We have a pretty good movie theater in our neighborhood of Oberkassel. It does not show everything I would want to see, but then again, neither does the Theater at Buffalo Creek! As is becoming our habit on Friday evening when we are in town, we check out the latest flick…last Friday night was no exception.
One of the things I find so amusing are the German titles that have been given to US films. One does not need a huge command of the German language (really, none at all) to know which film is being shown, although having the movie poster in the lobby does help. Sometimes the titles stay in English, sometimes they are translated into German, and sometimes they are an English-German combo thing. Apparently, the fact that the films have either been dubbed into German or remain in OV (original version, which for us, means English) does not indicate into which language the title is translated.
This past weekend, we saw the new John Cusack-Diane Lane film Must Love Dogs. The title for the OV version is Frau mit Hund sucht Mann mit Hertz. With a little translation assistance, that works out to be Woman with Dog is Looking for Man with Heart.
Here are a few others that I throw out, simply for the sake of discussion:
* Der Date Docktor - Translated as "The Date Doctor", although technically there is no German word for date doctor. Originally, this was the Will Smith film entitled Hitch.
* Herr und Frau Schmidt –OK, technically, this is easy to figure out (Mr. and Mrs. Smith). I just like saying it.
* Das Comeback - Literally translated as "The Comeback". In actuality, this is the new Russell Crowe movie Cinderella Man.
* Das Wandelnde Schloss - Translated as “The Changing Lock”. In actuality, it is The Skeleton Key, the new film with Kate Hudson.
One other point to note: I am still not used to seeing people buying bottles of beer at the movie concession line and taking them into the theaters. I still do the double-take when I see and then I remember, “Oh yea, I am in Germany”. And no, “sweet popcorn” is not that good to eat either.
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2 comments:
I think what happened is that they, too, liked the film but think "Must Love Dogs" is a horrible title having little to nothing to do with the movie. They tried to help it out a little, but again, they too, feel like the director ought to have gone a different direction with the title.
A friend in Zurich also mentioned that Swiss theaters code their movies that are in English with a captial E (as in Edf-English, deutsch, french) are English spoken with subtitles in French and German. The capital letter always indicate the spoken language, the small letters indicating subtitles). O would refer to original language (e.g. chinese etc…). It is amazing how different the approach can be in two countries that neighbor each other. Apparently, Germany is one of the few EU countries that even dubs...is not allowed in some countries, like the Netherlands.
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