Brave / Rebelle

(Rebel) I am yet to see Brave, but I want to, solely because Kelly McDonald is voicing the main character (and Kelly McDonald is coooool).

"Determined to make her own path in life, Princess Merida defies a custom that brings chaos to her kingdom. Granted one wish, Merida must rely on her bravery and her archery skills to undo a beastly curse." (Thanks IMDB!) Maybe Pixar wanted to draw some comparison with another Scottish-made-by-Americans films: Braveheart, and that might be why it was changed from "The Bear and the Bow" to the current title. (And it looks like someone had exactly the same thought)

In France, the film is known as Rebelle (Rebel applied to a female). Yes, yes, ok, Merida does rebel and runs away but not once in any synopsis I have read does the word “rebel” appear, although I did see a poster that states “Royal Rebel”, which would explain where the French got the idea from and why they did not keep “Brave” as a title, brave, being also a French word, meaning well... the same thing.

Kick-ass red-head? Like!

The problem when it comes to “brave” in French is that it not only means positive things like courageous,  honest, altruistic, obliging or helpful, but it’s become a wee bit condescending in expressions such as “mon brave” (which can be translated as “my good man”), or “un brave homme” (which I always take as “he works hard but has limited intellectual capabilities), and this is probably why I have never heard “brave” used in its courageous context, and why Brave New World, the 1932 Aldous Huxley novel was translated as “Le Meilleur des mondes” (The best of all worlds), and not “Brave nouveau monde” or “Courageux nouveau monde” or something of the likes. Although I always believed the title to be a reference to Voltaire’s Candide (and one of my favourite pep talks "all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds"). I digress. So this could explain why a straight translation has not occurred, but why not keep the courageous meaning? Words like Courageuse, Temeraire or Vaillante would have worked. Maybe instead of going for the Mel Gibson reference, they decided for a Bowie one? Once again, I don’t have an answer for that.