MovieChat Forums > Salinui chueok (2003) Discussion > Movie title is mistranslated - important...

Movie title is mistranslated - important to ENDING

posted 14 years ago by andrewjo33
7 replies | jump to latest

The Korean title is phoenetically: 'Salin-ui chue-ok'. The foreign title is 'Memories of Murder' which is quite badly translated.

"Sal-in" can be both Murder AND Murderer.

"Ui" is 'Of', no problems here.

"Chue-ok" Now this is also important. Chue-ok isn't just memories, we have another word for that. Chue-ok is an action of looking back & remembering. Reminisce is dead-on for this.

So the title really means:
"Reminiscing of the Murderer"

In the end of the movie, the former detective is told by a girl that another man was here looking at the ditch. The murderer was reminiscing of the rape 17 years ago.

[–] ssvegeto_7 14 years ago

You do realise that the title appears in the film in English right? Judging from interviews the director speaks pretty good English too and I'm pretty sure that the title is exactly as he intended.

[–] john-periv 14 years ago

Yeah but his point and explanation was pretty good.

[–] barabasa 14 years ago

------"Sal-in" can be both Murder AND Murderer.----------

Not true.

"Sal-in" is Murder.

If it said "Sal-in-ja" or something similar, then yes, it would mean murderer.

Memories of Murder is pretty good translation. "Reminiscing" instead of "Memories" is definitely acceptable, but you can't translate "Sal-in" as Murderer. That part is flat-out wrong.

[–] xxmyloveuxx 13 years ago

Well, in that case, the argument of the first post would still stand as.. the murderer can still be "reminiscing" his murder. Hence "Reminiscence of murder" would've been a more appropriate title, maybe.

[–] Ramuna 12 years ago

Whatever is it...Memories of Murder still stand as a better title in my opinion rather than Reminiscence of Murderer

[–] alaninho 12 years ago

Reminiscence of Murder sounds terrible. Foreign films often change their title as certain words sound better in different languages. In this case, they were right to use 'Memories'.

Regardless of what they may say to the contrary, the poster below actually agrees with me 100%.

[–] moonjo 12 years ago

OP's so wrong.
'Sal-in' is murder, act of murder, not murderer (which is 'sal-in-ja').
'Chu-eok' is memory, recollection (noun), NOT a verb/act of looking back.
To make it into what OP meant, it'd had to be 'Sal-in-ja reul Chu-eok-hada'. Completely different from the original title.