Re: Criterion in September
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Originally Posted by MarcoBiscotti
Subtitles!! Subtitles!! Subtitles!!
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OK, Ok, Ok!!!
Actually, I have not seen them. But let me try to put your mind to rest. Hoagland is uniquely qualified to do translations, being not only completely fluent in English and Japanese, but also completely fluent in Japanese culture.
Hoagland has come under fire for one well-known title. You know the one. Since I had not previously seen "Ikiru", the differences in the translations did not seem jarring to me at all. At
all.
Several posters above have expressed much dismay about Hoagland's approach, saying they desire "literal" translations. I think "literal" is not the way to go, at least in the general sense of that term, as such translations often
fail to adequately convey the actual meaning of the words, stripped as they are of cultural context. But Hoagland's translations will undoubtedly be more "literal" (in the best sense of that word) than any previously in the sense of being a closer reflection in English of the Japanese meaning.
Most importantly, all the anti-Hoagland criticisms that I've read come from non-Japanese speakers who are comparing Hoagland's translations to previous translations of the film, with which they are very familiar. Changing the subtitles is akin to changing the film. Do I understand their concerns? YES.
However, it should be pointed out that many of the original English translations that are familiar to us are wildly inaccurate. For one, nearly all of them substitute milder English terms and phrases wherever actual obscenities or vulgarities were employed. As I recall, Jeck's commentary on the original "Seven Samurai" Criterion release point this out, noting that certain vulgarities were not translated in the subs (I think he was referring to the repeated use of the Japanese term for "bastard"). According to a Japanese speaker familiar with this film (who post on the criterionforum),
"The Japanese original is full of swear words. I don't know if any of it reaches the level of "fuck" on the offensiveness meter (though I think it often comes close when the tensions are running high), but the word "kuso," which is a perfect, literal equivalent of "shit," can be heard numerous times. Mifune's character, especially, swears like the proverbial truck driver. In general, there's much, much more swearing in Kurosawa's screenplays than in Ozu's or Mizoguchi's. The Japanese are not the prudish tightasses that a lot of Westerners think they are. And the 1950s in Japan were not like the 1950s in America, i.e. "Leave it to Beaver"--they were a very dynamic time of rebuilding, social strife, and intense creativity."
That last observation lead to the other problem with traditional English translations, namely, that many tended to "clean up" the grammar into something akin to the King's English, probably under the misguided notion that foreign films are "art films" that bespeak a certain propriety (I know... a completely bourgeois, middlebrow notion, but one that was once quite widespread). Hoagland is largely attempting to correct these errors, and provide a translation that's closer to not just the spirit, but the actual nuts-and-bolts underlying meaning of the dialog she's translating. So, if a character says "SHIT!" in Japanese, she won't change it to "DARN!". If a character says something purely idiomatic to the Japanese language, she'll try to find an English idiomatic phrase that captures the same spirit rather than a clunky "literal" translation that just seems bafflingly obscure, if not an outright non sequitur.
In short, don't freak out!!!
