Star War The Third Gathers: The Backstroke of the West
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Star War The Third Gathers: The Backstroke of the West (often referred to as Star War Episode III: The Backstroke of the West or shortened to Backstroke of the West) is a bootlegged version of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. The bootleg contains amusing English subtitles translated poorly from Chinese. Due to the language barrier, many of the words and phrases were translated either literally or with alternate meanings, and thus the original meaning was lost. Most likely, the broken English is the result of being machine translated from the Chinese script. Curiously, the subtitles were translated from a Chinese translation when the original English script could have been used.
The film became the subject of an Internet phenomenon when an American living in China who purchased a copy of the DVD put up a website containing various screenshots from the film with the humorously translated subtitles. Amongst the most quoted lines is "Do not want", the translation of Darth Vader's already widely parodied "Noooooo!" at the end of the film.
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[edit] Characters
The majority of the characters' names were backtranslated from the Chinese transliterations, such as "Daxi Weida" (Darth Vader) meaning "Reaching the west of reaches".
- Anakin Skywalker: Allah Gold (often shortened to "Gold")
- Chinese: 阿納金 (anajin) is how the name is rendered in Taiwan. Perhaps in this rendition, the name was transliterated as 阿拉金 (alajin - Allah gold).
- Obi-Wan Kenobi: He is called Ratio Tile throughout the movie, but is also called Ratio Prosperous during the opening scroll
- Chinese: 歐比瓦 (Oubiwa). 歐 is a phonetic character used in transliteration, 比 means "ratio" and 瓦 means "tile". In some versions of the film name has also been rendered 歐比旺 (Oubiwang); 旺 means "prosperous". Oddly enough, in Taiwan his name was rendered as 歐比王 (Oubiwang - "King Obi") in the non-pirated version of this film.
- Supreme Chancellor Palpatine: Mr. Speaker or Speaker D, also sometimes just called D
- Chinese: 議長先生 ("Mr. Chancellor", "Mr. Speaker", "Mr. President"). Also, 帕卜丁 ("Palpatine"), where 丁 is the fourth Heavenly Stem. The Heavenly Stems are often used for enumeration purposes, similar to the way the letters of the alphabet are used in English for enumeration. In this case, 丁 is equivalent to D.
- General Grievous: Space General
- Chinese: presumably 太空將軍 - "space general".
- Count Dooku: The. This is debatable; there is no real solid evidence that this is how his name translated into Chinese and back, although the mistranslation of the beginning scroll ends with "the", while General Grievous' line, "But we lost the", replacing "But... the loss of Count Dooku..." makes this likely. However there is a fundamental problem with this as a proposed back-translation: Mandarin Chinese has no word for "the". He is also referred to as "a Big".
- Chinese:
- Senator Padmé Amidala: The Plum Of
- Chinese: One of the characters in her name is most certainly 梅 (mei - "plum"). Perhaps it's "帕的梅" (pademei - "the plum of a handkerchief"), though it's unusual to use a grammatical particle like "的" as a phonetic.
- C-3PO: Blow the skin
- Chinese: 吹皮歐 (Chuipiou) - 吹 means "blow", 皮 means "skin", 歐 is a phonetic character used in transliteration
- R2-D2: R2. Although "Artoo" is the more accepted spelling, this is nonetheless the only correctly translated name in the film.
- Darth Vader: Reaching the west of reaches
- Chinese: 達西維達 (Daxi Weida) 達 means "reach", 西 means "west", "維" has a number of meanings, including "dimension"
- Chewbacca: Drag along
- Chinese: In Taiwan his name is 丘巴卡 (Qiubaka), but the relationship to "drag along" is uncertain, unless one of the characters used is 拖 (tuo - "drag").
- Luke Skywalker: See me
- Chinese: 看我 (translated from a Mondegreen - "Luke" misheard as "look")
[edit] Terminology
- Sith Lord: South Host. Palpatine also warns Obi Wan and Anakin that Count Dooku is "a big".
- Chinese:
- Sith: West
- Chinese: 西斯 (Xisi) - a transliteration of "Sith". 西 means "west", 斯 is a phonetic often used to transliterate the "s" sound or to approximate "th", a sound that Chinese does not have.
- Jedi Council: Presbyterian Church.
- Chinese: 長老會 (literally "Council of Elders")
- Jedi Knight: Hopeless Situation Warrior; "Hopeless Situation" or just "Hopeless" for short.
- Chinese: 絕地戰士 (Juedi warrior) - 絕地 can mean "the end of one's rope".
- Galaxy: Milky Way. Star Wars is not set in our galaxy, so this would not technically make sense in English.
- Chinese: 銀河系 - In Chinese this term means "silver river system", referring to the Milky Way; however, the term can be used to refer to any galaxy.
- Spacecraft: Airship. Just about every form of spacecraft, be it a mothership or a small fighter vessel, is referred to as an "airship".
- Chinese: 空船
- Buzz droids: Airship robots.
- Chinese:
- Escape pods: First aid
- Chinese: 急救 - "emergency rescue", also meaning "first aid" in Chinese
- The Force: Wish power, Original Dint
- Chinese: 願力，原力，原 means original, 力 means Dint
- [[]]: 原力
- Sand People: Pathetic people
- Chinese: 哀伤人们 - "Sand" having been misheard as "sad" (哀伤), with people being 人们
[edit] Other words and phrases
- Do not want (Nooooooooooooooo!)
- 不要 Chinese has no word for "no"; instead, the verb would be repeated in the negative. 不要, literally meaning "not want", also means "don't".
- good elephant (seems like/it seems/apparently)
- Chinese: 好像/好象. The character 象 (elephant) is the simplified version of 像 (likeness/like/similar).
- fuck (do)
- Chinese: 幹 - this character means "to do", but with more severity than 做, the other common word for "to do". 幹 is also used as a swear word, similar in meaning and usage to "fuck".
- smelly boy (scum)
- Chinese: 臭小子 - "stinky boy", equivalent to "brat" or "little shit".
- strong and big (power/powerful)
- Chinese: 强大 - 强 means "strong" and 大 means "big"; the two characters together actually do roughly mean "powerful," but were translated into separate words.
