Criterion in September (1 Viewer)

[Chris S]

Educate the viewer, don't modify the nuances of another culture just to make it more palatable for them. If you don't then its simply dumbing down the film and that's disrespectful to the original creators and the viewers.

 

[Mark_TS]

Didnt Ms Hoagland get her start at Warner-Pioneer Japan, in the 1980s, translating US Rock band lyrics to Japanese for the bio/lyric insert sheets that came with most Japan pressed LPs ? (of US artists)
Years of that could color her translating skills;

IF this is the same person im thinking of, that is-

 

[Adam_S]

I probably won't be able to afford it but window boxing makes that decision easier.

iirc, my half japanese friend who speaks both english and Japanese fluently responded to seeing the current DVD as the translation being adequete but really softball at conveying how much they were swearing--being coarse and rural as they were. This is an element of different characters personalities that isn't well conveyed by the current DVD subtitles, you have to simply guess at hearing it in the vocal performance. She did not think it an excellent translation, though, but better than Spirited Away, for instance.

Adam

 

[Yee-Ming]

Much respect to Criterion for not sticking it to those who already own the existing box-set (like me)and enabling us to "upgrade" painlessly by getting the new 1-disc release, which is all we need.

A bit harsh IMHO. Brazil was an early title, when anamorphic wasn't de riguer (although IIRC it was getting relatively common). Also, it may well be that Criterion was limited by whatever Universal gave them -- even now, aren't there reports that the new anamorophic transfer had been done by Universal a while back and they (Uni) were sitting on it?

 

[Patrick McCart]

A clip appears in The Cutting Edge (the excellent film editing documentary on the Bullitt special edition - 16x9 and with 5.1 sound) and it's clearly from a new HD transfer.

 

[Hector.B]

I can't wait to get the Seven Samurai 3-Disc! David Desser (featured on the commentary) was my cinema studies professor at U of I!

 

[Brian PB]

Confirmation on the subtitling issue:


So, take that, all you little piss-pants!

 

[PaulP]

This is beautiful:

 

[JonZ]

Theres a review at DVDfile for Seven Samurai
http://www.dvdfile.com/index.php?opt...=5580&Itemid=3

Im drooling over here.

 

[PaulP]

How's this for drool-incuding:

 

[Joe Fisher]

Words cannot describe how I feel upon seeing this pic. September 5th can't come fast enough.

 

[MarcoBiscotti]

DVDBeaver's review is excellent, but can we get some further word on the subs issue... is it the "revised" Linda Hoelgwhatever version and are we offered the original translation from the first Criterion release?

Id like to hear more about this aspect.

 

[Chris S]

The subtitles are what I'm most interested to hear more about, although the DVDBeaver article Marco mentioned above really does show off how great this release of the film looks. DVDBeaver did have this following on the subtitles:

 

[JonZ]

Nice! Thanks for the pic Paul

 

[Nkosi]

Hey! How come Criterion never wrote me back?!!

I'm kidding of course. But I'm glad they responded to Brian PB and thanks for subsequently sharing man. I'm encouraged big time by that response.

And on another note, thank you PaulP for sharing those pix. My, my, my! Now I am really getting giddy and souped. Oh boy. It is on. September 5th can't get here soon enough!!!

 

[Nkosi]

And thanks JonZ and Chris S for those links!

I can't wait for this release!!

 

[MarcoBiscotti]

Subtitles!! Subtitles!! Subtitles!!

 

[PaulP]

Thanks for the pic shouldn't go to me, as I just linked it from the DVD Beaver review.

 

[Rich Malloy]

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!!!

 

[Rich Malloy]

In her own words (excerpts below): http://www.cgj.org/en/c/vol_10-4/title_01.html

NEVER MORE THAN 80 LETTERS --By Linda Hoaglund

"In the six years since I began writing English subtitles for Japanese films, I have worked on over 80 films, from Fukasaku Kinji's raging yakuza films, to Miyazaki Hayao's elegantly complex animation, to the recent outpouring of independent films made by Kurosawa Kiyoshi, Kore-eda Hirokazu and Sakamoto Junji, among others. I render the dialogue of confused, angry, willful, and mischievous characters into a series of individual subtitles, always less than 80 letters long.

"For me, the process of translating and condensing Japanese dialogue into English is visceral. I experience the character's emotions in Japanese, but express them in English, two languages that could not be more disparate. While Americans find Japanese expressions vague, Japanese find English unforgiving. In Japanese, subject is largely absent, tense often irrelevant. A subject's gender may go unmentioned for whole sentences, and contradictory tenses coexist in a single paragraph. Social interactions are assumed to be so transparent as to forgo fundamental Western linguistic references. The infinitive form of the verb "to go" constitutes a complete sentence, variously meaning "I'll go," "We'll go," "They'll go," "Will I go? "Will you go? "Will they go?"

"In creating characters and setting tone, not to mention conveying humor, I stray brazenly from literal translation. My goal is to reproduce the Japanese experience of film as faithfully as possible by not bogging down a Western audience with unfamiliar locutions."