The Backstroke of the West: the Origin of the "Do Not Want"

[JasonPratt]

I will suppose everyone knows the origin of the "DO NOT WANT" meme. If you don't, you will discover the origin... now?

I had never gotten around to reading the blog which showed screencaps from the bootleg which created the meme. Until this afternoon.

Now my life is in my behind.

winterson.com/2009/01/episode-iii-backstroke-of-west-redux.html

This is a sacrifice article that I cut up now.

[Windigo]

[MetalDog]

Did you have a stroke, JP?  Not your usual loquaciousness and skill level.  You are ok though, right?

[Staggerwing]

He's referring to a horribly-translated series of under titles in a bootleg version of Star Wars III. Someone ran the Chinese characters on the screen through a translation program and posted the results.


And no, I didn't already know that. I googlechopped his broken link.

[JasonPratt]

The link isn't broken. Blogger links sometimes don't include the http etc., so the hyperlink doesn't automatically trigger in the forum engine. Will try to fix manually.


Meanwhile, Know Your Meme for those who haven't run across (or have forgotten, since it seems to have gone out of vogue a little), "Do Not Want".

The ultimate entry in the sample list provided by the guy with the Chinese bootleg was Vader doing his infamous "Nooooooooo", which already looked and sounded like his silly duel commercial against the battery bunny (who keeps going and going), but the Chinese pirate translated the English into English as "Do not want".




The unintentional joke was that shortly after the film's theatrical release, someone covertly video'd the screen and audio in English; then somehow a Chinese video pirate got hold of it and sold bootleg copies in China, with Chinese subtitles -- but also, insanely, he decided to translate the fairly legible English audio back into English subtitles. In some cases it seems clear that he really is taking a stab at understanding the English, and other times he's using a computer translation, and other times he's trying to improve Lucas' script with a few additions. So for example when Obi-Wan and Anakin open the door on the command ship to find an elevator full of droids, they aren't muttering legibly in English at all, but the translator provides some dialogue for them anyway. In broken Engrish of course.

It was the overwrought "noooooooo" however, already despised by many fans, combined with the reserved pseudo-translation of "Do not want", that caught the fancy of the internet for a while.

[JasonPratt]

(I should add that I'm assuming Windy and MD actually know the meme and are adding to the joke. ;) )

Anyway, I was looking for a jpg of the infamous "Noooo" for a lacrymostic post-mortem of my loss to Barth playing Decisive Campaigns: Barbaross last autumn, and having run across the original source in the process (I knew the origin but had never seen the blog entry that started it), I decided to share.  O:-) :-*

[bayonetbrant]

O0

[bbmike]

[Martok]

As I wasn't previously aware of the origins of the "Do Not Want" meme, I have to admit I found this oddly fascinating.  Thanks for sharing, JP! 

[Nefaro]

 ;D









:bd:

[Nefaro]

 


Some more favs..

[Martok]

Yeah, there are some ere some real gems in there.  Laughed myself silly reading my way through it.   

[JasonPratt]

Thaaaaat's a different meme source.  ^-^ Appropriate tho!