Episode titles in the dubs

[Lance.Uppercut]

People keep complaining about the episode titles. There have been some pretty clever ones, I'd say, that span the course of the show, but the tendency these has been to lean toward puns. Sometimes embarrassingly bad puns. You have your occasional "tells-the-whole plot" titles, like Bart Gets Hit by a Car, Bart Sells his Soul, Homer's Triple Bypass and so on. Then you'll have titles whose source of parody has been referred to multiple times, like The Old Man and the Key / The Old Man and the C Student.

But what about the dubs? Is it also a problem? Figure that episodes get different episode titles when taken oversees, and, sometimes, these episode titles are shown at the right after the opening sequence. In the Japanese dub, you see the English and Japanese episode titles on the television in the "Created by" credit; in German, you see it in a yellow subtitle during the couch gag; in Latin America, Homer (er, pardon... Homero) announces the title during the "Created by" credit.

Do the dubbers use puns? Do they stick to the originals or come up with something new?

I personally like some of the titles in the dubs more than the episode titles they've come up with nowadays.

"Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo" becomes "D'oh-gun" in the Quebec French dub.
"The Squirt and the Whale" becomes "Wahlverwandtschaften" in the German dub, which is a play on a story from Goethe.
"Flaming Moe" becomes "Moeback Mountain" in the German dub.
"He Loves to Fly and he D'oh's", in the German dub, is a play on the German title of the movie Airplane!.

I've seen them come up with Bible references for some of the German episode titles, or, for one, they use a slogan for a German political party.

Lisa's First Word becomes "Am Anfang war das Wort" (in the beginning, there was the word")
Love is a Many-Strangled Thing becomes "Denn sie wissen nicht, wenn sie wuergen" (for they know not whom they strangle, a play on "for they know not what they do").

But yeah, sometimes they screw it up.

Large Marge becomes "Marge - oben ohne" in the German dub, or "Marge - topless". Well, maybe that didn't screw it up; since they see it at the beginning of the show, that probably made viewers want to tune in!

Pardon all the examples from the German dub, but it's the one with which I'm most familiar.

Do the dubs have the same problem of strange, punny or outright silly episode titles? Or do some of them come out okay?

[Dark Homer]

haha I think "D'oh-gun" is pretty clever, the other ones less so

[Financial Panther]

Seeing as how I rarely understand what the titles are parodying, it doesn't make much difference to me. Although I do understand "Moeback Mountain"; I think that's pretty clever.

[Malaise Forever]

I take a quick look at the French titles when I buy a DVD just for fun but that's about it...I'd rather stay with the original titles

Looking at some titles for Season 8 there's "Bart chez les dames" that's ok but then there's stuff like "La phobie d'Homer" instead of "Homer phobie" which would have kept the pun... but anyway.

So I'm not sure what this is about but I'd rather like a pun at the risk of it being bad than just plain stuff like "Ennemy Brothers" for "Brother from another series"

EDIT: I've reread the OP's last sentence, so I looked for better titles or similar titles in the dub.

I noticed "Love is A Many-Strangled Thing" is dubbed "L'étrangleur de Springfield" which is a play on "The Boston Strangler"
- "The Gray and the Blue" becomes "Le gris me donne les bleus" ( The gray gives me the Blues)
- "Take my life, please" becomes "Le choix du président" "President's choice" which is a food company in Canada (it's lame but at least it's not a repeated title)
- "How the West was Won" becomes "La conquête du Test" (the conquest of the West) so basically the same theme
- No Loan again Naturally becomes "Prêt pas prêt, j'y vais" (a phrase said at the beginning of "Hide and Seek" with the equivalent of Loan as the word)
and a last one : "Eeny Teeny Maya Moe" becomes "Maya la belle" a play on "Maya the bee" but with beautiful instead of bee.

Anyway all the other titles are more terrible than the original so really it depends...

[simpsonsbart]

Sorry, but I prefer the Parisian French version.

"Bart gets a Z" becomes "Bart's Answer".
"To surveil with love" becomes "Eye on the town".
"Flaming Moe" becomes "Moe doesn't miss that".
"Love is a many-strangled thing" becomes "Love breath-taking".

[Lance.Uppercut]

Does "Eye on the town" have the same colloquial meaning in French as in English (i.e., to "keep an eye on something")? It sounds like the puns are actually kind of clever, in the vain that "breathtaking", in this sense, is the deadly kind. I remember that "Tales from the Public Domain" was "To Bart or not to Bart" in Parisian French. Oh, pinais!

[Blobulle]

Does "Eye on the town" have the same colloquial meaning in French as in English (i.e., to "keep an eye on something")?

Yes.

[Shaunbadia]

This doesn't really count but on Sky here in the UK "Natural Born Kissers" is listed as "Margie may I sleep with danger?"

[simpsonsbart]

It's the alternative title, not he UK title.

[Lance.Uppercut]

This doesn't really count but on Sky here in the UK "Natural Born Kissers" is listed as "Margie may I sleep with danger?"

Never heard of that before. Is that kind of like "Life in the Fast Lane" also being called "Jacques to be Wild"?

[Shaunbadia]

Never heard of that before. Is that kind of like "Life in the Fast Lane" also being called "Jacques to be Wild"?

I've never heard of the alternate title for "Life in the fast lane" but I guess so.

[hanktheman]

lol dubs are great