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Engrish LOTR: The Two Towers Captions 313

Posted by michael from the made-of-love dept.
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.)"
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Engrish LOTR: The Two Towers Captions More

Engrish LOTR: The Two Towers Captions

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  • Hehehe (Score:3, Funny)

    by MattCohn.com ( 555899 ) on Saturday February 01, 2003 @02:25AM (#5202248)
    "too long I wanted my sister"

    Hehehe... sorry. I know, but still. That picture, with that caption, looking so serious, just cracks me up.

    heh.

    Hehe. Sorry.

    Heh.

  • Maybe I'm not getting this... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nordicfrost ( 118437 ) on Saturday February 01, 2003 @02:25AM (#5202250)
    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?

    • Well, I dunno (Score:5, Insightful)

      by autopr0n ( 534291 ) on Saturday February 01, 2003 @02:53AM (#5202350) Homepage Journal
      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.
      • "The problem is probably caused by not being able to spell very well, in combination not having much experience listening to English speakers."

        You forgot to mention that one needs to vary their mall content.
      • I'm sure I would make tons of mistakes if someone asked me to transcribe some spoken Chinese in a movie to make subtitles.

        It's for that reason you probably would never be given that job.

        I'd be interested in knowing if the entire movie is done as bad as those snaps, or if those are just a few precious examples.

      • Re:Well, I dunno (Score:2, Interesting)

        by u38cg ( 607297 )
        Chinese ideographs are common to all dialects - so the multiple dialects problem just doesn't arise when screening foreign films. I thought that films in China were mostly made now to a sort of standard Chinese, accessible to all Chinese speakers? Sounds a bit Orwellian, but I'm sure I remember reading about it.

        These subtitles are well done, but I think I have to cry fake. They are the wrong shape, they're in English (why would a Chinaman be any better at reading English than speaking it?) and we all know how "amusing" people who can't talk proper are.

        On an entirely unrelated note, your site is an excellent innovation, and very much appreciated. One suggestion: is it possible to use a cookie to track previous page views so that I don't have to dig through several pages to get to new content? That would just be the cream on the cake, so to speak.

        • Re:Well, I dunno (Score:4, Informative)

          by plumby ( 179557 ) on Saturday February 01, 2003 @06:25AM (#5202788)
          Not entirely true. There are two common form of Chinese ideographs. Traditional script is used in places like Taiwan and Hong Kong, but in the mid-50's, the People's Republic (PRC) adopted a simplified form of writing, both reducing the number of characters and the number of strokes in many of the symbols. The two sets of characters are vaguely similar in structure, but different enough to make it impossible to read the other if you've only learned one.

    • Re:Maybe I'm not getting this... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      There is no such thing as a standard "DVD caption text" size. The text is just a subpicture (yes, a picture) that gets overlaid on the movie. Max size 52 kB per picture. 16 colors.

      Ever wondered where you found that white rabbit in the Matrix on your keyboard? :)

    • Re:Maybe I'm not getting this... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Daengbo ( 523424 ) <daengbo&gmail,com> on Saturday February 01, 2003 @03:22AM (#5202422) Homepage Journal
      Well, I live in Thailand and get these all the time. I often watch the English subtitles with my girlfriend so that she can learn some, but often we end up tourning them off because they hurt more htan help. From Monsters, Inc. (which I grabbed randomly to get some examples), the first scene confuses Mr. Bile with Mr. Byrl, Phlegm with film, "the largest mistake" with "the big mistake," and "I'm Monsters' Inc" with "Hey, monster incorporated." Star Wars Episodes IV, V, an VI are atrociously bad. We face it every day, even when you think that you are buying the real item, you often aren't.

      Ocean's Eleven is (because of all the slang) rarely correct in any sentence, and often has minutes of blank titles where the translator got totally lost.

      I always make the joke that some Malaysian who knows very little English and even less Thai does both the subtitles for the pirates over here. The Thai is sometimes following some parallel story from another universe.
    • It's not unusual to see a 3rd party transposition of english subtext when there has been voice-over work done on the film. The real key would be if there was an English track to English subs.

      It's also not uncommon to do a translation of these that have english text, since it's easier to read fast and understand than it is to hear and comprehend a non-native language. You don't have dialect, accent and inflection on written text.

    • Re:Maybe I'm not getting this... (Score:5, Informative)

      by srmalloy ( 263556 ) on Saturday February 01, 2003 @03:38AM (#5202458) Homepage
      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...

      In the comment log, the author of the website explains what he did to produce the images:

      For all you sceptics out there: The reason the images are so crisp, is because they're taken from an Xvid DVD-rip. The text was ripped from the bootleg and inserted into the Xvid for the best possible image quality. This still means what you see on the captions are what you see on the screen. I could've written this on the front page, but I'm not sure if that would be a good idea. If I ever get hold of a camera, I will take pictures of the TV when playing the bootleg. I'd imagine *that* would be pretty hard to fake. Anyone who has seen an asian bootleg will testify to that the BLs *do* have english subtitles.

    • Re:Maybe I'm not getting this... (Score:4, Informative)

      by prockcore ( 543967 ) on Saturday February 01, 2003 @03:59AM (#5202499)
      But the text doesn't seem to be a real subtitle. It's too large to be a standard DVD caption text

      There is no standard DVD caption text.. every player does it differently.

      To get the screenshots, he probably ran it on a software DVD player. MPlayer has fairly large fonts (and they're customizable)
      http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/im ages/shot09.jpg
      • There is no standard DVD caption text.. every player does it differently.

        AFAIK every DVD disk has different font, not the player. The subtitles are in fact 3 bit (color1, color2 and transparent) images. That's why tools that rip DVD subtitles are in fact scanning the text from the images. I think this kind of method was selected so that every browser wouldn't need full unicode fonts to be able to display subtitles for e.g. latin and japanese content.

        The only thing the DVD player can do is to add some kind of filtering to that text -- as it isn't antialised and can be blocky looking on high-res displays.

        In addition to the official subtitling on the DVD some player software is able to use external subtitles from a text file. In that case, those players can display the font in any size, color and font-face available for the software.

      • Pardon me, but I always thought the caption was stored as image files and then superomposed onto the picture. It seems like that here, [bunkus.org] where the process of OCR'ing and re-encoding the subtitles is described. This method is also described by the person who made the pictures available. But I still do not believe that someone can hear a phrase from this movie and translate it into "get your pussy-face to my ass" or whatever. It might be possible if it was translated from Mandarin (Or any other dialect) into English, but wouldn't it be easier to just listen to teh English track? I know there's English-speaking versions of this DVD out there.

    • Re:Maybe I'm not getting this... (Score:4, Funny)

      by grammar nazi ( 197303 ) on Saturday February 01, 2003 @04:02AM (#5202506) Journal
      The grammar nazi is appalled!!
    • But the text doesn't seem to be a real subtitle. It's too large to be a standard DVD caption text.

      It's called "softsub". Some players allow you to use external text file with time codes to overlay text over video. You can choose font size, color etc.

      It looks like DVD-ripped DivX with softsub to me, not DVD.
  • http://home.online.no/~gremmem/engrish_ttt_caption s/00-20/two-towers-07.jpg Yes, no root for you!

  • hehehe (Score:4, Funny)

    by spdycml ( 625849 ) on Saturday February 01, 2003 @02:27AM (#5202257)
    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!

    • Re:hehehe (Score:5, Funny)

      by jejones ( 115979 ) on Saturday February 01, 2003 @02:39AM (#5202303) Journal
      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?"

      • Re:hehehe (Score:3, Funny)

        by pyros ( 61399 )
        Not totally related, but still a funny message. I was working on some program for school and the compiler told me the "Constructor is private and has no friends." I was so dumbfounded by such an easy to read message, it took a minute to figure out what it meant.

      • Re:hehehe (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Afrosheen ( 42464 )
        Considering that, at the time, the transition to pc100 was just beginning, I don't doubt that line at all.

        Anyone who's had to install ram on old-school p200's and lower knows what I'm talking about. That ram was a real pain in the ass (and fingers) to get into the slots properly. Add to that the fact that there was usually at least one IDE cable in your way, possibly more, and it WAS an act of God to install ram prior to pc66/100 slots.

      • Re:hehehe (Score:3, Informative)

        by dburr ( 92379 )

        That wouuld be the Abit AX5, a Socket 7-based ATX mobo based on the Intel 430TX chipset. I used to have one of these - in fact it was my first server and has performed faithfully until only very recently (may it rest in peace...). The first time I read the manual I nearly fell out of my chair laughing so hard, and my then-roommate literally jumped 10 feet in the air at my sudden outburst.

        The manual can be found here, for your viewing pleasure: http://fae.abit.com.tw/eng/download/dlmanual.php?n ame=APTX5&file=aptx5e.pdf [abit.com.tw].

        Oh, and the exact quote is: "You just need to insert the modules, without the help of God. Isn't it great?"

      • Like everything else online, there's a engrish gallewy here [engrish.com]

  • IMHO, Dave Barry's Article is much funnier (Score:5, Funny)

    by Omkar ( 618823 ) on Saturday February 01, 2003 @02:27AM (#5202261) Homepage Journal
    Read it here. [miami.com]

  • All your Helm's Deep are belong.... (Score:3, Funny)

    by heldlikesound ( 132717 ) on Saturday February 01, 2003 @02:33AM (#5202276) Homepage
    In The Third Age 3018

    War was beginning.

    Gandalf: What happen ?

    Aragorn: Somebody set up us the bomb.

    Legolas: We get signal.

    Gandalf: What !

    Aragorn: Palinteer turn on.

    Gandalf: It's You !!

    Saruman: How are you gentlemen !!

    Saruman: All your Helm's Deep are belong to us.

    Saruman: You are on the way to destruction.

    Gandalf: What you say !!

    Saruman: You have no chance to survive make your time.

    Saruman: HA HA HA HA ....

    Gandalf: Take off every 'orc' !!

    Gandalf: You know what you doing.

    Gandalf: Move 'orc'.

    Gandalf: For great justice.

  • Now why did you have to go and post that here ??? (Score:5, Funny)

    by xeniten ( 550128 ) on Saturday February 01, 2003 @02:33AM (#5202277) Homepage
    We finally have some piece and quiet around here from the last time someone posted a piece about engirsh. For a whole year it was nothing but all your base this, and make your time that.

    Now it's going to be a whole year of "You should make fun" and "we are not oaks we are hobiks."

    Arrrrghhh!

  • I call BS!!! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ashitaka ( 27544 ) on Saturday February 01, 2003 @02:36AM (#5202293) Homepage
    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!"

    • DVDs can have multiple language subtitles. And, many Asians use Hollywood movie DVDs' English subtitles to improve their English listening skills (it really does help a lot in language learning to read the original language text while listening to the movie).

      Of course, this particular TTT DVD probably won't be too suitable for this particular purpose. ;-)
    • I've seen a fair share of bootleg DVDs and the subtitles are always aweful. Usually its just a lack of proofreading, but if there's an accent involved (especially something thick and heavily European) then all bets are off. "Bring your pretty face to my axe" is actually pretty close, if you consider that the sound during battles can be overwhelming. And by the 2-hour mark, the transcriber probably lost what little grasp he had of the plot to begin with.

      Also, as another commenter pointed out, the guy didn't have a way to do screengrabs from a DVD so he took stills from the XviD screener floating around Kazaa. The text was added by hand but faithfully transcribed from his TV screen.

      FYI, subtitles on DVDs are just a 16-color bitmap overlay. They can be as big or as small as you want, with graphics or text, on top or on the bottom or in the middle of the screen.
    • If it's an asian video why aren't the subtitles in Japanese or Chinese?

      I've seen several Chinese DVDs. One kind are just dupes of the original DVD, so they have all the original features and subtitles. For bootlegs, such as "The TT", the bootleggers have to make their own subtitles. Like the originals, they usually have several choices, such as Chinese, Malaysian, Korean, Japanese. You might also get an alternate dubbed soundtrack in Chinese. Of course the text of the cover is just random cut and paste, sometimes from the website, sometimes of a completely different movie.

      I bought a batch of Disney cartoons on VCD published, presumably legally, in Taiwan. They have really bad English susbtitles. That was more annoying as you can't turn them off as you can on a DVD.

      • The bootleg of TTT I saw the other night was 'For the consideration of members of the Academy of Motion Pictures: Not for public release.'

        Pretty good quality too, although I *think* there were discrepancies between the English words and the Chinese characters. I don't read Chinese very well, but I did see few errors in what I could read.

        Mind you, for 6 Yuan, it was damn good.

        dave

  • Check out his other work (Score:3, Informative)

    by FueledByRamen ( 581784 ) <sabretooth@gmail.com> on Saturday February 01, 2003 @02:38AM (#5202297)
    The Video section [online.no], particularly. I love the TechTV blooper, and the helocrash is entertaining. Poor helicopter, it never stood a chance. I hate to see a waste of a perfectly good machine.
    • OMG, that old guy about shit himself when he broke that cylinder thing. Too bad the best video is in WMV format, though. If you're looking for a good laugh you gotta check that video section out.
    • This one is all over the place and this copy has no sound. Find one with sound and you'll get the full picture:

      The guy crashing the copter is the new owner.

      He is just learning to fly.

      He has not yet been certifed on this aircraft.

      Put together the above and what you see is inevitable.

      No, flying rotary wing aircraft is NOT easy.
      • this idiot is exactly what natural selection is for. why we try to protect these people from themselves is beyond me. sometimes nature just does what it has to.
      • This one on this page does have sound... I just downloaded it and listened to it just fine.
      • There is sound! At the end when the other guys run towards the wreck you hear the following:
        "He was told not to fly that thing."
        - "Has he been checked out on that thing?"
        "No, I don't think so, not at all"
  • Dead you may not kill them

    With lines like this, they could have just reused Yoda's CGI character instead of creating Gollum's.

    BTW, Here's [newyorker.com] a great review of LoTR 2.
  • Badly translating english is one thing, but then translating it into l33t sp3ak is another.

    Obviously a hoax.

  • 1962 Korean LOTR bootleg translation (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 01, 2003 @02:48AM (#5202330)
    My brother-in-law's boss spends a lot of time on business in South Korea, and recently he was given an amazing gift by a friend there: his friend's dad's 1962 Korean translation of LOTR. What a hoot! Old Pa's English wasn't so good, and although he loved the book, he grossly misunderstood and mistranslated it. He actually sold about 100 copies to fellow students, although if there are any others extant, I'd be surprised. As the bootleg Korean version is only 250 pages long for the entire trilogy, obviously a great many scenes have left out. But a few new scenes were slipped in, as you shall see.

    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."

  • Better bootleg (Score:2, Interesting)

    by PetWolverine ( 638111 )
    At the risk of /.ing myself, I'll say that I have a really excellent bootleg of the Two Towers on my computer:

    ftp://louise.dhs.org/Movies/Two%20Towers.mpg [dhs.org]

    It's ripped from four VCDs I got from a friend of a friend, originally ripped from the DVD given to the people who review movies for the Oscars.

    Okay, /.ers, bring it on...high traffic hasn't crashed my dual-1.25 GHz Power Mac G4 yet, and it won't do it this time!
    • At the risk of /.ing myself, I'll say that I have a really excellent bootleg of the Two Towers on my computer:
      The site's still responsive but I'm getting errors trying to download it.
    • If you're determined to slashdot yourself, better fix anonymous ftp ;-)
  • My favorite bad sub-title comes from a low budget Hong Kong Kungfu flick:

    As always, the young hero has just had his ass kick by the bad guy that just killed his family. The hero is back at the wise teacher's home and he wants to go straight back out (before getting the usual 1/2 movie training period required to thump the bad guy), but the teacher gives him a 3 minute speech. There are NO subtitles during this speech, none for 3 minutes. Then at the end a single word: NO!

    I've also rented the same movie with some what different sub-titles. The sub-titles can make a huge diference in the movie.

  • smells fishy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Simon Garlick ( 104721 ) on Saturday February 01, 2003 @03:03AM (#5202372)
    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.

    • Re:smells fishy (Score:2, Insightful)

      by badasscat ( 563442 )
      Put any DVD you own in your DVD player and bring up the subtitle menu. I can almost guarantee one of the options will be English subtitles. There are several obvious reasons for this, especially on an Asian DVD:

      1. Captions for the hearing-impaired
      2. Subtitles for those who can speak and understand English, but not all that well.

      My wife, when she first came to this country, fell into the 2nd category and nearly always watched English subtitles on English language DVD's to help her understand.

      It could still be a hoax, but it could just as easily not be. The fact that there are English subtitles on an English language film is no proof of anything, and the fact that they're done badly isn't either.
      • I find captions invaluable when watching movies with thick Irish or Scottish accents. They are still english, no?

        A while back when I was in college, I had an assignment having to do with the movie Rob Roy. Captioning saved my butt.

        There is alo a difference between closed captioning and subtitling. I believe those were subtitles, not CC. CC is handled by your TV's CC decoder, subtitles do not require CC decoder.

      • I> There are several obvious reasons for this, especially on an Asian DVD

        Another: when my wife and her friends are playing mahjong, smashing the pieces down on the table, while I'm entertaining myself watching a DVD, I usually turn on the English caption so I can follow the dialogue, especially as they usually have the sound tuned to maximum bass and treble for good explosions, but unintelligible speech.

    • Can someone explain how a film with English dialogue can have English subtitles?

      Maybe those crazy movie studios put English subtitles on an English DVD... oh, I don't know...

      So deaf people could know what was going on?

      Just a guess.

      love,
      br4dh4x0r

    • Let me explain... (Score:4, Informative)

      by natron 2.0 ( 615149 ) <`moc.liamg' `ta' `97sretepdn'> on Saturday February 01, 2003 @04:35AM (#5202580) Homepage Journal
      I am currently residing in South Korea and when they show American movies here they use Korean voice overs and english subtitles. So the voices and speech is Korean and the subtitles are Engrish. Most of the time the translation is horrible. As a matter of fact most English translations in Korea are very bad.

    • Can someone explain how a film with English dialogue can have English subtitles?

      All my Region 1 DVD's (yes, I actually BUY movies...) have english subtitles. Not everyone on this planet can HEAR...

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday February 01, 2003 @03:04AM (#5202376)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • hehe [online.no]

    Sharuman will be using his puppet
    Sharuman to destroy the people of Rohan

  • Yeah, right... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Doomrat ( 615771 ) on Saturday February 01, 2003 @03:15AM (#5202398) Homepage
    >The first half of the movie has the most screengrabs, as there is more action than talking later on, and the subtitle writers eventually started getting the name of the characters right.

    Or in other words, he got bored of making them up and thought that he'd already gotten enough material for a good hoax. I'm sure he'll enjoy the extra popularity his site is getting thanks to a post on Slashdot.

    Do you really expect that a subtitler could possibly make a mistake like "mr beens" and "Brings your pussy face to my ass"?

  • Growing up with Engrish (Score:5, Funny)

    by thefinite ( 563510 ) on Saturday February 01, 2003 @03:24AM (#5202428)
    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.
  • Yes it does seem silly that it would have english subtitles for an english film in a foreign country, but if this is real... it's probably an english to some asian language back to english, which may produce a very very strange sub.

    What you have to understand (at least in the language i can speak) is that compound words are the norm. There are words, then there are words made of many words (traditional example being white people... which in chinese is essentially white devil or white ghost, as a direct translation). So you can see where this is going... when you have only single syllable words, you gotta use multiple words sometimes to either mimic a word in another language, or to make new words, and it is this type of word making that will screw up translations.

    So if the translator just did a direct english-asian language-english translation... it will be ugly indeed.
    • So if the translator just did a direct english-asian language-english translation... it will be ugly indeed. No, it's ugly because someone with imperfect language skills who has never heard of Tolkien is trying to transcribe text, probably doing the whole thing in not much more than real time.

      You can see that most of the mistakes are words phonetically similar, not scrambled meanings as would be of words translated and retranslated. I remember I once worked on a Vietnamese legal mnaual that talked about "shoes and erasers"; eventaully I worked out they meant "rubber boots"; this obviously had been an English text, translated, modified, then translated back, probably by someone else. Then I had to translate this into intelligible English -- Fortunately I was able to work out what the original English source was and use that to work out the more cryptic text.

  • Who is gremmem and why does Cyclometh hate him so much?
  • Is it just me, or does Smeagol look just a trifle Yodish?
    Great.... More Smeabrews, just what Hollywood needs.

    He really does look like an evil Yoda.... In one caption, he even says, "dead you may not kill them."
    Bizarre.
  • There are hundreds of millions of people in the world who can write passable English. Many of them are poor (India might have more English speakers than any other country in the world), many would be willing to review English text for a low wage and flunk the bits that are incomprehensible. There are American / British / etc people who have been forced into early retirement and would work at this for very little money.

    So why do the Japanese (especially) inflict incomprehensible product manuals on the world? When they could get them checked for maybe $1 per page for an entire product line?
    • So why do the Japanese (especially) inflict incomprehensible product manuals on the world? When they could get them checked for maybe $1 per page for an entire product line?

      Because to do that would be to admit that their English was crap, and thus lose face. In Hong Kong I was not allowed to correct appalling English in advertisements because to tell them that this needed to be done would have embarrassed an important client.

  • threat (Score:5, Funny)

    by Xpilot ( 117961 ) on Saturday February 01, 2003 @04:11AM (#5202528) Homepage
    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.
  • If this is what they did to LOTR, I'd like to see them translate "The Osbournes".
  • While other hobbits, humans and assorted spieces are finally getting some action in two towers, Frodo is still mostly just walking around and complaining about the ring. Don't you think it's time for him to lighten up and say something like bring your pussy face to my ass [online.no]?

    Anyway, most people can still watch without caption. Where to get the DVD?

  • I'm Arogon son of Alfred (Score:3, Funny)

    by aralin ( 107264 ) on Saturday February 01, 2003 @04:35AM (#5202582)
    I'm Arogon son of Alfred
    My name is Smeedle
    Gibley lower your axe
    Gandolf foogray that was my name
    Shadol fax is the lord of all horses
    If I go Filden dies
    You must lead people to the Humsdeed
    I bring word of Elfron of Riven Death

    And the one that caputures the spirit best:

    Toast me! I say you got to toast me!

  • First off it has the credits from an entirely different movie on it somehow, which you sometimes see when using the next and previous scene buttons.

    It even has the subtitles from one, if not more, entirely different movies, in funny Engrish themselves made funnier by the fact that Gimli is talking about DNA or Elrond is interrogating Arwen on the Union Warship.

    Tim
  • I think we need to make it a requirement for Americans to learn at least one foreign language.

    Any one will do. In California, where I live, the most common foreign language is Spanish, so I have been working very hard on learning this language.

    It is very easy to make some nasty errors in Spanish. For example, a common dialog (in both English and Spanish) can go like this:

    "How are you at programming"
    "I am good."

    Now, if someone says "I am good" in Spanish wrong, it sounds like "I am good at having sex". Another error, which can be nasty, is that the following dialog in Puerto Rican Spanish:

    "Where is the teacher?"
    "She just left. You may catch her if you hurry."

    Sounds like this in Mexican Spanish:

    "Where is the teacher?"
    "She just left. You may fuck her if you hurry."

    Just the other night, I was talking to a bilingual girl born in the US, and she made this particular error (in Spanish):

    "So, are you going to cum home soon?"

    these errors even get past proofreading. The label on the Memorex CD-R blanks says this in Spanish:

    "Guarentee of goods and services for one anus"

    The point being, that learning a foreign language is, to put it mildly, very very difficult, and you can and will make extremely humourous errors learning it. Native speakers will find you most amusing at times. You will find yourself talking and suddenly having to stop because you do not have a word for the concept you wish to express.

    Learning a foreign language is, all in all, great fun, especially when you find people who will tolerate your errors in their language, and who can intuitively speak the languag ein a form you can understand. Great way to meet girls too, because females are more likely to enjoy talking to people struggling with a language.

    - Sam

  • Movie Piracy, a quick primer. (Score:5, Informative)

    by jedrek ( 79264 ) on Saturday February 01, 2003 @05:31AM (#5202678) Homepage
    (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.

    • Heh, funny dude, I just got done watching a VCD of
      [media-blasters.com]
      biozombie. I guess you can really only get why the joke is so funny if you
      watch the movie, but it's got two guys working in a bootleg VCD shop in some
      Japanese mall (japan i think cause they show a big map of it in the
      beginning) . A customer walks in and the dialog goes like this.



      Customer :Hey there's something wrong with this VCD I wanna
      return it.


      Woody Invincable: Lemme see that! (grabs vcd and puts down
      game gun controller)


      Customer: See you can't even see steven chou's face!


      Crazy B: This is very good cinamatography by a very famous
      director!


      Customer: I think these are bootlegs!



      (Crazy B and woody invincable jump over the counter and
      hold their sega dreamcast light guns up to the customers head)


      Crazy B: WHAT WHAT ARE YOU THREATENING US BOY?


      Woody Invincable: Take any 3 porno's and get the hell outta
      here, don't come back or we'll kick your ass!




  • http://home.online.no/~gremmem/engrish_ttt_caption s/80-100/two-towers-04.jpg reminds me of "you're my heart, you're my soul", should anybody know that.
  • enough god is built on his craft

    Aragorn: Enough blood has been spilt on his account.

    The only part of the movie that really bugged the hell out of me. Why the heck did they let that bugger go? Even if he didn't want to kill him, he could have at least jailed the guy until after the troubles. First time I saw that I wanted to yell out "You idiots, now where do you think he's going to go?"

  • On the first part where you see Gandalf about to fall and it says "Follow you fools," I'm not really surprised that they screwed it up. I can barely tell what he's saying when I watch the American version. I had to buy the DVD and turn on subcaptions to learn it should actually be "Fly you fools."
  • sharp fax machines | panasonic fax machines | sharp toner | fax machines At the bottom of the page are a bunch of links that are hidden from view...any ideas??? http://www.sharp-fax-machines.com/

  • Not only bootlegs, official translations too... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by fuxoft ( 161836 ) on Saturday February 01, 2003 @08:19AM (#5202968) Homepage
    I work as a English movie translator (in the Czech Republic) and I put together a little page [fuxoft.cz] of things that appear in OFFICIAL translations of English movies in our theatres.

    That means people were PAID for this and EVERYONE who sees the movie in our country watches it like this.

  • Best subtitle (Score:3, Funny)

    by XNormal ( 8617 ) on Saturday February 01, 2003 @08:33AM (#5202991) Homepage
    "Fire advise google [online.no]"

  • For USD 2.50 a pop... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by costas ( 38724 ) on Saturday February 01, 2003 @09:04AM (#5203046) Homepage
    ... sources tell me that bootleg DVDs go for ~USD 2.50 a pop in the streets (and malls) of Hongkong. For the price of a happy meal for brand new, just-in-theaters movies (Chicago, The Recruit, etc) I'd take my chances.

    This of course bodes well for that company that's bringing the self-desctructable DVDs to market... if you would risk $3/disk for a bootleg that may not contain a viewable version of the movie, why not pay say $4 for a one-time use disk of the real thing?

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