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On a trip to Latin America recently, I saw a theater poster for a musical direct from Broadway called La Novicia Rebelde. Now, I’m pretty good with Broadway titles, but this Spanish one—literally something like The Rebel Nun—wasn’t 1)ringing a bell until I saw the 2)credits at the bottom for Rodgers & Hammerstein注1. Suddenly, I could see a whole flock of nuns singing about how to solve a problema注2 like Maria.
Now, as titles go, The Rebel Nun isn’t much like The Sound of Music, but someone clearly decided it would tell Latin-American audiences what the show was about, which is, of course, the point of titles, even when translation isn’t an issue. Book titles, for instance, often 3)fall by the wayside as projects work their way to the 4)multiplex. Take the classic science-fiction story Do Androids[机器人] Dream of Electric Sheep?—that didn’t sound nearly 5)ominous enough for what Ridley Scott was putting on screen.
So Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? became Bladerunner. A few years later, test groups thought the title Shoeless Joe suggested a story about a homeless person, so for the screen, that baseball novel got 6)rechristened Field of Dreams. And anyone want to argue that D. W. Griffith didn’t know what he was doing when he called his silent epic about the Deep South注3 The Birth of a Nation?
The book it was based on, which 7)glorified the Ku Klux
Klan注4, was titled The Clansman[集团成员], not quite as 8)universal. Griffith remained 9)conscious of the power of titles. To 10)atone for the public 11)furor over the racism in Birth of a Nation, his next epic was a morality tale that he called Intolerance[不容忍].
Sometimes, movie projects go into production with 12)dummy titles that no one expects to make it into release. The film that made Julia Roberts a star, Pretty Woman, was originally called Three Thousand because that’s what her call-girl character charged Richard Gere: $3,000 for the night. And back in the 1990s, there was a script that got 13)shopped around Hollywood with the 14)descriptive but 15)cumbersome 16)moniker Teenage Sex Comedy That Can Be Made for Under 10 Million Dollars, That Your Reader Will Love But the Executive Will Hate. Once it got green-lit, the producers 17)opted for something a little shorter that would highlight the film’s most memorable scene: American Pie.
在最近的一趟拉美之行中，我看见一张剧院海报，是一部直接从百老汇引进的音乐剧，名字叫《叛逆修女》。我对百老汇剧目了如指掌，却对这个西班牙语名字（直译大概就是《反叛的修女》）完全没有印象，直到我看见海报底部的阵容写着罗杰斯和汉默斯坦。突然之间，我仿佛看见一大群唱歌的修女，正为如何对付问题儿玛丽亚而烦恼。
作为名字，《叛逆修女》和《音乐之声》完全不像一回事，但有人显然认为这个名字能让拉美观众明白这场演出的主题，而这当然正是标题的作用——连翻译都不是问题。又比如当小说要改编成多媒体形式时，原书名经常不如人意。例如经典科幻小说《机器人会梦见电子羊吗？》——这名字听起来完全不像雷德利·斯科特搬上银幕那片子那么杀机四伏。
于是《机器人会梦见电子羊吗？》变成了《银翼杀手》。几年之后，由于实验小组以为《赤脚的乔》这个标题讲的是流浪者的故事，所以这本棒球小说的电影版更名为《梦幻成真》。还有人认为D·W·格里菲斯将他那部关于南方腹地的史诗默片命名为《一个国家的诞生》实在是不知所谓吗？
这部电影改编自一本美化三K党的小说《同族人》——这名字不够大众化吧。格里菲斯非常清楚片名的威力。《一个国家的诞生》中的种族主义让公众一片哗然，为了将功补过，格里菲斯的下一部史诗走道德教化路线，名叫《党同伐异》。
有时候，一些电影计划在制作初期会使用暂定名，人人都知道这样的名字不会在上映时出现。让茱莉亚·罗伯茨一夜走红的电影《风月俏佳人》原名《三千美元》，因为这正是她所饰演的应召女郎给理查·基尔的价格：过夜费3000美元。早在上世纪90年代，有一个剧本在好莱坞到处物色（合作方），那标题虽然活色生香，却又长又臭：《制作成本低于一千万的年轻人性爱喜剧——读者爱之，制片恨之》。剧本获得通过之后，制片人找了个短一点的片名，以突出电影当中最让人难忘的场景——《美国派》。
On one occasion, it was a 18)typo that turned a 19)mediocre title into a much better one. Pierce Brosnan’s second 20)stint as 007 was originally going to be called Tomorrow Never Lies. But a secretary mistyped a single letter one day, the producers loved it, and her mistake stuck.
Often, a lot of care and consideration go into title changes that don’t make much difference: Predator[捕猎者] instead of Hunter, say, or Pixar’s The Incredibles instead of The Invincibles[不可战胜的], or Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven instead of The Cut-Whore[妓女] Killings. Okay, that last one is probably an improvement. But research established that men didn’t like the title The Last First Kiss for a Will Smith movie, so they renamed it Hitch. Not sure why that’s better.
And there’s nothing saying producers will only change titles to give their films extra 21)oomph. George Lucas famously reconsidered the title for his third Star Wars movie after the posters were printed and changed Revenge of the Jedi to Return of the Jedi, saying that“revenge” was not a Jedi concept. And then there’s that classic Steven Spielberg hit A Boy’s Life. Not ringing any bells? Well, it made it pretty far into production. Try putting the words “A Boy’s Life” into imdb.com注5 and see what pops up.
Yup, A Boy’s Life became E.T.: The ExtraTerrestrial[地球外的]. A bit more 22)commercial, wouldn’t you say?
有一次，打错字让一个平庸的电影名得到了升华。皮尔斯·布鲁斯南第二次饰演007的电影原名《明日无谎言》。但是有一天，一位秘书打错了一个字母，制片人喜欢上（《择日而亡》）这个名字，于是将错就错了。
很多时候，各种担忧和考虑带来的电影名改动并不会产生很大改变，比如将《捕猎者》改为《铁血战士》，皮克斯工作室的《无敌一族》改为《超人特工队》，又或者是克林特·伊斯特伍德的《妓女追杀令》改为《不可饶恕》——好吧，最后这个应该好一点。不过，一个调查发现男性认为《最后的初吻》这个名字并不适合威尔·史密斯的电影，制作方于是更名为《全民情敌》，真不明白为什么后者更合适。
这也不是说制片人改片名就是为了让电影更加吸引人。人所皆知乔治·卢卡斯在第三部“星战”电影的海报印出来后重新考虑名字，将《绝地复仇记》改为《绝地武士归来》——他说“复仇”并不符合绝地武士的理念。还有一例就是史蒂文·斯皮尔伯格的经典之作《男孩的人生》。想不起来吗？喔，这名字还是制作后期才改的。在imdb.com上搜索“男孩的人生”，看看跳出来的是什么吧。
没错，《男孩的人生》更名为《ET外星人》——更有票房号召力了，你说对吧？
注5：全称是Internet Movie Database，是美国一个权威的电影网站。除了详尽的资料外，IMDB的特色是他们还会给影片评分。分数根据复杂的规则得出，不光有专业人员意见，也允许普通影迷打分，可以比较客观地反映影片的质量。不断更新的IMDB电影排行榜网罗了电影史上最优秀的作品，深受全球电影爱好者的追捧。
Now, as titles go, The Rebel Nun isn’t much like The Sound of Music, but someone clearly decided it would tell Latin-American audiences what the show was about, which is, of course, the point of titles, even when translation isn’t an issue. Book titles, for instance, often 3)fall by the wayside as projects work their way to the 4)multiplex. Take the classic science-fiction story Do Androids[机器人] Dream of Electric Sheep?—that didn’t sound nearly 5)ominous enough for what Ridley Scott was putting on screen.
So Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? became Bladerunner. A few years later, test groups thought the title Shoeless Joe suggested a story about a homeless person, so for the screen, that baseball novel got 6)rechristened Field of Dreams. And anyone want to argue that D. W. Griffith didn’t know what he was doing when he called his silent epic about the Deep South注3 The Birth of a Nation?
The book it was based on, which 7)glorified the Ku Klux
Klan注4, was titled The Clansman[集团成员], not quite as 8)universal. Griffith remained 9)conscious of the power of titles. To 10)atone for the public 11)furor over the racism in Birth of a Nation, his next epic was a morality tale that he called Intolerance[不容忍].
Sometimes, movie projects go into production with 12)dummy titles that no one expects to make it into release. The film that made Julia Roberts a star, Pretty Woman, was originally called Three Thousand because that’s what her call-girl character charged Richard Gere: $3,000 for the night. And back in the 1990s, there was a script that got 13)shopped around Hollywood with the 14)descriptive but 15)cumbersome 16)moniker Teenage Sex Comedy That Can Be Made for Under 10 Million Dollars, That Your Reader Will Love But the Executive Will Hate. Once it got green-lit, the producers 17)opted for something a little shorter that would highlight the film’s most memorable scene: American Pie.
在最近的一趟拉美之行中，我看见一张剧院海报，是一部直接从百老汇引进的音乐剧，名字叫《叛逆修女》。我对百老汇剧目了如指掌，却对这个西班牙语名字（直译大概就是《反叛的修女》）完全没有印象，直到我看见海报底部的阵容写着罗杰斯和汉默斯坦。突然之间，我仿佛看见一大群唱歌的修女，正为如何对付问题儿玛丽亚而烦恼。
作为名字，《叛逆修女》和《音乐之声》完全不像一回事，但有人显然认为这个名字能让拉美观众明白这场演出的主题，而这当然正是标题的作用——连翻译都不是问题。又比如当小说要改编成多媒体形式时，原书名经常不如人意。例如经典科幻小说《机器人会梦见电子羊吗？》——这名字听起来完全不像雷德利·斯科特搬上银幕那片子那么杀机四伏。
于是《机器人会梦见电子羊吗？》变成了《银翼杀手》。几年之后，由于实验小组以为《赤脚的乔》这个标题讲的是流浪者的故事，所以这本棒球小说的电影版更名为《梦幻成真》。还有人认为D·W·格里菲斯将他那部关于南方腹地的史诗默片命名为《一个国家的诞生》实在是不知所谓吗？
这部电影改编自一本美化三K党的小说《同族人》——这名字不够大众化吧。格里菲斯非常清楚片名的威力。《一个国家的诞生》中的种族主义让公众一片哗然，为了将功补过，格里菲斯的下一部史诗走道德教化路线，名叫《党同伐异》。
有时候，一些电影计划在制作初期会使用暂定名，人人都知道这样的名字不会在上映时出现。让茱莉亚·罗伯茨一夜走红的电影《风月俏佳人》原名《三千美元》，因为这正是她所饰演的应召女郎给理查·基尔的价格：过夜费3000美元。早在上世纪90年代，有一个剧本在好莱坞到处物色（合作方），那标题虽然活色生香，却又长又臭：《制作成本低于一千万的年轻人性爱喜剧——读者爱之，制片恨之》。剧本获得通过之后，制片人找了个短一点的片名，以突出电影当中最让人难忘的场景——《美国派》。
On one occasion, it was a 18)typo that turned a 19)mediocre title into a much better one. Pierce Brosnan’s second 20)stint as 007 was originally going to be called Tomorrow Never Lies. But a secretary mistyped a single letter one day, the producers loved it, and her mistake stuck.
Often, a lot of care and consideration go into title changes that don’t make much difference: Predator[捕猎者] instead of Hunter, say, or Pixar’s The Incredibles instead of The Invincibles[不可战胜的], or Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven instead of The Cut-Whore[妓女] Killings. Okay, that last one is probably an improvement. But research established that men didn’t like the title The Last First Kiss for a Will Smith movie, so they renamed it Hitch. Not sure why that’s better.
And there’s nothing saying producers will only change titles to give their films extra 21)oomph. George Lucas famously reconsidered the title for his third Star Wars movie after the posters were printed and changed Revenge of the Jedi to Return of the Jedi, saying that“revenge” was not a Jedi concept. And then there’s that classic Steven Spielberg hit A Boy’s Life. Not ringing any bells? Well, it made it pretty far into production. Try putting the words “A Boy’s Life” into imdb.com注5 and see what pops up.
Yup, A Boy’s Life became E.T.: The ExtraTerrestrial[地球外的]. A bit more 22)commercial, wouldn’t you say?
有一次，打错字让一个平庸的电影名得到了升华。皮尔斯·布鲁斯南第二次饰演007的电影原名《明日无谎言》。但是有一天，一位秘书打错了一个字母，制片人喜欢上（《择日而亡》）这个名字，于是将错就错了。
很多时候，各种担忧和考虑带来的电影名改动并不会产生很大改变，比如将《捕猎者》改为《铁血战士》，皮克斯工作室的《无敌一族》改为《超人特工队》，又或者是克林特·伊斯特伍德的《妓女追杀令》改为《不可饶恕》——好吧，最后这个应该好一点。不过，一个调查发现男性认为《最后的初吻》这个名字并不适合威尔·史密斯的电影，制作方于是更名为《全民情敌》，真不明白为什么后者更合适。
这也不是说制片人改片名就是为了让电影更加吸引人。人所皆知乔治·卢卡斯在第三部“星战”电影的海报印出来后重新考虑名字，将《绝地复仇记》改为《绝地武士归来》——他说“复仇”并不符合绝地武士的理念。还有一例就是史蒂文·斯皮尔伯格的经典之作《男孩的人生》。想不起来吗？喔，这名字还是制作后期才改的。在imdb.com上搜索“男孩的人生”，看看跳出来的是什么吧。
没错，《男孩的人生》更名为《ET外星人》——更有票房号召力了，你说对吧？
注5：全称是Internet Movie Database，是美国一个权威的电影网站。除了详尽的资料外，IMDB的特色是他们还会给影片评分。分数根据复杂的规则得出，不光有专业人员意见，也允许普通影迷打分，可以比较客观地反映影片的质量。不断更新的IMDB电影排行榜网罗了电影史上最优秀的作品，深受全球电影爱好者的追捧。