Lost in translation

Portuguese subtitles are good fun.

Numbers are often wrong, which is not much of a problem if it's a phone number in The Sopranos. However, in Malcolm in the Middle the parents were saying that Francis moved 3000 miles to be far from them - the subtitles read that he relocated '5 km' away. Not quite the same effect.

You know in Jaws when they catch sight of the shark and say "20 feet, if it's an inch... 25 feet. And three tonnes of him there". Here Richard Dreyfuss is all scared that the shark is 3 metres long - now, you'd hardly need a bigger boat for that little guppy.

Madeirans must think we're sissies.

Titles of songs have a tendency to go astray as well. Here Nelly Furtado sings 'Manheater', but my favourite is Bananarama's 'Look at the Hoor'.

Then again, maybe someone in Translation Land knows exactly what they're doing...