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Chinese audience find "Avengers" subtitle a nuisance

Xinhua, May 15, 2015 Adjust font size:

The success of the Marvel superhero movie "The Avengers: Age of Ultron" has been dampened somewhat, thanks to some clumsily translated lines.

Moviegoers are left baffled and comic book fans are complaining that poor subtitles have ruined the spirit of superheroes such as Captain America and Iron Man.

One line from Captain America "You get hurt, hurt'em back. You get killed...walk it off" was translated as "if someone tried to kill you, lose no time to run." In another, the Captain said "Fury, you son of a bitch," translated as "Fury, my old buddy."

When Ultron sings "I had strings, but now I'm free. There are no strings on me," in a dark parallel of Pinocchio, it was translated as "I've got no wires on me."

There are plenty of other controversial translations, and some hardcore fans have been extremely critical of translator Liu Dayong, saying it takes more than language skills to deliver fine Chinese subtitles for such superhero movies.

Subtitling also came under fire in Marvel's "Guardians of the Galaxy", "Pacific Rim" and "The Hunger Games".

The comic-book action movie has raked in more than 300 million yuan (48.4 million U.S. dollars) in ticket sales since its release on Tuesday. Endi