Wonder = Beauty… Wait, how do you say?
The long awaited movie adaptation of the DC Comic “Wonder Woman” was finally released in May 2017. In case you are curious, here’s the official trailer in English.
In some European countries, such as Italy and Germany, the movie has been out for a few days now, while the official release date for Spain was in June.
The poster and its translation
We all remember last year’s controversy concerning the questionable Spanish translation of the official movie poster tagline “Power. Grace. Wisdom. Wonder”:
The controversy concerned, of course, the translation of the noun “wonder” (which is also part of the name of the hero, Wonder Woman) with “belleza” (beauty), a word that clearly only refers to the outer appearance of the woman. As always, women cannot just be “powerful, graceful, wise and wonderful”, they have to be beautiful.
The news spread all over Twitter too…
Translation of the poster in other countries
Austria and Germany
But let’s take a look at how the tagline was translated in some other European and non European countries. In Germany and Austria they chose not to translate it:
Italy
However, we weren’t able to find the Italian version of the teaser poster with the famous tagline online. Maybe they didn’t know how to translate it and chose not to release it?
Latin America
What is curious is that, in the Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America, the name of the movie was actually translated into “Mujer Maravilla” and maybe that is why the translation of the actual tagline didn’t cause the same issues as in Spain.
Mexico
For example, one of the official posters in Mexico clearly translates “wonder” with “maravilla”:
Brasil and Portugal
And same goes for the Portuguese-speaking countries, where Wonder Woman becomes “Mulher Maravilha” as we can see from one of the Brazilian Instagram pages dedicated to Wonder Woman.
Spain and the controversial poster
As far as the Spanish translation, after last year’s controversy, nothing has really popped up. We weren’t able to find an updated version of the poster and the last tweets about the controversy date back to last summer. I guess we will have to wait and watch the movie to see if the same tagline is repromoted and how.
When it comes to translation, it is impossible to say what’s right and what’s wrong. Should the name of the hero be translated? Should the tagline be translated if the name is not?
What is sure is that, in order to be a “wonder woman”, you don’t have to be a pretty one!