Since this movie has a ton of English wordplay, I was excited to see what differences it had in Portuguese. I was not disappointed! There are some fascinating changes made:
Alice’s sister (or whoever she is) says “counts” instead of “earls” when she’s reading her boring book.
Instead of saying “What nonsense,” her sister says “You’re dreaming.” Alice doesn’t really go with this line of thought though, and just says “Everything in my world would be different.”
As I’ve seen in other films, there’s no word for “trouble” in Portuguese, so depending on the way it’s used, it’s always translated differently. In this case, instead of saying “Curiosity always leads to trouble,” Alice says “Curiosity is an ugly thing.”
Instead of the iconic “Curioser and curioser,” Alice says “What a thing, what a thing!” This is a common Portuguese phrase that basically means “Oh dear,” and Alice uses it a lot throughout the film.
The pun “You gave me quite a turn” is replaced with “You crumpled my doorknob,” which has some alliteration (amassar maçaneta), so it’s a fair attempt at wordplay. I can’t wait to see how the translators deal with all these puns.
Instead of “One good turn deserves another,” the door says “One moment. Let’s see what can be done.” And then says “What are you looking for?” instead of “What can I do for you?” At least the “impassable” / “impossible” pairing works fine.
“A little of that went a long way” changes to “You shot up like a rocket!”
Alice doesn’t say any of her lines like “Now I shall never get home!” and “I know, but I can’t stop!” she just cries and sobs.
Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum are hard to understand, but one thing I understand is instead of “That’s manners!” they says “That’s how it is!”
When normally the Tweedles narrate “The Walrus said” and the Walrus winks, instead he just keeps talking as part of his verse. The “shoes and ships and sealing wax” line is hard to understand, but he says a bunch of other nonsense like “Visits from kings, organs, and pastries.”
The White Rabbit calls for a Mariana to help him instead of Mary Ann.
Alice takes a cookie and says “Oh, thank you. I like cookies” instead of “Don’t mind if I do.”
Instead of “I’ve been down more chimneys…” Bill says “If were to tell you all the times I’ve…”
Dodo proposes a “better process” rather than a “more energetic solution.”
“We’ll Smoke the Monster Out” has different lyrics like “Let’s cook!”
A big pun is shamelessly lost when Alice says “What strange butterflies!” and the flower says “Those are patties with butter.” “Horse fly” is also lost, since Portuguese has an actual word for them. This scene must be so confusing to native speakers.
“Golden Afternoon” is called “The Garden of Flowers.” Most of it is translated okay, but the “dog and caterpillars” part just talks about normal caterpillars (which has no “cat” joke in it), and one of the lines of “In a golden afternoon” is just replaced by “La la la la la la la la”
“Bud” is just called “child,” so the name pun is lost.
Despite calling her a “mobile vulgaris,” the flowers accuse Alice of being a little mouse, not a weed.
The puns lost with the caterpillar include:
“I do not see (C)”
“It is not (knot)”
“Who are (R) you (U)?”
“Why (Y)?”
“Golden scale (musical scale)”
Cleverly, instead of Alice using the O to say “Don’t you think you ought to tell me who you are first?” she say “Don’t you think you ought to tell me O seu nome?” which means “your name.”
Alice compliments the Caterpillar on his recitation being “beautiful” before saying it’s not how she heard it before.
The Caterpillar just says “exactly” rather than “exactically,” but Alice still struggles with saying it and resorts to saying “precisely” anyway.
Alice calls her height “ridiculous” instead of “wretched,” and the Caterpillar says that he is “very proud” of his height.
I can’t be positive, but it sounds like the Cheshire cat, or as he calls himself, “Master Cat,” is just singing the “Jabberwocky” poem in English with a heavy Portuguese accent.
The Cheshire Cat says “Do you know how to do this?” when standing on his head.
The March Hare is just called the Hare.
The Cheshire Cat: “You may have noticed that I’m more there than here.”
The Mad Hatter and March Hare say “All full!” instead of “No room!” and they say it’s very “ugly” to sit without being invited.
The word for “unbirthday” in Portuguese is “desanivarsário,” meaning "disanniversary."
Oddly, Alice uses the wrong form of “sorry” when she says she doesn’t understand what an unbirthday is. She basically says “my condolences” instead of “excuse me.”
The March Hare: “Precisely why we’re drinking so much tea!” instead of “we’re gathered here to cheer.”
The Mad Hatter: “What a coincidence!” instead of “small world this is.”
This one is fascinating: Originally, Alice said “On the riverbank with you-know-who. I mean my C-A-T.” And the Mad Hatter says “Tea?” To make this work with the Portuguese word for tea, chá, they had Alice say “On the riverbank with my—do you speak French?—With my cha-tte.” That must have taken some finagling, since it was impossible to skirt around like with the other letter puns in the scene with the Caterpillar.
The Mad Hatter says “Why does a raven look like a writing desk?” though it might translate the same. Instead of asking if it’s a riddle, Alice asks if it’s a charade.
The March Hare: “The time! The time! What time is it?”
The Mad Hatter: “I see why! The clock is full of springs and tins.”
The White Rabbit doesn’t say “You’ll get crumbs in it!” instead, he just says “No no no!” and the Mad Hatter says “Oh, this is the best butter! Why are you grumbling?”
The Mad Hatter: “Two days slow. I don’t know what to tell you.”
Alice: “Where could I be?” instead of “Nothing looks familiar.”
Instead of “But I very seldom follow it,” Alice sings “But I follow never, never follow.” The last few lines of the song are replaced with her sobbing.
The Cheshire Cat: “That’s because you can’t. Everything around here is the queen’s.”
The Cheshire Cat: “Some go this way. Some go that way. But as for myself, personally, I go this way.”
To aid in making multiple rhymes in the “Painting the Roses Red” song, the cards always say they’re painting the roses “carmine.”
The Cards and Alice say “Not blue, not green, nor purple. Anyway…” instead of pink, green, and aquamarine.
The Queen of Hearts continues the way the Cheshire Cat did, by saying “Everything here is mine, all mine!” instead of “All ways are my ways!” I think it’s because the word for “path” doesn’t quite translate to the same sense as “ways” (as in preferences and manners) as it does in English.
Several of the characters speak in the extra formal version of Portuguese (think thou, thy, and understandest in English)
The king calls for a “jury” instead of a trial. I’m guessing this was just for the brevity of the word he said instead of the exact translation, “julgamento.”
“Nothing whatever” is translated as “Nothing of nothing.”
Instead of yelling “WELL…?!” into the dormouse’s teapot, the queen yells “HEY!” which is pretty funny.
The cards don’t yell “It is?!” when the king announces the queen’s unbirthday.
The King: “Rule 42 forbids persons more than a kilometer high (rather than a mile) leave the court immediately.”
Alice’s insult of the queen changes from a “fat, pompous, bad-tempered old tyrant” to an “old, silly, umannerly tyrant.”
The reprise of the Caucus Race song at the end when Alice is running away is strangely untranslated, and remains in English.
Alice is silent at the end chase sequence when the Caterpillar blows smoke in her face and in the last moments before she wakes up (the “Alice!... Alice!... Alice!...”)
- Her sister (or whoever) asks Alice where she learned that recitation instead of asking her what she’s talking about. And instead of saying “Caterpillar? For goodness sake…” she says “Of all the dreams…”
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