10 Translated Movie Titles in Spanish You’ll Never Guess

For cultural reasons best known to themselves (but let’s blame censorship under Franco, which is the dubious go-to excuse for why foreign films are dubbed here rather than subtitled), Spanish movie distributors tend to opt for translated titles that are at once blindingly obvious, and inscrutably obscure.

Any film with an original English name that could be deemed in the least odd, misleading, culturally or linguistically specific, will get the micro-precis treatment, its title rendered in the form of a truncated elevator pitch delivered in the split second as the doors close behind the departing producer.

See if you can work out what these titles refer to from the literal backtranslation given. Bear in mind that if you’re in the USA, you may have come across the Latin American Spanish variant(s), which are sometimes similar, sometimes completely different (even between Argentina and Mexico, say). Sometimes more faithful, sometimes less.

These are the versions displayed at cinemas in the land of Cervantes himself. Whose magnum opus should presumably have been rendered in English (“Don who? What kind of a name is that anyway?”) as “The Mad Knight and His Patient Squire”.

I’ve ordered them in what I think is more or less easiest to hardest to decipher.

1. La Loca Academia de Policía (The Crazy Police Academy)

A gimme to start with. Presumably they added the adjective in case the gurning buffoons on the poster weren’t enough of a clue that this wasn’t a serious documentary about law enforcement training methods.

2. Tiburón (Shark)

Less of that puzzling synecdoche! And anyway, shouldn’t the chosen body part have been “dorsal fin”?

3. Atrapado en el Tiempo (Trapped in Time)

If you don’t get this one, try again tomorrow.

4. Un Canguro Super Duro (A Super Tough Childminder)

In case of pun, break glass.

5. Dos Colgaos Muy Fumaos (Two Really Stoned Stoners)

This isn’t ‘Withnail and I’, which was simply ‘Withnail y Yo’.

6. Con Faldas y a lo Loco (With Skirts and Going Crazy)

Hint: ‘crazy’ always means comedy. This is a classic.

7. Cadena Perpetua (Life Sentence)

Could be almost any prison movie. Take your pick.

8. Dos Hombres y Un Destino (Two Men and One Destiny)

It’s a buddy movie of sorts, but not Lethal Weapon. Which was ‘Arma Letal’, or ‘Lethal Weapon’. Thus proving that you can just translate the title and people will still go and see it.

9. Escuela de Jóvenes Asesinos (School for Young Murderers)

Again, it’s not ‘Dangerous Minds’. Which was ‘Mentes Peligrosas’, or ‘Dangerous Minds’. (See above.)

10. ¿Teléfono Rojo? Volamos Hacia Moscú (Red Telephone? We Are Flying Towards Moscow)

This might not actually be the hardest, but it’s probably my favourite movie of the ten, and maybe the best example of how this approach to renaming films so seldom comes up with a version that is actually snappier and more appealing.

One last honourable mention that didn’t make the list because it doesn’t really fit in with the genre of ‘tediously literal description of the film’s central concept’: ‘Sonrisas y Lágrimas’, or ‘Smiles and Tears’ which is, bizarrely enough, ‘The Sound of Music’.

So, to check your scores on the doors, here are the answers:

1. Police Academy (duh!); 2. Jaws (double duh!); 3. Groundhog Day; 4. The Pacifier; 5. Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle; 6. Some Like It Hot; 7. The Shawshank Redemption; 8. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid; 9. Heathers; 10. Dr. Strangelove.

Key message: These are not the film titles you are looking for. Thanks for playing!