Great Moments in Film Translation – Pulp Fiction

 

There’s the most famous line from the movie rendered into Japanese subtitles – “I’m going to make dinner of your backside.” Even a generous untranslation only gets “I’m gonna roast your ass.” Although perhaps “料理ing an 後ろ” is as unusual a wording in Japanese as “getting medieval” is in English which I guess is the one of the highlights of Tarantino movies – dialogue that’s close enough to vernacular English to seem real but at the same time funny and edgy enough to be cool and therefore hyperreal.

The dubbing goes in a different direction and is possibly more accurate: (the best I could tell it is,) けつぶけで破って、グチャグチャしてやる。Man, a little help from the audience. Any idea what a けつぶけ is? I get the けつ part, and I get the やぶる part. I also understand that this is what probably results in グチャグチャ of the, I’m assuming, asshole region.