For an abusive subtitling

Film Quarterly

Volumn 52, Issue 3, 1999, Pages 17-34

  Nornes, Abé Mark ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN   (United States)

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EID: 33749079492     PISSN: 00151386     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1525/fq.1999.52.3.04a00030     Document Type: Review

References (41)

1. Quoted in Antoine Berman, The Experience of the Foreign: Culture and Translation in Romantic German, trans. S. Heyvaert (Albany, NY: State University of New York, 1992), p. 53. Thanks to Darrell Davis, David Desser, and particularly to Makino Mamoru and Aaron Gerow for their help and comments while writing this essay.
2. Philip E. Lewis, "The Measure of Translation Effects," in Difference in Translation, ed. Joseph F. Graham, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985), pp. 31-62.
3. Trinh T. Minh-ha, Framer Framed (New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 102.
4. An analogous reversal of power may be found in the translation of The X-Files for Japanese television, in this case through the apparatus of dubbing. Mulder is dubbed by a man with a husky, deep, tough-man voice, while Sculley's relatively low, business-like tone is replaced with the high-pitched voice one usually associates with soap operas and weather report announcers. This manipulation of the material qualities of language- in this case the grain of the voice- reverses the sexual play and politics of the show. While less dramatic, the Robocop example displays the same dynamic. As I will argue below, standard subtitles ignore the material aspects of language.
5. Antje Ascheid, "Speaking Tongues: Voice Dubbing in the Cinema as Cultural Ventriloquism," The Velvet Light Trap, no. 40 (Fall 1997), p. 40.
6. Fujinami Fujiaki, Nyūsu Kameraman- Gekidō no Shōwa-shi o Toru ("News Cameraman- Shooting the Turbulent History of the Showa Era"), (Tokyo: Chūōkōronsha, 1977), pp. 81-84.
7. Donald Richie, "Donald Richie on Subtitling Japanese Films," Mangajin, vol. 10 (1991), p. 16.
8. See for example, Toda Natsuko, Jimaku no Naka ni Jinsei ("A Life in Subtitles"), (Tokyo: Hakusuisha, 1994), p. 27;
9. Okaeda Shiji, Sūpā Jimaku Nyūmon- Eiga Honyaku no Gijutsu to Chishiki ("Introduction to Subtitles- Film Translation Technology and Knowledge"), (Tokyo: Baburu Puresu, 1988), p. 18;
10. Kamijima Kimi, Jimaku Shikakenin Ichidaiki ("Biography of a Subtitler"), (Tokyo: Pandora, 1995), p. 22.
11. Toda, p. 27. Toda is reporting hearsay; it appears she has done no real research for her history.
12. Biographies include Toda (1994), Kamijima (1995), and Shimizu Shunji, Eiga Jimaku no Gojūnen ("Fifty Years of Film Subtitling"), (Tokyo: Hayakawa Shobō, 1985).
13. most famous, but Kamijima's is the most interesting of the bunch. How-to books are popular among translators looking to add variety to their usual slate of boring business translations; a few of them are apparently used as textbooks in classes offered by some of the more high-profile subtitlers; see Kamijima (1995), Okaeda (1988), Okaeda (1989), Shimizu Shunji, Eiga Jimaku no Tsukurikata Oshiemasu ("Teaching the Way to Make Movie Subtitles"), (Tokyo: Bunshun Bunko, 1988)
14. and Shimizu Shunji, Eiga Jimaku wa Honyaku de wa Nai ("Film Subtitling Is Not Translation"), ed. Toda Natsuko and Ueno Tamako (Tokyo: Hayakawa Shobō, 1992).
15. Toda, p. 10.
16. Shimizu (1992), pp. 61-62.
17. Okaeda Shinji, Jimaku Honyaku Kōgi no Jikkyō Chūkei ("On-the-Spot Transmission of Subtitle Translation Lectures"), (Tokyo: Gogakushunjusha, 1989), pp. 194-195. Far more disturbing is his ignorant homophobia when he prefaces a section on homosexuality and subtitling with a bizarre aside implying America has "homos" and Japan does not, and explicitly blaming AIDS on American homosexuals.
18. Toda, p. 11.
19. Okaeda, p. 6.
20. Rudolf Arnheim, "Sound Film Confusion," in Film Essays and Criticism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997), pp. 33-34.
21. Okaeda (1989), p. 229.
22. Herman Weinberg, Booze, Cigars, and Movies (New York: Anthology Film Archives, 1985), pp. 107-108.
23. This strategy continued well into the postwar period in many parts of Asia that used narrators throughout the silent period.
24. Tachibana Takashirō, Tōkiitsū ("Authoritative Knowledge of the Talkie"), (Tokyo: Shiroku Shoin, 1930), pp. 118-119.
25. Tanaka Jun'ichirō, Nihon Eiga Hattatsu-shi II ("The History of the Development of Japanese Cinema II"), (Tokyo: Chūōkō ronsha, 1980), p. 207.
26. According to Shimizu Shunji, Films Inc. in Tokyo holds a 35mm print of Tamura's Morocco.
27. Shimizu, (1988), p. 350. While Shimizu's account says this version never reached public theaters, a contemporary article suggests otherwise. In "A Quick Note on the Talkie," Hayashi Chitose went to the trouble of counting lines of dialogue and subtitles. Hayashi's count: 387 spoken lines/229 subtitles with 4 "inserted subtitles," for an average of 32 lines/19 subtitles per reel. While he notes that the most dialogue-heavy scene of the film uses more subtitles (41 for 52 lines), Hayashi stops his analysis with the basic argument that "less is better. " I argue below this is nothing other than a silent era-specific conception of cinema carried over the sound barrier. Hayashi Chitose, "Tokii ni Kan Suru Hashirigaki" ("A Quick Note on the Talkie"), STS no. 5 (10 May 1931), p. 39.
28. These and other ken'etsu daihon are preserved in the Makino Mamoru Collection. Shimizu Chiyota was, along with Tamura, one of the founding members of Kinema Junpō, the premiere film magazine from the teens to the present-day.
29. Longer lines required multiple subtitles, making the total number of subtitles 360. The other ken'etsu daihon I inspected appeared to have similar subtitle counts. They may be found in the Makino Mamoru Collection.
30. Mura Chio, "Ozu Yasujiro no Geijutsu Taido" ("Ozu Yasujiro's Artistic Attitude") STS no. 13, p. 25.
31. This was related to me by Komatsu Hiroshi, who saw the print while working at the Film Center.
32. Toda, pp. 26-27.
33. Tamura Yukihiko, "Morocco," Kinema Junpō (1 February, 1931).
34. I would like to thank Aaron Gerow for helping me flesh out these points after reading an early draft of this article. His dissertation is groundbreaking work on the Pure Cinema Movement: A. A. Gerow, Writing a Pure Cinema: Articulations of Early Japanese Film (Dissertation for the University of Iowa, 1996).
35. Ota Tatsuo, "Sūpā Impōzu ni Okeru Nihongo no Hinkon" ("The Poverty of Japanese Language of Spoken Titles"), Nihon Eiga, vol. 4, no. 5 (May 1939), p. 51.
36. Quoted in Hugo Friedrich, "On the Art of Translation" ("Zur Frage der Ubersetzungkunst"), trans. Rainer Schultze and John Biguenet, in Theories of Translation- An Anthology from Dryden to Derrida, ed. Rainer Schultze and John Biguenet (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 12-13.
37. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Translation" (" Ubersetzungen"), trans. Sharon Sloan, in Theories of Translation, p. 61.
38. Antje Ascheid's article on dubbing attempts to avoid these traps, but falls into others because of an inadequate theorization of translation itself.
39. Trinh T. Minh-ha, When the Moon Waxes Red (New York: Routledge, 1991), p. 60.
40. Robert Stam and Ella Shohat report the following: "In the late 60s and 70s, French leftists reportedly 'kidnapped' a Kung Fu film as La Dialectique peut-elle casser les briques? ('Can the Dialectic Break Bricks?') with incendiary subtitles.
41. A sequence of devastating karate blows would be subtitled: 'Down with the bourgeoisie!'" See their "The Cinema after Babel: Language, Difference, Power," Screen vol. 26, nos. 3-4 (May-August 1985), pp. 35-59. What's Up, Tiger Lily? is actually a low-budget Japanese detective film with Allen's parodic dubbing on the soundtrack. One could also imagine an abusive dubbing, although ultimately dubbing is mired in corruption because it completely erases the experience of foreign sound, one of the most crucial material aspects of language. These examples are also curious for their parody, which indulges in the abusive translator's pleasure in experiencing the foreign, while sharing the corrupt translator's domination of the source text.