Aus dem Haus

When did Krieg der Sterne become Star Wars?

I’ve had this discussion a hundred times before but yesterday we were watching TV with my flatmate and we were getting annoyed by the TV commercials for films. Well, actually not the commercials themselves but the titles of the films or even more precisely their translations into German. Much has been said and written about this topic so far but it still continues to amaze and amuse me how the film titles are rendered into the German language.

First of all, they not always are rendered at all. Some of them just stay the same, e.g. “Remember Me” (the new flick with the heart-throb Robert Pattinson) or “From Paris with Love”. My flatmate was in favour of this solution because he found many German translations ‘doof’ but to me, it’s a suspicious practice.First of all even though English is really widespread and almost omnipresent in the German media, there are still numerous people who don’t speak and understand this language fluently. Especially with titles like the ones above I would try to find a German equivalent, as they’re not even that complicated.

Furthermore, (and that was an argument that confused my flatmate and made him rethink his stand) what about French, Spanish, Japanese etc. movies? Should we leave their titles in the original as well? I was actually pretty sure it was absurd but what struck me even more was the result of my little research: German cinemas are showing a couple of Turkish films at the moment, and guess what! Some of them have actually original Turkish titles e.g. “Çok Filim Hareketler Bunlar”. Isn’t that crazy? Well as the topic seems endless, let me come back to that next week. For now, let me know about your experience with this matter! Happy Easter!

P.S. All the example titles are taken from a website about films currently being shown or to be shown very soon in German cinemas!