Is '노인을 위한 나라는 없다' a sensible translation of the film tile 'No Country for Old Men'?

Question

The poster for the Korean release of the film No Country for Old Men translated the title as '노인을 위한 나라는 없다'.

This seemed an odd translation to me, as I felt that the phrase meant something more like 'this is no country for old men'. In fact I found that it is a reference to the W. B. Yeats Poem, Sailing to Byzantium:

That is no country for old men. The young

In one another’s arms, birds in the trees —

Those dying generations—at their song,

The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,

Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long

Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.

Bearing this in mind, could '노인을 위한 나라는 없다' still be a sensible translation?

Answer 1

Translating titles of movies in English is not easy as you can't translate all of them as literally as possible. Not only should it be catchy to attract movie-goers' attention, it should be concise for space restriction. Some movie titles are not translated at all and written in romanized 한글. For example, 'Avengers' is '어벤져스' not '복수자들'. 복수자들 doesn't sound very catchy and it actually sounds a little stronger than '어벤져스'.

"노인을 위한 나라는 없다" will be literally translated to:

There are no countries (There is no country) for old men.

This is somewhat different from "This is no country for old men" which translates to:

이곳 (이것)은 노인을 위한 나라가 아니다. 이곳은 늙은이가 살 나라가 못된다.

There is no subject and verb in the movie title and whichever the movie title meant, "노인을 위한 나라는 없다" sounds more catchy and appropriate than "(이곳은) 노인을 위한 나라가 아니다". At the end of the day, the decision was made by a distributor in Korea.