Super Bad

Once, when I was still in school, I read an article about how various countries change the names of Hollywood films. Germany, apparently, is not just fond of doing this, but they also like changing the meaning.

One of your cinema groups in South Africa has screens dedicated to artsy and foreign language films. I remember wondering what we in English speaking countries do with names that we might not like and if we actually translate the titles accurately.

In Korea the names are often changed as well. You would think that they would translate it, but no, they just give it a new English name and write that name, wait for it, in Hangeul. Sometimes the changes are small, like the recent How to Train Your Dragon, which became plain Dragon. Sometimes those small alterations changes the meaning completely. One older example that still annoys the hell out of me is The Day After Tomorrow which just became Tomorrow. Not exactly the same thing, is it now?

At the time of writing this post the animation Despicable Me is showing in Korean theatres. I can’t say that I like the English title all that much. I completely dislike the international title Meet the Minions. I do, however, like the Korean title, Super Bad. Super Bad does have its problems though.

Firstly, Super Bad is already a not too shabby film from two years back and it was not intended for the animation audience, at all. Secondly, the Korean spelling is, well, so Korean. Even though Korean is perfectly capable of writing super(수퍼) in an intelligible way, most people, for whatever reason, prefer shooper(슈퍼). I dare you to tell your average Korean on the street that super is actually written and pronounced as sUper and see the bemused “Really?” expressions on their faces. Priceless.

(I’m thinking I need to start a little side project of the konglish kind just for films)

As a side note, I heard that some members of Girls Generation did voice work for this film. Apparently they were really good. The script was also changed a bit to make the humour more Korean and I hear they did a really good job with that.

The one mother who studies with me said her son didn’t like it because “when you make the moon smaller it will not become lighter, so how did they carry it.” (I never even thought of that.) My reply was “But, IT’S SO FLUFFY!”