Movies are moving pictures. Every picture tells a story. I don't really want to try and read and watch the movie at the same time. I admit it. I have been told by people all my life I am terrible at concentrating. I can't focus. Ever. I mean, let me tell you about this time when I was in a play in college and… See what I mean? Do remind me to tell you that story sometime. Anyway, I do find it disconcerting to watch a film I also have to read. I have done it. I have seen some Kurosawa and a few others in my life. I just do not enjoy the experience.
Movies are also sound. They are aural experiences and I apologize in advance to the denizens of hypersensitive PC fucks everywhere: foreign tongues sound foreign. Sometimes they even sound funny to my ears. It can be really hard to let myself get sucked in to an intense scene when I hear those sounds. The dramatic use of facial expressions, other visual scenery, and the score in the background cannot always overcome the fact that those sounds can sometimes make me laugh. Even when they don't, there is something lost in translation.
Harkening back to my college days, I learned in my nonverbal communication class that 93% of meaning is transferred by nonverbal means. I guess the 7% I have to read rather than hear is the difference between loving foreign films and waiting for Hollywood to take them and fuck them up in English.
From: Mark Saleski
To: The Hot Topic Team
Subject: Foreign Language Films
The whole foreign film/subtitles thing seems to be a love-it/hate-it phenomenon.
Personally, I've always loved foreign movies. And while I don't love subtitles, I'll put up with them because the films themselves resonate with my inner-directed self.
Kurosawa being an exception, most of the foreign language movies I love are full of dialogue and not much else. Subtitles? Ah, I don't care. There are just too many great films out there to allow some text on the screen to make the decision (to watch or not) for me.
Interestingly enough, my favorite foreign movie — indeed, my favorite movie of all time — combines moments of highly nuanced character development with segments of heart-stopping action. It's a French film called Diva. A Parisian courier's love of a particular opera singer gets him wrapped up in a white slavery and drug ring, plus some other creepy underworld types. The characters are so interesting, the plot so engrossing, and the music so beautiful, that I completely forget about the subtitles.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - DJRadiohead
Well done, everyone. Particularly you, Brewster. You have exposed what I always expected was true: I am the low-rent member of the Mondo world. Fuck.
Fine. You all win. I suck. Bring me some Hungarian comedies.
2 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
You know, out here in Hebrew land, the subtitles are usually in Hebrew. So I watch films in English and read the subtitles in Hebrew as I listen to the characters talk. All I can say is that no matter how you try and translate a film into a foreign language - be it dubbing or subtitles, it loses an awful lot. Any positive comment in Rnglish - and there are lots of ways to indicate assent in English - becomes "b'séder" (alright) in Hebrew.
If English loses all that much in Hebrew subtitles, imagine how much the Latin and Aramaic (can you guess the film?) lose in English subtitles?
3 - Mat Brewster
Don't worry, DJ, the rest of us have known you were low rent for a few months now.
Subtitles make you become a more active viewer, and I do understand the need to sometimes be completely passive when watching a film.
Truth be told, there are tons of really great English language flicks out there to watch. I'll give you a few years to catch up on those before I start throwing Godard at you!
Ruvy my wife is always complaining about the same thing. The subtitles to French films are often completely out of whack.
4 - Steve C.
As a side effect of my cinephilia, everyone I know eventually starts watching subtitled movies. I've watched enough foreign films that I don't miss any visuals -- my eye is practiced enough that I can devour the subtitles whilst still studying the frame for neat visual details. Maybe that's all it takes... practice.
5 - Mat Brewster
Honestly, how many times do we miss some of the visuals in English language pictures? Whether its leaning over to pick up the soda underneath our chair, or glaring at the idiot on his cell phone in the third row, there are often distractions that keep our eyes off the screen.
Using that as an excuse not to watch a film is pretty lame.
6 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
Exceptional work, Sir Brewster. And DJ, i dunno how you have the time to watch the trailers, let alone the flick, with the ammount o' work you got goin on.
the thing about subtitles bein highly unreliable is a good point, also. often times i'll excuse shitty dialogue in, say, a Korean flick that i wouldn't let the inevitable hollywood remake off with. simply because i dunno if it's truly bad dialogue, or just crappy translation.
same troubles when reading foreign books translated into english, in fact. is this prose really this bad, or was the translator just a knob?
7 - tommyd
I love French and Japanese films. So much more satisfying. Sublime and thought provoking. True art.
Hollywood produces mindless junk, which isn't always a bad thing, but if that's all one watches.....
8 - Mary K. Williams
Good work Sir Brewster, good work. And to the rest - I held off reading all the input until now - I liked it.
Sir DJ - I shall keep you company in the low rent district, though I feel as I can barely pay that lately - but its not such a bad place.
9 - Matthew T. Sussman
DJ, I know you think you're the only uncultured one here, so I'll add to the pile of cultured thought with the transcript of my favorite subtitled scene, the two Jive guys in Airplane!:
Jiveman #1: Sheeeet, man, that honkey mus' be messin' my old lady got to be runnin' col' upsihd down his head! (Golly, that white fellow should stay away from my wife or I will punch him.)
Jiveman #2: Hey Holm, I can dig it! You know he ain't gonna lay no mo' big rap upon you man! (Yes, he is wrong for doing that.)
Jiveman #1: I say hey sky, s'other say I won say I pray to J I get the same ol' same ol. (I knew a man in a similar predicament, and he ended up being sorry.)
Jiveman #2: Knock yourself a pro slick. Gray matter back got perform' us' down I take TCBin, man'. (Don't be naive Arthur. Each of us faces a clear moral choice.)
Jiveman #1: You know wha' they say: See a broad to get that bodiac lay'er down an' smack 'em yack 'em. (Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.)
Together: Col' got to be! Yo! (How true!)
Together: Sheeeeyit! (Golly!)
10 - Nancy
Sometimes you can actually learn something watching foreign films. First one I ever saw was "Babette's Feast". Not only did I love the movie, I picked up enough Danish to find out that the subtitles weren't half of the actual dialogue, which was (from what I could work out) much funnier. Also 'discovered' Isaak Dinesen aka Karen Blixen, and thru that a whole bunch of films & books & whatnot. Talk about vastly enriching. Crouching Tiger was another really interesting & exponentially instructive film, as was Eat Drink Man Woman. The Wedding Banquet is another good one to start on, because half of it is in English. To me, what's interesting is the difference between what the subtitles say, and what the actual dialogue says (if you know enough of the language to get the gist of it).
11 - Mary K. Williams
Suss - awesome scene. They've been showing Airplane a few times lately on TV - forget the channel - but I have to stop and watch for a while - Peeeericelss!
12 - Mark Saleski
ooh, "babette's feast", that was a good one!
13 - Nancy
It is, and very delicately humorous, too. Love the old guy who keeps exclaiming "Hallelujah!" at inappropriate intervals, and the sweet little old lady who decides she likes wine better than water.
Not sure "The Gods Must Be Crazy" qualifies as foreign language; some if it IS in San. Now, THAT is a cute movie.
14 - Aaron Fleming
Excellent stuff people!
That point about details being lost in the translation is interesting, reminds me especially of Jean-Pierre Jeunet's commentary on the Amelie DVD, where he occasionally mourns the lack of direct translation, highlighting the fallacies in the conversion, but unfortunatly unable to do much more than say "here's a bit that only people who know the French language will fully grasp."
S'pose it's just one of those things that are inevitable when you can't speak the language that the film is in.
15 - Mark Saleski
you know, i hadn't thought of that when writing up my bit, but the 'untranslatable' issue is one of the reasons i've always thought it was weird to read poetry translated to english.
the original language has its own 'music' that i would imagine is lost.
16 - Bennett
Wonderful job folks. Great insight about the lame translations that we (must) think are acurate, but as Matthew points out, it just aint so.
I remember watching early Kung Fu flicks and the actor pours out a long paragraph of heated dialog, but the subtitle only says "I hate you, you will die".
I'm thinkin' the actor was flinging fucks and cunts left and right but the translator didn't dare.
Fun topic!
17 - Howard Dratch
I agree. Films without the whole world of film is just a movie. Where would we be without all the great films mentioned here? The Seven Samurai, The Hidden Fortress, The 400 Blows and a cinema load of other favorite films?
I used to chortle (well, maybe smile) at the people who could not read well enough to enjoy a good film.
Then we moved to Mexico and I began having to read sub-titles in Spanish to those same Japanese, French, Italian and Swedish movies. Hard work! If you read slowly and haltingly much of the fun of the film is lost.
Of course there is also reading the Spanish subtitles to English films. Then you do, indeed, learn how inaccurate the translations are. Sometimes totally reversed, off the wall, or most of the dialog ignored.
But whatever the hassles a great film is still a great film. Nice discussion up above.
18 - Mat Brewster
My wife always points out the numerous mistranslations in Amelie. There is one so blatant even I laughed with my very limited French.
I watched L'Auberge espagnole from a French DVD a few months back. Talk about confusing. It is in French, Spanish and English. The French had no subtitles so I made out what I could, speaking a very basic form of the language. The spanish had French subtitles and I speak no spanish, but read a little French. The english also had french subtitles but by that point I was so used to struggling with the language I didn't recognize the English being spoken and still tried to translate the French subtitles.
19 - Victor Plenty
If you don't like reading subtitles, turn them off. Enjoy the language as music, and follow the story by following the expressions and actions of the characters.
If you can't do this, I'm sorry for you.
20 - DJRadiohead
Mr Low Rent returns... the "I'm sorry for you" crap rings with a kind of superiority and snobbiness that just goes up my ass sideways. That's a lot of bullshit. If someone wants to deny me the title of Movie Buff or Film Aficionado because I thought Hidden Fortress was good but not life changing or because I don't think watching Lithuanian suspense movies or Belgian porn they can be my guest. I am quite certain there are brilliant artists of every sort of nationality and origin the world over and hence great movies have been made in every corner of the world. I am not worried about the possibility I might not see all or even most of them. I'm not arsed. I don't feel deprived. I don't need anyone to be sorry for me. That actually almost offends me. I guess that's on me, but it does.
I guess, too, what should probably be said is that a movie never really changed my life. I like movies. Always have. I've seen a lot of them but I don't consider myself any sort of student of film. Even when I went through my brief period of film study (self-directed, mind) I was always more interested in screenplays and the writing. Working with scripts in English was a little easier because it's the only language I speak.
I think it's great so many of you have found meaning or joy in films from 'round the world in different languages. That's great. I just don't need anyone's scorn or condescension because I haven't.
21 - DJRadiohead
If someone wants to deny me the title of Movie Buff or Film Aficionado because I thought Hidden Fortress was good but not life changing or because I don't think watching Lithuanian suspense movies or Belgian porn they can be my guest.
Oops, mangled a word in that diatribe:
If someone wants to deny me the title of Movie Buff or Film Aficionado because I thought Hidden Fortress was good but not life changing or because I don't
thinklike watching Lithuanian suspense movies or Belgian porn they can be my guest.22 - ss
I saw a S Korean flick called 'The Presidents Last Bang' a few weeks ago. It was a slapstick take on the 1979 assasination of the President for life.
Compared to Kubrik spoofing on nuclear war right after the Cuban missle crisis I guess that's pretty tame, but there aren't any Kubric's working in English right now, so sometimes I guess you just have to take what you can get, whatever country it comes from.
23 - Mark Saleski
maybe we should send dj the bc ForeignFilmEnjoymentKit: pipe, slippers, smoking jacket, copy of La Dolce Vita.
24 - DJRadiohead
Sending me off for re-education, Sir Saleski? I probably need it.
I'm certainly not anti-culture. I think we could all use some of it. I have watched foreign films. I just didn't get a woodrow from it or a strained arm patting myself on the back for my great and marvelous taste.
I just get pissed off when "culture" is used in a weapon-like manner. What pretentious bullshit. Forgive my uncultured tongue: fuck a whole lot of that noise.
All right. I'm done. Seriously. You may return to a more civilized discussion.
25 - Mark Saleski
yea, i can certainly understand the snobbery aspects of love of stuff like this...i started watching them because i went through a big cult movie watching period, and then foreign film seemed like a natural progression.
i also liked the non-linearlity of the movies, the fact that they don't always resolve in a typical hollywood kinda way.