10 Movie Titles With Ridiculous German Translations

Less than forty years ago, it was mandatory for foreign films that were distributed in Germany to adopt a German title. While this might seem fairly obvious to some, you would be surprised to see how many great movies have been lost in translation because the German title didn't quite capture the meaning of the original.

Surely, the cultural distinctions carry some of the onus for the unexpectedly wacky foreign titles - on one hand what might sound good to an English audience could seem absolutely lame to the German audience when translated and vice versa. The titles are set by the distribution companies involved who own the distribution rights in Germany and their decisions are largely based on marketing motives rather than good faith.

What's more, as time progressed, it became common practice to keep elements of the original title but include a German, often redundant subtitle; hence, the movie Scream became: Scream: Schrei! and so on.

But somewhere down the line, the people in charge must've deemed the mere addition of a German subtitle as lackluster and began treating audiences to an entirely different title (often with unintentionally hilarious results) which deviated from the original, such that most English speaking people wouldn't recognize it, even if it was translated back into English.

German Title: Ich Glaub' Mich Tritt Ein Pferd

English Translation: I Believe A Horse Is Kicking Me

On one level this bizarre adventure comedy is barely known in Germany, while on another, it has since attained cult status in the US. Not only did it establish food battles as an art form but also it introduced the legendary John Belushi into Hollywood as Bluto Blutarsky - a drunken, seventh year college student and member of the wildest fraternity on campus whose activities revolve around alcohol, parties, women and pranks.

The English title does a fairly good job of foreshadowing the debauchery viewers should expect when they choose to see a film titled Animal House but then again we wouldn't appreciate the German language if it wasn't contingent on its vivid expressions particularly in all things horseplay.

And so in an episode of when-film-executives-trying-to-pander-toward- teen goes terribly wrong, just imagine a group of middle aged men sitting in a meeting room as they ponder on how best to sell a comedy movie to a younger audience and then suddenly in a light bulb moment someone goes "How about we use a slang that the kids use nowadays as our title?"

Apparently, YOLO didn't make the cut, hence we are forced to settle with one of the most unrelated titles in cinema history.