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Lost in Tranlastion disccusion... offtopic from spam thread on photoshoot

Thunderthief

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Lol most Japanese ive talked to said "Lost In Translation" was a racist movie.
 
Thunderthief said:
Lol most Japanese ive talked to said "Lost In Translation" was a racist movie.
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And you believed them? Do you have any other insights into this or are you just going to take it as gospel what a few second and third generation Asians think?
 
yukio_michael said:
And you believed them? Do you have any other insights into this or are you just going to take it as gospel what a few second and third generation Asians think?
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My girlfriend it "put Japan in a bad light", then I pointed out "isn't it pretty much what we did last weekend?", "oh, yeah... still"

It doesn't show the rosy, wonderfulness of Japan, so its a bad movie. At the same time, it shows a truth that exists within Japan. For that alone I think its a wonderful movie.
 


There's pros & cons to this. I'm using "Lost in Translation" as a way to describe the general feel I'm looking for, for this particular project.

I'm curious how the Japanese feel about the Japan story in "Babel"....
 
I don't think Lost in Translation was a bad movie. In fact, there were many (in mass media) who appreciated the fact that modern-day Japan was shown in it. Although there were certainly people who were offended by some parts that made the Japanese look stupid, it has been tolerated in good humor. Overall, many Japanese understand that it's a movie seeing Japan from the Western perspective. I personally like it.

I hear more vehement criticism of "Sayuri" than for Lost in Translation.

As for Babel, you won't be able to get Japanese response on that until the Golden Week holidays in early May 2007, because that's when the film is shown here in Japan.
 
I don't see how Lost In Translation could be considered "racist" or that it made the Japanese "look stupid." The exception would be the "fantasy lady" with her rip-my-stockings routine.

I love that movie. People who I've shown it to who've never been to Japan really have a hard time "getting it." People who've gone to Japan can relate to the comical situations depicted.
 
ArmandV said:
I don't see how Lost In Translation could be considered "racist" or that it made the Japanese "look stupid."
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There are some proud Japanese who think the Japanese in film looked stupid (at least it had been mentioned so in the mass media). I think they are pointing to the fact that there had been little or no character portrayal for the Japanese actors in the film.
FYI, what I'm writing here is not my opinion! I personally liked the movie.
 
I didn't like that movie. I didn't particularly like the portrayal of Japan, but that's not why I didn't like the movie. I didn't like the premise or Bill Murray's corpse-like acting during the movie. I realize that was part of the point of his character, but I didn't like it.

As far as Japanese looking stupid in that movie....well...I thought that Suntory looked pretty stupid for hiring a translation who was clearly unqualified for the job. I could have done a better job in my sleep!
 
Mikawa Ossan said:
As far as Japanese looking stupid in that movie....well...I thought that Suntory looked pretty stupid for hiring a translation who was clearly unqualified for the job. I could have done a better job in my sleep!
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You've never met a "professional" interpretor then
(Seriously, they can be that bad!)
 
Ewok85 said:
You've never met a "professional" interpretor then
(Seriously, they can be that bad!)
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Really? Hmm...maybe I should into being an interpreter......

I had a friend who was an interpreter for a short time. She spoke perfect Japanese (native speaker) and maybe 90% perfect English. You wouldn't know she was Japanese just by hearing her speak. Anyway, I assumed that most interpreters were basically the same, because I've seen on TV people translating while people are talking, and on NHK (is it?) when they translate overseas newscasts on the fly.

No, I've not met many professional translators. I can only think of one, and she was NOWHERE as bad as the one from the movie.

So they're really that bad, huh? No wonder we have some of the international problems we do....
 
Mikawa-san,
Professional interpreters are ranked by their skills (usually) into A, B and C. C rank interpreters are those who escort foreign show biz celebrities and musicians (gai-tare). A-class people go to economic summits and major international conferences interpreting in behalf of top government officials, major company presidents, etc.
There are also freelancers whose skills can vary widely.
So, the charges vary widely by the skill level of the interpreter.

The client gets interpreting service that commensurates with the money he/she is willing to pay for.
 
Also, there's a difference between interpretation and translation. Interpretation deals with spoken language, and translation deals with written language. Of course, that brings up the question of what you call the people who make the subtitles for movies, but I believe since it's the output that's considered, those people are considered translators.
 
Well, right, but at this point I'm only thinking about interpreters, as that is what appeared in the movie.

I guess the interpreter in the movie would be classified as a C level interpreter, huh? It still seems strange that Suntory would hire such a lousy interpreter for the purposes of the commercial, considering that translation would just be a minor expense in the big picture, and Suntory isn't exactly a small company!

Hmm...I personally couldn't be an A interpreter any time soon, but I bet you anything that I could be a B interpreter without too much effort. I wonder how much it pays....I wonder how much competitive that field is. I know that translators are basically a dime a dozen, but intrepeters....I wonder....

EDIT: I was going to write this before, but just now I thought of a family friendly way to say it.

I think the term "gai-tare" is a great term, and although I know "tare" comes from "tarento", it's not the first thing that comes to mind....
 
Tare-tare sauce? I love that stuff...

Well it depends, I know the Japanese representative for one of the largest IT companies in the world, who isn't exactly the greatest interpretor or translator, and thats just how it is. Maybe the lady in the movie was specialised in English to Japanese interpretation and simply out of her league?

In the end the movie was showing one possibility, one side of Tokyo that rarely gets shown (and I think it should be shown more).
 
Interesting.

I always thought it was really difficult to become an interpreter in Japan. Of course I really should know better now to think that just because the test is difficult it really means anything.

Perhaps you're right, and she specialized in English to Japanese. She just struck me as having no more English proficiency than a high school student. Less, actually, to tell the truth!
 
Few points, I think they put also westeners in bad light in yakiniku restaurant scene. I dont think they pictured truth of modern Japan either. Interpretor was bad in movie, so what ?
Anyways I found this movie quite boring after all. ☝
 
I think that it's a question of what Chomsky coined (though in a much more insidious sense) "worthy & un-worthy" victims... I think that its the idea of a movie about Japan made by a white woman (who happened to have lived there). Not much would be said if it were a movie which portrayed foreigners in a bad light which was made by a Japanese man.

Here is a movie whos main protagonists couldn't care less about being in Japan, know nothing about it, but somehow through finding each other, (which is the whole point of the movie, that when you are somewhere, anywhere, alone that it's difficult to enjoy things) that they learn to love the the things that make the country different, or at least come to grips with being there.

There are sweet parts of the movie where you see Bill Murray wearing a yukata, and maybe you remember your first time at onsen (not me... but...), or first time at some aspect of Japanese culture, like matsuri---

I think it's a endearing movie, and I think that there is always room for dialogue about it, but that many people who fly off the handle like the writers at now-defunct "lostinracism.org", are just missing the point entirely.

Ps. If you type in "lostinracism" in google, the second link is a review I did (which follows everyone elses review) of the aforementioned movie on JREF.
 
This is one bored me to death Japan-theme movie,storyline has no substance.It's a tad racist in the scene,the Japanese actress's role was humiliated for her thick accent.
 
Mikawa Ossan said:
She just struck me as having no more English proficiency than a high school student. Less, actually, to tell the truth!
Click to expand...

Thats another point - maybe she wasn't an interpretor, and just a memory of the staff who had the "best" English skills and was "volunteered" for the job

kirby36 said:
This is one bored me to death Japan-theme movie,storyline has no substance.It's a tad racist in the scene,the Japanese actress's role was humiliated for her thick accent.
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You're just unhappy because it showed some truth.

Yukio has the idea, neither of the main characters wanted to be in Japan, and the movie shows it that way. I think its a wonderful movies that captures Japan wonderfully - for people who have no idea about Japan and Japanese it is the type of experience that you will find. Tell me where its racist and I'll tell you where you are wrong
 
Ewok85 said:
Thats another point - maybe she wasn't an interpretor, and just a memory of the staff who had the "best" English skills and was "volunteered" for the job
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Now that makes a lot of sense!
 
I think a lot of people will call into question the most obvious scene where there is a sort of gag made out of the difficulties Japanese can have in pronouncing words that in English would begin with R. Another thing that is mentioned is Bill Murray's joke "Short and sweet. Very Japanese..." which some people seem to think is a joke (which is followed by a visual gag) about the height of the Japanese.

These aren't simply stereotypes that people attribute to the Japanese--- these things are generally true. The Japanese do have troubles w/ the letter R (and the letter's V & B if anyone's curious), and are not the tallest people on the planet. It's the presenter, an English-speaking caucasian woman in this case, who bears the onus of racism for lightheartedly saying it, however.

I might point out that Japanese entertainment itself is full of a sort of stereotypical archetype of speech & character. We might react to it in the same way as forms of entertainment more familiar to us which use cliched images in order to simplify our understanding of a certain character or group

I might also remind you that the Japanese themselves are no strangers to poking fun at the way non-Japanese speak & learn Japanese as well as the English language, and English speaking peoples in general.... This sort of thing is common on evening television. It's been fairly common for the Japanese to make light of homosexuals, blacks (oh do they love to "poke fun" at blacks), and just about everyone who happens to not be full blooded Japanese on television.
 
I think it's a great movie. It was quite funny when I saw it though - it was a few weeks after I found out I was moving to Japan, but at that time I knew absolutely nothing about the country (apart from the typical cliches). Anyway, it was a stinking hot day back home so my friend and I decided to go to the movies. I didn't care what I saw, just as long as I could sit in some air conditioning. When we got to the movies we saw another friend there by chance, and decided to go to movie he was seeing. Finally when the movie started we realised that it was about Japan, so my friend had a great time giving me cr@p when all the weird scenes came on. Needless to say, I ended up leaving that movie theatre quite worried about what I was about to get myself into!
 
I just think its weird that the Japanese are more than happy to make fun of themselves, but when someone else has fun at their expense its suddenly "racist" and "unfair". Lighten up and smell the coffee already.
 
I made a new thread for that discusion and deleted the original one, also this one is in the appropriate section
 
It's kind of a dead horse issue... But I'll relate something similar. The last time I was in England, the United States was thick into the quagmire that was and will be the creation of a future Iraqi civil war...

Not that Tony Blair didn't have any sort of equal (monetary) reason for being there with British troops, but being an American, I drew the brunt of jokes about our (my) President... as if I myself were somehow responsible...

As it goes, except for my friends I knew there, my local pubs were a little bit more caustic than normal... I wound up spending a lot of time with a fellow I met there from South Africa... we spent our time eating cheap kebab takeaway & questionable chicken... Spent a lot of time laughing at the superiority complex of the British--- It was sort of my "Lost in Translation" for England--- a country, keep in mind, where I had visited at last nine times previously.

Unfortunately, before my move to Japan, I've probably lost his address and number some where... Perhaps I'll find it when I visit my home in Florida for Christmas... the point is that sometimes, when you find one person in a country far from your own with whom you can laugh at your own precarious situations, you can live a rich existence that seems impossible as simply an "outsider"....

My 2en...
 
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