It was bound to happen: bootleg DVDs of The Two Towers made in Asia are hitting black markets everywhere.
The first interesting thing about these bootlegs is that they’re not “screeners”, or in other words, they weren’t made using a videocamera brought into a theatre. These are high-quality direct digital copies made for distribution by the filmmakers to members of the Motion Picture Association of America in the hope of winning Oscar votes.
The second interesting thing is that they’ve been subtitled very horribly, which has produced some hilarious results:
- During the battle of Helm’s Deep, Gimli asks Aragorn to toss him, but the subtitles read “toast me…I say you got to toast me!“
- The character names are often misspelled: “Fodo“, “I am Aragon son of Alfred“, “my name Smeedle“, “Gibley low you axe“, “Gandolf foogray that was my name“, “Shadol fax is the lord of all horses“…and on it goes.
- They can’t quite agree on how to misspell hobbits: “did you see two hoberts with them“, “we are not oaks we are hobiks“
- Instant-messaging speak rears its ugly head: “u r my heart“
- And there’s one subtitle that I can’t figure out [warning: not safe for work] — however did they arrive at that translation?
More hilarity can be found at the Engrish TTT Captions page.
[Link courtesy of MetaFilter.com]