CandyTownFA: Well, here in Italy it came out as “It’s raining meatballs”. The marketing team knew what they were doing
metmike89: In Poland, it was translated as “Meatballs and other weather phenomena”
mystriddlery: Really you could change it to each cities favorite food, technically it was raining like all kinds of food so it would still be correct.
SrPantuflas: Scott Pilgrim vs The World was named literally “Scott Pilgrim vs the exes of the girl of his dreams” in Spanish
pussymagnate: Hebrew movie title translations are notoriously bad.
Examples:
* “Naked Gun” -> “The Gun is Laughing to Death”
* “Inception” -> “Beginning”
* “Terminator” -> “Lethal Assignment”
* “Total Recall” -> “The Recall of Destiny”
And the list goes on. I’m guessing the main reason is linguistic (not every word, phrase or play on words has a good translation).
Lately it seems like the trend is to just transliterate the English title and hope the audience gets it.
Edit: styling
Jaba01: In Germany it’s translated as: Cloudy with a chance of meatballs.
patrik667: Mentioned in the article, “eternal sunshine of the spotless mind” was translated to “if you leave me, I’ll delete you” in Italy.
Paired with Jim Carrey, this seemed like a cheap, stupid, slapstick humor from the title, instead of highlighting the underlying poetry and depth of the actual movie.
DerikStar: More weird/funny Israeli translations to movie titles:
* The Hangover – On the Way to the Wedding We Stop at Vegas
* Superbad – Horny on Time
* Alien – The 8th Passenger/Rider
* Miss Congeniality – What Kind of Cop?
* Die Hard – Dying to Live
* Scary Movie – Dying to Scream
cock_baron: It’s raining falafel Halal…lujah
bg1987: A more accurate translation would be “Falafel Rain”
This is because meatballs aren’t that common in Israel, unlike falafel.
Btw they did NOT edit the posters, so the Title said “Falafel Rain”
but the “Falafel” on the poster still had spaghetti in it.
There is a WAAAY funnier story with the naming fiascos that happened here, it has to do with the American Ninja movie series.
Basically due to the tendency to name movies after trends (a lot of movies were named “American something” after american pie came out)
After the first American Ninja movie came out and was a huge hit.
The actor released another movie named “Avenging Force”
which was released as “American Ninja 2” in Israel.
All was fine and dandy until the REAL American Ninja 2 came out.
But Israel already “released” american ninja 2, so in Israel the movie was released as “American Ninja 3″….
Source: http://blogs.haaretz.co.il/assaflevanon/381/ (its in hebrew)
Stanislavsyndrome: >In Germany, Woody Allen’s classic “Annie Hall” was called “The Urban Neurotic.”
Isn’t that all Woody Allen Movies?
Luke_CO: In Czech language we have this expression “it’s raining wheelbarrows”, similar to English “It’s raining cats and dogs”.
Our movie distributor, being ignorant as always, named this movie “Cloudy, sometimes wheelbarrows”, completely ignoring the theme of the movie
sudo-is-my-name: Mmm, falafel.
razrazyy1: Frozen was also translated to “To Break the Ice”
SerCharlesRos: “Burger Rain” in spanish
redeyeddragon: In sweden it was “its raining meatballs”
TheFirstOfHisHandle: Honestly this isn’t as bad as some other awful translations
The Hangover- “on the way to the wedding we stop in Vegas”
The Hangover part 2- “on the way to the wedding we stop in Bangkok”
OH and The Hangover part 3 you ask? “Hangover 3 back to Vegas”
jmsly: I once heard from an Israeli girl that Lost in translation was titled Lost in Tokyo. Ha!
PoopsMcG: They missed the best one ever. When the teen comedy “She’s the Man” came out in Israel, it was cleverly titled “יש לה בצים”–“She’s Got Balls.”
mikebrown33: I read the translated title in the voice of the Weather Girls:
“It’s Raining Falafel! Hallelujah!
It’s Raining Falafel! Amen”
gavers: Many people in the comments are talking about how bad titles are when translated to Hebrew, but most don’t talk about **why**. I will try and explain a little about that.
The attempt in Israel is to get people to go see a movie by giving it a connection to some other similar/successful film – usually by giving it a similar name. The issue is that some of the “original” movies were translated poorly, and fall into one of the following categories:
* [“Lethal _______”](http://en.targumon.co.il/titlelist.asp?genre=k) – the Lethal Weapon series has left it’s mark on Israeli movie titles. If there is any sort of way to tie in a risk/chance/death element to the movie, they’ll go with that.
examples: The Cell – “Lethal Cell”; Gale Force – “Lethal Storm”; Dead Sexy – “Lethan Sex”; To Die For **and** Poison Ivy – “Lethal Temptation”.
* [“Fateful _______”](http://en.targumon.co.il/titlelist.asp?genre=g) – Similarly to “Lethal”, if there is any sort of way to tie in a fate/death element to the movie, they’ll go with that.
examples: Gunfight at the O.K. Corral – “Fateful Duel”; Two Men – “Fateful Confrontation”; Total Recall – “Fateful Memory”.
* [“death by/from _______”](http://en.targumon.co.il/titlelist.asp?genre=d) – Basically any parody or comedy movie, going back to The Naked Gun will try this. In Hebrew the term can be used to mean that someone is “dying to do” something as well, and not just literally dying.
examples: Naked Gun – “The Gun Dies Laughing”; Loaded Weapon – “Death from Laughing”; Spy Hard – “The Spy Dies Laughing”; George of the Jungle – “The Jungle Dies Laughing”; BASEketball – “The Ball Dies Laughing”; Scary Movie – “Dying to Scream” (at least this one has a legit connection to the Scream franchise).
* [“The ____ , the _____ , and the _____”](http://en.targumon.co.il/titlelist.asp?genre=c) – Are there three elements in the movie? Great!
examples: The Truth About Cats & Dogs – “About Men, Women, and Other Animals”; Six Ways to Sunday – “Me, Mom, and the Jewish Mafia”; For The Boys – “Yesterday, Tomorrow, and Forever”; Outrageous Fortune – “The Crook, the Lover, and the Mistress”.
There are more types listed [here](http://en.targumon.co.il/genre.asp), but basically throughout the 80s, 90s, and early 00s the people translating the films were VERY lazy.
atomicspacekitty: You’d be surprised at the translated titles of movies. In Portuguese the movie The Hangover is translated to “If You Drink, Don’t Get Married”. Sound advice.
bargman: In Korean it’s “If food fell from the sky.”
Analithic: מעונן עם מאה אחוזי לחוח
theblackbarth: In Brazil, is “It’s Raining Hamburgers”.
We had some weird tradition on movie titles where sometimes we added small subtitles “trying to explain” the movie (like Robocop: The Cop from the Future, or Rocky: A Fighter) and in some cases titles that we “feel” it could help the audience to understand the theme of the movie. A few examples:
* The Green Mile – Waiting for a Miracle
* Shawshank Redemption – A Dream of Freedom
* The Godfather – The Powerful Boss
* Airplane – Fasten your belts the pilot has gone
* Naked Gun – Run that the Police are coming
* Berverly Hills Cop – A Tough Cop
froso_franc: In Italy it was translated to “It’s raining meatballs”, “Piovono polpette”.
TheNookle: I live in Israel, and it took me weeks to realize it’s even the same movie. I thought it was a local knock-off…
metyuadem: That sounds positively delightful.
alsobrante: In latinamerica was “Lluvia de Hamburguesas” ir Burguer Rain