Star War: The Third Gathers – The Backstroke of the West (星球大战第三集: 西方的背影, Xīngqiú dàzhàn dì sān jí: Xīfāng de bèiyǐng), more commonly known as Backstroke of the West, is a 2005 Chinese bootleg DVD of the film Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith that became an internet meme for its poor machine-translated English subtitles. The bootleg first gained attention in June 2005, shortly after the film's release, when American blogger Jeremy Winterson purchased a copy at a Shanghai market and shared screenshots on his personal blog.

The literal machine translation from Chinese to English resulted in bizarre mistranslations, most notably renaming Anakin Skywalker to "Allah Gold", Obi-Wan Kenobi to "Ratio Tile", and the Jedi to "Hopeless Situation Warriors". Additionally, the resulting subtitles introduce random profanity and instances of Chinglish. A full-length English fandub of the film was produced for YouTube.

The bootleg is most famous for its translation of Darth Vader's climactic scream of "Nooooooo!", which was rendered in the subtitles as "Do not want". Following the fandub's wider circulation in early 2017, the bootleg received renewed attention from entertainment journalists, several of whom praised the quality of the voice acting and its unintentional comedic reworking of the film.

History

Origin

Xiangyang Market[zh], pictured in 2006, and shut down that year
i saw revenge of the sith last weekend at a local theater with my friend joe who was in town on business. it was much better than the first two movies and a fitting end (err.. middle) to the star wars saga. the next day i was walking past my friendly dvd salesperson and decided to check out revenge of the sith. i was assured the quality was good and for 7rmb why not give it a shot.

— Jeremy Winterson, June 7, 2005

American blogger Jeremy Winterson lived in Shanghai, China, as an expat for work in 2005, and purchased a bootleg DVD of Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith as part of a batch from a local street vendor along his commute. Having shelved the DVD shortly after purchase, Winterson later credited his sister with rediscovering it and sparking his interest.

Winterson stated he purchased the DVD at Xiangyang Market[zh], an open-air market in Shanghai known as a major hub for pirated and counterfeit goods. The following year, in 2006, the market was permanently closed as part of a crackdown to improve the city's image.

Following positive feedback from friends and family on Winterson's blog post about the bootleg, one of his friends shared it through a work mailing list, after which it became popular enough that Winterson's domain provider temporarily suspended his blog for exceeding its bandwidth limits. Winterson's blog post was briefly mentioned in an official starwars.com blog post on June 17, 2005.

Translation errors

In a poorly machine-translated exchange, "Allah Gold" (left) informs "Ratio Tile" (right) that he was "made by the Presbyterian Church".

Winterson theorized the film's subtitles were first transcribed by hand into Chinese and then machine-translated back into English. The machine translation often ignored structural differences between English and Chinese and produced literal translations of Chinese characters.

Notable character and faction name changes include:

Reception and legacy

A full-length fandub of the film was produced by the YouTube channel TheThirdGathers; the dub was later reposted, in full, by YouTube channel GratefulDeadpool on February 14, 2016. The English fandub received wider attention from entertainment journalists in January 2017, with some viewing it as an unintentional and comedic improvement over the original film. The Hollywood Reporter called the redub a "fan-made masterpiece" that did "the unthinkable" by making the film "cool", while Uproxx declared it a "vastly superior movie". The A.V. Club described the "legendarily bad Chinese dub" as the "best version of the Star Wars prequels," writing that it made the film "watchable by making [it] even less sensible".

The machine translation inadvertently introduces "fuck" and other profane words into the subtitles.

SlashFilm described the machine-translated script as a "beautiful monstrosity" and "kind of magical", declaring it "the only version of this movie I ever want to watch". Noting its unintentional comedy and the mixed reception of the prequel trilogy films, Nerdist stated it allowed fans to enjoy the film as a "bizarre, sometimes incoherent comedy," and Gizmodo declared it "gloriousness defined" and "basically the greatest thing on Earth." Several journalists further noted the quality of the fandub cast's voice acting.

Journalists highlighted specific bizarre mistranslations, such as General Grievous commanding troops to "batter to death them", and random use of the word "fuck" and other profanity, which Inverse stated made the otherwise "squeaky-clean" film "weird and enjoyable". The bootleg is best known for the mistranslation of Darth Vader's climactic scream of "Nooooooo!", into "Do not want", upon learning about the death of his wife, Padmé Amidala. Inverse attributed this to the lack of "an equivalent word for 'no'" in Chinese, with the machine translation instead using the "negative tense of a verb" based on the scene's context.

See also

Notes

Works cited

External links

  • as uploaded by Winterson