The Milk Of Sorrow

Question

I've watched the first couple scenes of a movie called "The Milk of Sorrow" in the English translation available for streaming on Netflix. It is about a girl living with the aftermath of terrorism in Peru. The movie is all in Spanish, but the Netflix version has English subtitles. My question is about the phrase "milk of sorrow". This is evidently the translation the subtitler has chosen for "la teta ausustada". But if I'm not mistaken, "la teta ausustada" means "the frightened breast". Why is this translated as "the milk of sorrow"? I can understand changing the title, because English "the frightened breast" might be off-putting to English audiences, but so far "la teta asustada" is coninually translated as "the milk of sorrow" in the subtitles. Why is this the case?

Answer 1

We have touched on this subject before, which continues to be a mystery to all but those who actually make the weird decisions to change the titles of books and movies. Maybe if you search the Forum for a bit you can come across some other threads where we have talked about this... I couldn't find them right away.

In any event, in this particular case I attribute it to that peculiar fear to being offensive that motivates a lot of decisions in the US.

In Latin American cultures, the word "teta", while vulgar, is hardly offensive nowadays, and people use it fairly freely and openly in everyday conversations. While in England I found that it wasn't so rare to hear people referring to women's breasts as "T*ts", without necessarily being offensive. In the US it is one of George Carlin's (in)famous "Words that You Cannot Say on Television":

So, "la teta asustada" can only be properly translated as "the frightened tt". But those in charge of translation were to frightened of such a scandalous word and went for a completely different phrase that, *in their opinion probably conveyed the idea behind the film. In order to be consistent, then, the apparently opted to keep it that way everywhere the original would have been.

Too bad. I like the original far better. Plus it ads a touch of humor within a very grim reality - which is the way we work in Latin America.

Answer 2

In this particular case, a condition is believed to be transmitted from women to their children through breastfeeding. Apparently in Latin cultures the focus is on the breast while in English cultures the focus is on the breastmilk.

That seems logical enough. - hiladora, Mar 17, 2011

Answer 3

The rewording may well be the American film industry and as Gekko says, they may have been afraid to use the literally translated title. I remember reading an article about the film "Mar Adentro" which won an academy award for the best foreign language film. When Ramon Sampedro was being taken to Boiro to prepare for his suicide there were several clips shown which were viewed from the van in which he was travelling. One of these scenes were two dogs copulating, a natural event in any countryside. The article said that the American film industry insisted this scene be cut before its American release.

Not to mention that "The Scared Tit" sounds like a comedy, not a documentary. - lorenzo9, Mar 16, 2011

I really think they were concentrating on the word "tit". - Eddy, Mar 16, 2011

Answer 4

This kind of thing can also be seen in some pretty random book titles. For example, Rigoberta Manchu's book which in English is titled "Crossing Borders: An Autobiography" in Spanish "Rigoberta: La Nieta de los Mayas"

Two COMPLETELY DIFFERENT SENTIMENTS may I point out...