1.7.2010
And since we are on the
topic of translating titles: what is it with this morbid fascination that
death exerts on the translators of James Bond movie titles from English into
German?
It all started in 1981 with "In tödlicher Mission" (On a deadly
mission) — not an obvious translation, one might say, of "For your
eyes only". After the untranslatable "Octopussy", next was "A view to a kill"
in 1985, which was rendered "Im Angesicht des Todes" (In the face of death)
... at least a little closer to the original (and with a nice little word
play that makes use of the allusion to visual vocabulary: 'Angesicht' has a
common root with the German word for sight, so there is after all a certain
connection to the term 'view' in the original title). But have you noticed
that again 'death' (Tod) makes an appearance in the German title where there
is no direct counterpart of it in the English? That's two; three makes a
pattern, so let's see how it continues.
In 1987, Timothy Dalton's first movie was "The living daylights". Not a
chance to get death into that, wouldn't you say? Well, there's no
limits to creativity: the German translation was "Der Hauch des Todes" (The
breath of death). Damned if I see the connection, but they managed to get
death into it all right.
Shall I go on and mention that the next one was "License to kill" (1989),
with the obvious (and very precise), but consequently death-laden translation
"Lizenz zum Töten"? After that, beginning with "Goldeneye", death has
interestingly withdrawn from the German titles. That's a pity: it was good
fun to watch it sneaking in one time after the other.
