Morjes!

Welcome to my blog. I write about fitting in, sticking out, and missing the motherland as a serial foreigner.

Tell me something good

Tell me something good

A fun thing about living in a foreign country (I originally wrote "one of my favorite things," but it seemed super nerdy so I changed it) is seeing movie posters and advertisements in another language. Seeing a poster for a movie you already know the title to can be helpful from a language-learning standpoint. I remember learning the words for "sky" and "fear," and the instrumental case following быть, from Russian movie posters (Vanilla Sky, The Sum of All Fears, and We Were Soldiers, respectively).

But sometimes they change the title of a movie, and then it's interesting linguistically as well as marketing-ly. Here in Finland, Me Before You is "Tell me something good" (imperfect translations are my own; sorry if I'm missing some nuance).

Frozen is "frosty adventures." 

Zootopia is Zootropolis. The BFG is IKJ (big nice giant - not really a change). The Martian is "alone on Mars." Independence Day: Resurgence is Independence Day: New Threat.

I wish I could observe the meetings where the movie titles in Finnish are decided on. How do they determine when to keep English (as in Independence Day)? Why do some titles get translated over straight, while others are completely changed? Fascinating.

Us vs. Them

Us vs. Them

July 8th, outsourced