Sinophile Cinema

[talktooloose]

We watched an interesting Chinese movie last night called "Full Moon in New York" about three Chinese women who have moved to the big apple. One is from the mainland, one from Hong Kong and one from Taiwan. The script is actually pretty half-baked, but the three actresses (including the sublime Maggie Cheung) and the cinematography make it work. You get a real sense of gritty New York where the beautiful life is just out of reach.

BUT!

What was totally hilarious was the subtitles. The movie was in both English and Mandarin (and occassionally Cantonese) with two complete sets of subtitles. However, the English subtitles did not match the spoken English, suggesting that a Chinese translator wrote them from a version of the movie where the English had been dubbed over.

While this was merely curious, hilarity ensued when one of the women, an aspiring actress, auditioned for the role of Lady Macbeth. The subtitle writer apparently didn't recognize Shakespeare's famous scene and wrote out the dialogue as if it were a Sam Shepard play:

"Out damn spot! Out I say. One -- two -- why, then 'tis time to do't. Hell is murky -- Fie, my lord, fie!"

...was translated as:

"Shit! Damn blood stain! Damn it! One two spot. So we can go ahead now. It's so dark in hell. Shit! Holy shit!"

Sometimes globalization resembles a game of Broken Telephone.

Comments

[barkis.livejournal.com]

HEY!

will you e-mail me the address to your music page again??

[epanastatis.livejournal.com]

If I knew Mandarin, I'd find the best possible Chinese translation of Macbeth and retranslate the whole thing word for word into English, in that style. Then I'd try to stage it at Theater for the New City or some such low-rent East Side venue. Because it would just be that cool.

[talktooloose.livejournal.com]

I see the germ of a brilliant notion in there. Not Macbeth, but a dramatic section of an unknown play, say five minutes long. Translate it into Mandarin, have it retranslated to English. Have that translated in Portugese. The Portugese back to English. That English to Swahili, then back to English, etc.

Take the subsequent English scripts and hand them to different directors who do not get to the see any other scripts and cannot communicate with each other. Mount the pieces one after the other in one evening, beginning with the ur-text and moving farther along into the transmuted texts.

Sell Bits and Bites™ at the concession stand.