“You stinky!” - Hong Kong’s funniest subtitles July 13, 2008
Posted by Cal in : Articles, Humour , trackbackOne peculiarity of Hong Kong films has always been the territory’s tradition of subtitling their films in Chinese and English. Chinese subs are necessary as dialects vary from place to place but the written form can be understood universally (theoretically, at least) and English subtitles seemed to have been law at one point but the practice still continues even though the colony is no longer under British rule. As the people who do the subtitles are Chinese, it’s not surprising that the translations can go awry at times – sometimes with hilarious consequences.
My introduction to Chinese subtitles probably came later in life than most fans. My first exposure to Hong Kong films was on TV, where they were subtitled perfectly; after that, I had to make do with horribly dubbed VHS tapes, and it wasn’t until I saw a freshly pirated copy of City Hunter that I became aware that Hong Kong subtitled its own films into English. It was a bit of shock after watching Channel 4’s meticulously worded subs to be faced with a line like: “oh, are they chewing gums or my hearing’s wrong?”
But it wasn’t until I saw Police Story 2 that the potential for comic interpretations became apparent. One bad guy shouts a command to his colleagues when Jackie gets the best of them: “Beat him out of recognisable shape!” From then on, I’ve been looking at Hong Kong subtitles in a different way…
The best ones aren’t necessarily the ones that are completely wrong or weird. In some ways, you can see that the subtitle makes perfect sense in itself; it’s just that no native speaker of this language would phrase it in such a way. And why the Chinese seem to think we have a bodily function we call “stooling” is beyond me. It’s odd because such things as typos are relatively rare, and when was the last time you read a Chinglish subtitle that mixes up “you’re” and “your” or “there” and “their”? I believe I’ve only seen one such mix up, and as native English speakers get them muddled up every day, that’s quite an achievement.
It’s not just the dialogue that can come to grief - sometimes the blurb on the back of the DVD box can raise a belly laugh or two. The following is taken verbatim from the back of the Hong Kong Universe DVD of The Protector (with apologies to all who have read my comments about this nugget before on the HKMDB):
“Super action star Jackie Chan being the Director and actor this time* in “The Protector”, co-starring Sally Yip and other action actress**.
New York policeman Billy Wong (Jackie Chan) chase after the gangsters who killed his partner on the ground, on the ramparts and in the air***. He investigates a kidnapped case to Hong Kong and discovers Mr. Big is the leader of the gangsters****. Finally, a big fireball lights up the beautiful harbour of Hong Kong”
*Erm, actually, James Glickenhaus is the Director, as it says elsewhere on the box.
**I guess the blurb writer wasn’t a fan of Moon Lee, who co-stars alongside Jackie…
***Jesus, what a day: first killed on the ground, then killed on the ramparts and then again in the air. No wonder Jackie’s after revenge.
****This completely ruins the tension in the movie: all along I was thinking Mr Henchman was the leader.
Some of the best Chinglish subtitles can be found in the book Sex and Zen & A Bullet In The Head by Stefan Hammond and Mike Wilkins, and I’ve tied to avoid duplication where possible. As this book is now twelve years old, I think it’s high time for some new ones to be copied and pasted throughout the Internet! I plan to write new articles with new subs when I’ve got enough together, and if any readers have got a howler they’d like to see on here, please email me on drunkenmaster42@hotmail.com. In the meantime, I present the following for your amusement.
Unreasonable requests and outlandish orders:
“Bump him to death” – From Beijing with Love
“Sock him, Fatty” – Pantyhose Hero
“Let me see how rude are you!” – Forbidden City Cop
“Carry a gun! Armed Rubbery!” – People’s Hero
“You’re under our encirclement” – Fatal Move (whatever happened to “we have you surrounded”?)
“Bastard, bump against me” – Pantyhose Hero
“Doctor, are you rude?” – Forbidden City Cop
“Follow that fatty! Run him down” – Pedicab Driver
“Let me rape you once and for all” – Pantyhose Hero
“Jin Si, your belly is open. Run” – The Heroic Ones
“Let’s gay” – Pantyhose Hero
Insults, abuse and fighting talk:
“Can I slap her heavily?” – Forbidden City Cop
“You stinky!” – Fatal Move
“Auntie, you talk like a whore” – Pedicab Driver
“Frankly, are you a girl or a pervert?” – Pantyhose Hero
“You want to beat me, I do want to hit you hardly with rod too” – Forbidden City Cop
“Fatty, how can you piss on the street?” – Enter the Fat Dragon
Just plain wrong:
“Keeps delaying rascally” – Fatal Move
“Damaged, it’s sharp” – Pantyhose Hero
“I really recognise his scent of smell” – Ebola Syndrome
“You have a gun, return him with a bullet!” – People’s Hero
“No, I have just stooled” – Lawyer, Lawyer
“Slash the boys like greens, you serious” – Fatal Move
“Cut off the crabs, I will kill you if you don’t pay” – Fantasy Mission Force
“Sorry, my orgasm” – Pantyhose Hero
“I am stooling” – Bio Zombie
“Was beaten up when I just walked in. Someone expelled me out” – Fatal Move
“It Banged, and a lot of people stooped down on the street” – People’s Hero
“What for? I don’t chew gums” – Interpol 009
“Those bastards drank the urine which I’ve added with cathartics” – Lawyer, Lawyer
I’m off to do some stooling now. Until next time, enjoy those subtitles!
Comments»
James Glickenhaus did direct the original version of “The Protector”, but for the Hong Kong release some additional scenes were filmed in Hong Kong and they were directed by Jackie Chan. Admittedly they are stretching the truth a bit.
Also having lived in Singapore, I quite often saw pirate copies with reviews of the movies, as the cover blurb, absolutely slagging the movie.
“What is it actually?”
One guy to a dude filled with arrows, The Traitorous (1976)
“Go…eat something”
An expirining Jimmy Wang Yu to his fiancee, The Trail of the Broken Blade (1967) - and that was from a new DVD translation!
“I would wonder, if other Miss Lee?
HA! HA! You are nonsense!
New Game of Death (1975) and I still don’t get it!
Thomas: Yes, I’m aware of the “unusual” circumstances of the directorship of THE PROTECTOR (the Hong Kong version doesn’t suck QUITE as much as the US version). Those Singapore covers sound hilarious! I’d love to see one.
James: Thanks for those, they’re funny! I’ve only ever seen New Game of Death dubbed, and even that made no sense. That subtitle would make the film SLIGHTLY more entertaining, I think.
I love it! You just don’t get all that madness with Italian Horror (although that can come with its own share of nuttiness on occasions). That Protector sales blurb’s got to be the funniest I’ve heard (though I have read one or two bad ones on the back of Hollywood DVD releases, and they’re English, allegedly) - like you’re going to rush to the till and pay for the bloody thing after reading that! Nice article and I’m looking forward to part 2.
One of my favorites (reminds me of the great war room quote in Dr. Strangelove):
We’re a Kung Fu School, so calm down. Let’s not fight!” — Master of Seven Peaks School (New Fist of Fury 1976)
“when was the last time you read a Chinglish subtitle that mixes up […] “there” and “there”?”
Never, but that might be because they are both the same word.
Thanks for the comments guys! I’m keeping ‘em peeled for new ones as I watch each release…
Another groaner, and a recurrant one at that, is where a character will make an indigant noise, what you or I might translate as “HUMPH! or HMPH or even HUH” and the Chinglish subs always call “HEN”
Yeah, I’ve seen that one a few times! Actually, I’ve seen it really recently but I can’t remember now what it was in!
Another groaner was Columbia’s otherwise decent DVD of New Fist of Fury - the only uncut dvd of the film in the original aspect ratio and language
The subs were copied from the dub but whoever did them must have been rather deaf as Jackie’s character Ah Lung becomes He Long. Sigh…