At the movies
When films from the U.S. are shown in Mexico, exhibitors not only translate but frequently change the titles. In the Mexican adaptations, certain heated words are almost always utilized -- among them death, murder, fatal, mortal, passion, desire, secret, terror, horror and so on. My ex-wife, who used to write movie criticism for the newspaper La Jornada, once marveled in print that they had not retitled Hamlet as My Son is an Incestuous Killer. Once in a while, however, the Mexican title is better than the original. Oliver Stone’s film about George W. Bush, W., has just opened here, and they’ve called it Hijo de … Bush. For those who don’t understand Spanish, that would be translated as Son of a … Bush.