14 DAY TRIAL // “Guardians of the Galaxy,” the Marvel movie which swept the international box office and was billed as one of the best superhero movies the studio has made in later years, is having some trouble in China. Poor subtitles are driving people away from cinemas and thus hurting the overall rating of the movie, not to mention profits.
China Daily reports that several inaccuracies in the film's subtitles meant that the movie got mixed reviews and several members of the audience complained that they didn't understand the lines.
Audiences were left puzzled by bad translations, the movie got mixed reviews as a consequence
Anyone who has seen it knows that the entire film relies on a series of humorous scenes, not only visual, but also mostly based on the lines of the characters. So if the translator didn't do a good job adapting the text to his or her native language, then the audience wouldn't be able to get the joke and thus miss the point of the scene altogether.
A Weibo user by the name of “Gudabaihua,” who is known for subtitling clips on social media, told the publication that he identified no fewer than 80 translation mistakes in the Chinese subtitles that run throughout the film.
He also complained that “aside from a lot of mistranslations, the subtitles failed to show the original feel of the movie, such as the jokes, puns and homophones.” “We cannot help but doubt the professionalism of the translator,” he concluded.
The fact that “Guardians of the Galaxy” was not a big hit at the Chinese box office is a big surprise, since the Chinese market is usually open to Hollywood blockbusters such as “Iron Man,” “X-Men,” and “The Transformers.”
This is not the first time bad translations have hurt a movie's ratings
Specialists explain that an additional factor to the movie's less than satisfying attendance is the fact that the Chinese public is not familiar with the characters.
The movie opened in China on October 10 and it managed to raise only 191 million yuan ($31.2 million - €24.3 million) in the first three days, less than other superhero movies in the recent past, such as “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” and “X-Men: Days of Future Past.”
Sadly for the Chinese market, this is not the first time that bad subtitles have contributed to low ratings for a movie, and this is beginning to put into question the subtitle translation system. Other movies that were hurt by bad subtitles were “Men in Black III,” “Pacific Rim,” “The Hunger Games,” and “Skyfall” among others.