Is Darth Vader a Presbyterian?
I found this via Odyssey:
Darth Vader is Ordained by the Presbyterians
and then there’s this:
Darth Vader’s Ordination is Questioned
And now… (drum roll please…) for the explanation:
There’s a pirated copy of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith out there. It’s been dubbed into Chinese, and then the Chinese has been translated back into English for the subtitles.
Therefore, “Jedi Council” is translated into Chinese, and when it is translated back into English, it ends up translated back as “Presbyterian Church.”
A lot more of the images can be found here and here.
By the way, the title of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith is “Star War The Third Gathers: The Backstroke of the West”.
This is just too funny!
Perhaps this is an attempt by the Chinese government to equate religions such as Christianity with the dying corrupt religion of the Jedi Council.
I never saw that angle on it… I assumed that they just had an automatic computerized xlator running and it just took some wild guesses.
But maybe you’re right!
Well, its just a guess. I just talked with some folks who were in “East Asia” for a while and they said that the prevailing attitude from the government was to make Tibetian Buddhists look like a part of the past culture thus negating anything current going on with the religion. They almost make the Tibetians look like the equivalent of the glamourized and stereotyped Native Americans. The idea is to make religion look like a thing of the past that has no importance to contemporary life or progress. A tourist attraction.
I’m not sure if this carries over to attitudes about the Presbyterian church or if it was even intentional.
[...] 3 July 2005 Ten Years on the ‘Net Installation Address Schools of Interpretation Is Darth Vader a Presbyterian? Sermon 31 July 2005: A Refugee Hope Uns [...]
Actually, the Chinese term for “Presbyterian Church” (é•¿è€?会 Zhanglao Hui), in English literally means “Society of the Elders”. Perhaps in the Chinese translation of “Jedi Council” the members are referred to as “Elders”. Thus, the translator, looking for a term for a group of elders, seems to have found the term “Presbyterian Church”.