
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DavidShallcross
 Posts: 1008 |
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I guess I missed the California surfer slang, and think of Snuffy Smith:
Great balls of fire, I'm bodacious And Eureka wasn't necessarily meant to be English. It could have been intended to be Greek, or any other language that adopted the word from Greek. |
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FLCLGainax
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I have a feeling the literary character's name commonly gets butchered among native English speakers. |
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Top Gun
 Posts: 4622 |
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To be fair, FUNi wasn't the only one to get it wrong. One of the (rather enjoyable) Frogwares Sherlock Holmes adventure games has the detective facing off against the original Arsene Lupin, and he says "Lew-pin" throughout the entire thing. Always drove me nuts.
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yuna49
 Posts: 3804 |
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I've got two:
"Tweeny Witches" was attached to the English dub of Mahou Shoujotai Arusu, or "Magical Girl Squad Alice." Tweeny Witches seems like a large road sign telling boys and adults that this isn't a show for you. I enjoyed this show as a man then in my fifties. "Chiko, Heiress of the Phantom Thief" wins my award for worst translation of a title I've seen. It's the official English title from the production committee for "Nijuu Mensou no Musume," or literally "Daughter of Twenty Faces," which would have been a perfectly fine title. While Nijuu Mensou is indeed a phantom thief, and Chiko is an heiress, she's not his heiress. In fact she's not his daughter at all. She is an orphan being raised by her aunt and uncle spoiler[who are slowly poisoning her to get their hands on her inheritance]. She is taken away by Nijuu Mensou and becomes his acolyte. The use of "musume" in the title is meant to symbolize how she becomes his surrogate daughter. While Nijuu Mensou is a famous character from the stories of Edogawa Ranpo and thus well-known in Japan, "Daughter of the Phantom Thief" would have been a fine alternative for Western audiences. |
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SheRrIs
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No mention of Bus Gamer? I'm disappointed with you all.
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GregoriusU
Posts: 23 |
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[quote="Nemoide"]
Hmm, don't know the laserdisc explanation, but "Greenwood" sounds like it could be a reference (by someone who only had a nodding acquaintance with the term and its origin) back to the old Robin Hood ballads where Sherwood Forest was sometimes referred to as "the greenwood" as a more poetic way of saying, "big bunch of trees that aren't dead." Since the outlaw and his merry men were, in fact, thieves ... |
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Ali07
 Posts: 3333 Location: Victoria, Australia |
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Yeah, I don't see the issue. Though, that title does make me think of "surfer bros" and not pirates. 
I think that most see bodacious as an outdated word. Unsure if that really qualifies and Engrish... |
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Touma
 Posts: 2651 Location: Colorado, USA |
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It seems like it is not in the vocabulary of many people, but it is in mine and that is why I see nothing unusual about the title. "Bodacious" is just another, rather ordinary, word to me. The closest synonym that I can think of is "audacious", which is probably closely related etymologically, but "bodacious" has a more positive connotation to me. And it is frequently used to refer to attractive young ladies, such as Marika and her crew.
I believe that "Bodacious Space Pirates" is most definitely not Engrish. All three words are proper English words and are used correctly. |
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LuScr
Posts: 141 |
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Shadow Warrior Chronicles!
On a more gloomy note, Hajime no Ippo really did become Fighting Spirit, and that was a debacle. A few other titles that made it over...
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