A South Korean translator who translated the recent Marvel movie ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ is receiving much criticism for mistranslation. The controversy has even led to Blue House petitions.

On April 25th, ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ premiered in South Korea. It was a huge success and set records for reaching the highest opening score, highest pre-sales, and fastest movie to reach over 200,000 views.

The controversy arose when many Korean viewers complained that some parts of the movie were mistranslated. It was even more controversial because translator Park Ji-Hoon, who was in charge of translating ‘Avengers: Infinity War,’ has ran into several mistranslation controversies before.

Park Ji-Hoon has translated other Marvel movies before, such as ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier,’ and ‘Avengers: Age of Wultron’. Even with these movies, Park received criticism for several major mistranslations.

Some examples include when Park translated a line “I was gonna ask you…” from ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’ to “do you want to do it?” Because the line was exchanged between two male figures, many viewers argued that it confused the sexual identity of the characters. Another example is when Park translated “Water, Wet!” to a literal translation of “Water is wet” in the movie ‘Batman vs. Superman.’

The biggest complain from the movie ‘Avengers 3’ was when Doctor Strange said “it’s the end game.”

While the original context meant “it’s the last step,” Park decided to translate it to mean “there’s no hope anymore.” By doing so, many argued that the mistranslation distorted an important scene that is essential in leading the context over to the sequel movie, ‘Avengers 4.’

The controversy even led to a Blue House Petition, titled “we protest against translator Park Ji-Hoon’s participation in Marvel movies.” Some criticized that the audience was going overboard, but the fact that it led to a Blue House petition proves that lots of people are angry.

In response, an official of ‘Avengers 3’ explained that “lines are up to interpretation and there is no fixed answer. We think the answer lies in ‘Avengers 4.'” However, this response angered a movie critic Heo Ji-Woong. He shared on his personal SNS that “when Americans translate a Korean curse word that sounds similar to “seed” as “seed,” we don’t excuse it because “there is no fixed answer” to translating.” Many netizens agreed with Heo Ji-Woong, because he was clearly referring to another mistranslation where Nick Fury’s line of “Mother F*****” was translated as just “mother.”

Original Article (1), (2)
Translated by Dasol Kim

FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK!