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Würzburg (pte037/02.05.2005/13:59) - The translation of film titles into German can sometimes lead to confusion - or can be completely misleading. Often the German title seems to have nothing to do with the original, and in fact sometimes only has an oblique reference to the film. An anglicist from the University of Würzburg in Germany http://www.uni-wuerburg.de , Christoph Schubert, has conducted a study about the translation of English-language film titles, and has empirically proven that the practice of translating titles is becoming less common. This he sees as a sign of globalisation and the fact that English holds a place in the world as the number one language - also in advertising.
Schubert sites the film 'The Time Machine', based on H G Well's classic of the same name. The original film from 1960 was translated into German as 'Die Zeit Maschine', but the remake released in 2002 retained its English title.
Between 1994 and 2002, 47 per cent of the studied film titles kept the original English titles. Ten years earlier it was only 37 per cent. From 1944 to 1953, 38 per cent of the titles were translated word-for-word and only 9.2 per cent retained their English titles. Schubert questions whether titles such as 'The Road to Perdition' and 'Pulp Fiction' might reveal an inadequate understanding of the English language by German native speakers and thus scare viewers off, rather than encourage them to see the film.
As Schubert sees it, the German-language film versions are increasingly retaining their original titles. Unlike 'Key Largo', the 1948 Hollywood blockbuster with Humphrey Bogart, which whose translated title was 'Harbour of Vice'.
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