Sunday 18 August 2013

Translated film titles - a languages game.

As the title suggests, here is another game to play with 6th form or really good KS4 students.

When English language films are translated into other languages, they are often given strange titles.

For example:

The Bruce Willis film, "The sixth sense" in China was called, "He's a ghost!" which, if you've seen the film, kind of spoils the plot and if you haven't seen it, then I've just ruined it for you.

The game is this: find some titles of English language films and their French, German, Spanish version titles. The more bizarre the better.

A good place to look for this is wikipedia. On the left hand side of wikipedia pages are the links of foreign language versions of each article.

Here are some examples:

Les dents de la mer = Jaws

Maman, j'ai raté l'avion = Home Alone

Ein Zwilling kommt selten allein = The Parent Trap

Die unglaubliche Reise in einem verrückten Flugzeug = Airplane

A todo gas = Fast and Furious

Gru, mi villano favorito = Despicable Me

R3sacón = The Hangover: Part 3

You could play this as a matching activity, multiple choice activity, or just get the students to try to work out what the original title was. Some students could even find their own titles to test their classmates.

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