Star War: The Third Gathers – The Backstroke of the West, 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 its 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 On June 7, 2005, Jeremy Winterson wrote about his experience seeing Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith at a local theater with a friend who was visiting for business the past weekend. Winterson considered the film as superior to the first two films in the Star Wars prequel trilogy and a fitting conclusion to the saga, while noting it was in the middle position in the chronology of the series.
The following day, Winterson encountered a DVD seller and decided to purchase a bootleg DVD of Revenge of the Sith as part of a batch from a local street vendor along his commute., "In 2005, a fellow by the name of Jeremy Winterson bought a bootleg of the movie in Shanghai and noticed something amiss with the English subtitles.", "a couple of years ago when i was living in shanghai i bought a revenge of the sith dvd off the street." He wrote that the seller had assured him of the DVD's quality, which was priced at 7 RMB.
At the time, Winterson lived in Shanghai, China, as an expat for work in 2005. Having shelved the DVD shortly after purchase, he later credited his sister with rediscovering it and sparking his interest. Winterson stated he purchased the DVD at Xiangyang Market,, "Time Bandit said... where can i find this dvd???"; "jeremy said... ... time bandit- i found this copy in the xiang yang market." an open-air market in Shanghai known as a major hub for pirated and counterfeit goods., "... about 80 per cent of Shanghai's piracy cases originated from the market."; "... the market would be closed after the failure of repeated crackdowns on sales of fake products." The following year, in 2006, the market was permanently closed as part of a crackdown to improve the city's image., "The famous Xiangyang market closed for good yesterday, the victim of a crackdown by authorities on the rampant piracy of brand-name items"; "... as the city tries to spruce up its 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., "When he shared a bunch of screenshots online, Backstroke of the West became a viral phenomenon among Star Wars fans.", "Adam Edwards said... Wow. I am sending this to our Star Wars mailing list at the office."; "jeremy said... what can i say guys. this definitely got way past adam's office star wars mailing list." Winterson's blog post was briefly mentioned in an official starwars.com blog post on June 17, 2005., "In this site, one of our fans blogs about coming across a Chinese bootleg copy of the film with very, very misleading English subtitles. ... Check it out here.
Translation errors
Winterson theorized the film's subtitles were first transcribed by hand into Chinese and then machine-translated back into English., "i figured out that a chinese pirate had originally tried to listen to the movie in english and wrote in chinese what he thought he heard- this was then translated back by machine into english.", "Essentially, the English dialogue had been ... translated to Chinese, then auto-translated ... back into English." The machine translation often ignored structural differences between English and Chinese and produced literal translations of Chinese characters., "(which don't account for the many, many differences between Mandarin and English)", "... the bad translations are the result of a "machine translation of the Chinese script to ROTS ..."
Notable character and faction name changes include: Anakin Skywalker was translated to "Allah Gold"., "... and Anakin Skywalker being called Allah Gold, ..." Obi-Wan Kenobi was translated to "Ratio Tile"., ""Ratio tile, the wish power are together with you" (="Obi Wan, may the Force be with you")" Chancellor Palpatine was translated to "Speaker D"., "It's very silly to see Palpatine referred to as Speaker D ..." The Jedi were translated to "Hopeless Situation Warriors"., "Anakin and Obi-Wan are referred to as a "hopeless situation warriors" instead of Jedi Knights." The Jedi Council was translated to the "Presbyterian Church" or "Hopeless Situation Presbyterians"., "I was just made by the Presbyterian Church" (= Jedi Council)", "Weirdly, Backstroke of the West also occasionally refers to Jedi as "hopeless situation Presbyterians,""
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., "February 14, 2016 ... Dubbed by TheThirdGathers ... I synced the subtitles and the dub to HD video of Revenge of the Sith.", "Dubbed by TheThirdGathers" 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",, "... Is a Fan-Made Masterpiece"; "... has done the unthinkable: He's made Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith cool." while Uproxx declared it a "vastly superior movie"., "'Revenge Of The Sith' Dubbed With A Chinese Bootleg's Subtitles Is 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 best version of the Star Wars prequels is still the legendarily bad Chinese dub"; "But one of their most legendary forms makes them watchable by making them even less sensible, ..."
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"., "... well, it's kind of magical."; "... now this is the only version of this movie I ever want to watch."; "... the machine-translated subtitles ... created a beautiful monstrosity." 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,", "Now fans can enjoy one of their least favorite Star Wars flicks as a bizarre, sometimes incoherent comedy." and Gizmodo declared it "gloriousness defined" and "basically the greatest thing on Earth.", "It's basically the greatest thing on Earth."; "Seriously, nothing about that isn't gloriousness defined." Several journalists further noted the quality of the fandub cast's voice acting., "As read by voice actors who do surprisingly accurate impression of Ewan McGregor, Hayden Christensen, and the rest ...", "The voice work is surprisingly bang-on, and even the characters who aren't an exact match are funny enough to let you roll with it."
Journalists highlighted specific bizarre mistranslations, such as General Grievous commanding troops to "batter to death them",, "Among the ridiculous translations are General Grievous repeatedly commanding his underlings 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 Star Wars movies were pretty squeaky-clean ..."; "Even in the first few minutes, Obi-Wan's out here dropping F-bombs at random droids."; "There's not a ton of profanity in here, but it crops up in the oddest of places, ..." 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., "The climax of the film—when Anakin-as-Darth Vader finds out that Padme has died—is possibly the most climactic climax of the entire trilogy ...", "This bootleg is most well-known for the line "Do not want," a mistranslation of Darth Vader's widely parodied "Noooooo!"", "The bootleg version also includes the infamously bad subtitled version of Darth Vader's iconic "Nooooooo," which was replaced with, "Do not want."" 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., "Chinese doesn't have an equivalent word for "no." Instead, speakers often use the negative tense of a verb based on the context of the conversation."
See also Engrish Humour in translation Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam English as She Is Spoke
Notes
References
Works cited
External links Backstroke of the West script as uploaded by Winterson