In this brief text I will explain, from my point of view, how some movies’ and books’ names are translated from English into Portuguese. I will focus a bit on how some of them retain their meaning while others do not.

But before I go into the subject, I want to explain how the text is structured. Firstly, I write about cases where the English and Portuguese names have the same meaning, as it will be easier to go through. After that, I introduce some examples where each language presents a name with a different meaning, followed by a short comment on the impact it may have on the audience’s understanding of the work (book or movie).

The first example is the American series “Everybody hates Chris”, which is translated to “Todo mundo odeia o Chris” in Portuguese, meaning exactly the same thing as the original title. There are also two books I want to mention: “The Name of The Wind”, by Patrick Rothfuss, and “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban”, by J. K. Rowling. Both books’ names have a literal translation to Portuguese: “O Nome do Vento” and “Harry Potter e o Prisioneiro de Azkaban”, respectively. Since the titles in both languages have the same meaning, there is no need to discuss the impact on the audience.

To illustrate how the translation process is not always so direct, I use the horror movie “Saw” as an example of a case where the Portuguese name has, in my opinion, nothing to do with the original one. In Portuguese this movie is called “Jogos Mortais”, which could be interpreted as “Deadly Games”. I would like to stress that I completely understand why, in this case, a literal translation has not been opted for. In Portuguese, the English word saw could be translated in two different ways, depending on whether it functions as a noun, being translated to serra, or a verb, which translates to serrar. Either name would have no appeal as a horror movie’s title, and would hardly be chosen by those who could be seeking that kind of entertainment.

The same argument exposed in the previous paragraph is true for some of the other examples listed below. In order to account for the cultural background from different people around the globe, it is usually necessary for a title to be adapted while being translated.

Some other examples that the reader may find interesting are shown in the table below. From left to right each column contains: the original English title, the literal translation to Portuguese, the actual Portuguese title, and the literal translation from the actual Portuguese title into English.

To sum up, there are some cases where I really cannot fathom why the title was adapted, for the literal translation would have made as fine a title as the adapted one. However, in most cases some adaptation may be necessary to allow for the efficient exchange of information between different cultures.