The Turkish translators for Now You See Me decided they will localize it to "Sihirbazlar Çetesi," which roughly means "Wizards Gang." (Magicians?)
this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2026
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Maybe Turkey doesn't have an expression akin to "now you see me, now you don't"?
Could have instead translated the trilogy as "Abracadabra," "Alakazam, and "hocus pocus" or whatever the turkish equivalent of that is. "Elemtere fiş kem gözlere şiş"
The Neverending Story II
Real opportunity lost not just calling it the neverending story again
Right? I would even have taken 'Part II'.
Star Wars: they never went to war with the stars.
Airplane! doesn't have a dumb name, but the German dubbed version does:
"Die unglaubliche Reise in einem verrückten Flugzeug" (The Incredible Journey On a Crazy Airplane)
And The Big Bus was called "The Hair-Raising Journey On a Crazy Bus".
Even though the movies have nothing to do with each other, apart from being comedies set in vehicles.
this is like how The Producers were shown in sweden using the name of the musical in the film, Springtime For Hitler, and then the name stuck. every Mel Brooks movie is called Springtime For X in sweden; Springtime For Mother-in-law, Springtime For The Sheriff, Springtime For Frankenstein, Springtime For The Lunatics, Springtime For World History, Springtime For Space...
No, that's actually a lot worse!
we had a real hard-on for translated titles for a while. two of my faves are 1) translating the bond film "from Russia with love" to "agent 007 sees red" 2) changing the title of "it could happen to you", a movie that has a guy win two million at the lottery, after which we learn he's an undercover police officer, and which ends with him giving the money away to a waitress in a heartfelt moment of empathy, into "cop gives waitress $2M tip"
Nice. Here are some more ideas for your translators:
(Warning – Spoilers for movies old enough to drink beer in the US)
Boy talks to dead psychologist
Everyone dies at the end
Earth
right? some others:
- the world's fastest indian -> "lemon trees and motor oil: a hell of a true tale"
- the amityville horror -> "the house that god forgot"
- the princess bride -> "minute of the pale death"
- grosse pointe blank -> "even an assassin needs a hit from time to time" (where "hit" is slang for "date")
- hitchcock's "rope" -> "the yell" (the swedish word for yell is "rop", in the-form its "ropet". very funny)
and my favourite, which i had forgotten until looking up these things:
- superman 3 -> "superman has a bit of bad krypto-luck" (lit. "stålmannen går på en krypto-nit", "superman walks into a krypto-(losing lottery ticket)". "gå på en nit" means to fail at a task, as in you failed because of the luck of the draw. and as you may have guessed, "kryptonit" is the swedish translation of kryptonite. yes, i'm cringing just writing this out)
German movie Titel Translations are so bad, I feel like it could be its own community
Hey, we sometimes avoid translation by giving the movie a completely different English title!
(See Crossroads -> Not a Girl)
Yeah and German->English translations have the same problem
There's no reason that 'Fuck you, Goethe!' had to be Anglo-washed into "Suck me, Shakespeare" which isn't even how we'd put that phrase in English. "Suck it, Shakespeare" would make more sense - "suck me" is an invitation.
Interesting film, btw. But English speaking people have probably heard of Goethe - and even if they haven't, knowing about Goethe is not in the slightest critical to understanding the movie.
That's hilarious!
In Spain, if it had Leslie Nielsen on it, it would be "(whatever action summarizing the movie) however you can!"
Naked Gun - Agárralo como puedas (catch it however you can)
Airplane! - Aterriza como puedas (land however you can)
... And so on. I think it applies to all of the movies with Nielsen.
Funnily, it is not a cultural quirk. It was usually part of regional marketing. Copyright and distribution deals of exported movies are very complex. Many countries have laws with mandatory dubbing. Contracts sometimes includes local translation, marketing, and theater distribution deals all in one. So, they would do all that they could to promote the movie for the local culture. It's akin to how some voice actors have dubbing contracts, so only they are allowed to dub a particular actor for a particular market. Because that market associated the voice with the actor. If it is a big celebrity, changing the voice could sour audiences to the new film. Mix that with a pre-Internet era and you get that sort of quirky name translations. It simply sold more tickets in that market, according to marketers at least.
Gonna cheat here with a series called The Night Agent. It's a name that should be given to a parody spy thriller, not something that tries to be serious. "Tries" being the keyword there, as it is atrociously bad. It's got all the clichés you'd expect. I turned it off early into episode two, I just couldn't watch it anymore.
Batman/Superman: Apocalypse
It's a movie primarily about Supergirl, that largely takes place on earth and does not threaten the end of the world. It does briefly go to Apokolips, but that's a different word than the title
That how to Trainer your dragon poster looks strange.
Pontypool, such a bad name for a movie but a really good low budget horror movie
The guest, good throwback action thriller with an extremely bland, boring name
Saw 3d: the final chapter is the 7th of 10 in the series
If I had legs I would kick you
Just based off the title I refuse to watch it, so braindead
Just based off the title I refuse to watch it, so braindead
IKR?? Even as an 8 / 9 year old I was crawling out of my skin from the cringe. It was prerty good but i tried to watch it again as an adult and the intro was too bubbly.
Glad someone else gets it. Looks like "Brainrot: the movie"
A very very very similar movie is Strange Magic which is actually written by George Lucas. Supposedly. And this one is even more brainrotted, but has a super devoted fanbase. It's... unique, but tries to be like a musical disney movie, and a lot of the songs don't actually sound good, or the performance makes your skin crawl. Honestly i liked it overall, the romance was good. I'm just surprised at why this movie has such a devoted fanbase like 11-13 years later, and simultaneously remains so underground like it's a movie for freemasons.
The title of that one is just the name of that ELO song. Not sure how i feel about that, but i guess it's better than "epic."
Similarly Jug Face (2013)
Together with Jarhead, I really couldn't follow this trilogy, at all.
The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle
Which does actually describe the film, but makes for a shitty title. Although, if you’ve seen the film, you might understand how they couldn’t come up with anything else.