Sillyscurry has kindly linked and commented further on my last posting about Monty Python and the Japanese subtitles. Apparently Monty Python was reissued on video and DVD in Japan in the late 1990s by Universal, with new subtitles, and "Saxone's" was translated as "Saxon shoes" instead of "Saxons" (as in Ancient Britons). I have to confess, I can't remember what I saw exactly in the subtitle (a few Kirin Beers might have passed my lips by then) but I suspect it was the earlier Pony Canyon translation.
"Saxon shoes" is still not an accurate translation of course, but then you really do start sympathising with the difficulties of being the translator. There's a limited space for the subtitles (and you're probably being paid peanuts too). So you can't put "Saxone's (which should be sakusohnzu in phonetic Japanese, not the sakuson of 'Saxon') - a well known rather downmarket shoeshop chain which is now part of Barratts." I suppose you could either try to think of a Japanese equivalent (Amerikaya?) or say "discount store" in Japanese.
"Ancient Britons" is probably funnier and truer to the surreal spirit of Monty Python.
Sillyscurry, a blog written in Japanese and English by Kitamura Genkotsu, a Japanese student living in London, linked to my entry about the death of the Japanese comedian Ikariya Chosuke and mentioned that some people say The Drifters, the troupe that Ikariya led, were like Monty Python. I can see the similarity in terms of their huge influence on a generation and beyond, and also in the fact that both were first popular in the early 1970s. And The Drifters could get pretty surreal too, although the setting for the show was always a traditional proscenium arch stage.
I've often wondered how anyone brought up outside of the UK can find Monty Python funny though, packed as it is with so many obscure British cultural references. I wonder whether children recently arrived in the UK in the early 1970s (when I had just arrived in Japan) also watched Monty Python as I watched the Drifters and tried out the catchphrases in the playground in order to make friends.
When I was in Japan again in the 1990s, I borrowed Monty Python videos from the local rental store and found that someone had gone to the trouble of putting Japanese subtitles on them. They were mostly accurate but one cultural reference escaped them. In the fire brigade sketch, Mrs Little (Terry Jones) is asked questions about her shoes by a fireman on the phone, and says "Saxones" (the now defunct shoe shop chain), obviously in response to being asked where she had bought them from. The no doubt by now desperate Japanese subtitler plumped for "Ancient Britons" as the translation.
An article from Reuters puts some factual flesh on my previous posting about Filipino texting:
"The country's 22 million mobile users, more than a quarter of the population, send an average of seven messages each every day."
"Some say Filipinos are shy and appreciate the relative anonymity of texting. Others say conventions such as inquiring after the health of one another's families before starting to chat verbally has made SMS an attractive time-saver.
Certainly, money is a factor. Sending a message can cost as little as half a peso (0.9 U.S. cents), an affordable option in a country where the minimum wage in the capital is just $5 a day. "
I don't think 'shy' is quite the word I would use to describe this kind of behaviour. It's a preference for being indirect.
We moved to Japan, to a city in the north called Sendai, when I was six years' old. The bullet train did not go as far as Sendai in those days, and there were very few foreigners living there, apart from some missionary families and families who taught (as mine did) at the local universities.
I went to a Japanese kindergarten and then a Japanese school, as there were no international schools. This meant I learnt Japanese as one learns a first language - by repeating what other people said, in the contexts they said it in, without consciously understanding the vocabulary or grammar. There was one nun (it was a Catholic school) who could speak English, who would help me once a week with any questions I had, and the Japanese alphabet, counting and days of the week.
The other person who helped me was Ikariya Chosuke, who died at the age of 72 on the 20th March. He led a comedy troupe called The Drifters, who had a very silly variety programme on TV on Saturday nights from 1969 to 1985, called Hachijidayo, Zeninshugo!"("It's Eight O'Clock! Let's Get Together!") It was extremely scatalogical, but my parents, thankfully, realised that being able to laugh at jokes in another language, no matter how crude, was helping my confidence, so they would let me stay up to watch it.
Ikariya's death has provoked a wave of nostalgia from Japanese people of my generation who remember repeating The Drifters' catchphrases in the playground. I could still probably sing the whole opening song word perfect given the chance. Apparently the programme took over 50% of the viewing audience in 1973, putting it in the top 50 most watched programmes of all time in Japan. So it was a very effective way of me being able to find some common ground with my classmates - vital for settling down in a new culture.
Watching my toddler son learn to speak and read has shown me how even the youngest children are drawn to books about bodily functions. He loves Maurice Sendak's 'Some Swell Pup', even though it's got way too many words for him, because of the graphic weeing and pooing of the little puppy. Which reminds me, I really should get him this book, 'Everyone Poops', which, no coincidence perhaps, is by a Japanese author.
I realise I have posted about the film 'Lost in Translation' extensively before, and it is slightly off-topic, being intercultural but nothing to do with information and communications technologies. Nonetheless, this article by Leilla Matsui (a freelance writer living in Japan who was involved in the film) is something I have to link to (thanks to Blogalization for alerting me to it), as she is so right, especially in saying:
" The subtle interplay of glance and gesture makes Coppola's film a tribute to great Japanese filmmakers like Yasujiro Ozu (often referred to as "the most Japanese filmmaker") whose meticulously crafted films about seemingly little things make 'Lost in Translation' more a Japanese film than a film about Japan -- a point her detractors here seemed to have overlooked. "
and also argues the film is quite the opposite of the usual racist films depicting Westerners in 'other' cultures:
"The locals who the film's protagonists encounter in everyday life are, ultimately, indifferent to the presence of these American visitors -- a refreshing and radical departure from the typical Eurocentric view which places Westerners at the centre of everyone else's universe. "
The film does not open in Japan until April/May, so few Japanese have seen it so far. I found some reviews on blogs from Japanese people who either live in North America/Europe or were visiting and saw the film. Here are some excerpts from what they say (my translation):
From the comments section of this blog
"It has quite a light touch [untranslatable Japanese word - assari - also means crisp, clean] and had a nice feeling about it. There was no sex or violence and the main actress was pretty cute. The storyline was more like an inconsequential travel journal and was even a bit sluggish. If it had been more 'crash bang wallop' I suppose it would have been a straightforward American movie. The depiction of Japan was nothing out of the ordinary - amusement arcades, pachinko parlours, red lantern bars etc - the sort of places foreigners like. But it is different from the usual films where Japan is the stage because the story is about two Americans. Not much dialogue for an American movie, I thought. Even though there wasn't much of a plot, I managed to stay awake. Perhaps because the main actress fitted the atmosphere of the film so well.
(Yozo Suzuki)
Looking at all the comments on the internet, people seem to be split between "it was boring" and "no this bit was great". People are also saying that you enjoy it because you're Japanese or you can't enjoy it because you're Japanese.
(t-hide)
I had big expectations because the reviews had been so good and it was winning prizes for its script but I was surprised to be so completely wrong in my expectations. There wasn't a single interesting incident and the story hardly develops at all. I suppose it was just another Hollywood movie, but half the film was in Japanese and there were no subtitles, so perhaps this gave it a fresh feeling to Americans.
(kiki)
I went to see it with a friend. It was great. I recommend it...but I think I enjoyed it because I was Japanese, surely people from other countries won't find it all interesting. Especially as there are no subtitles in English... and all sorts of insider-type insights...
(keita)
When I spoke at the VoxPolitics event on blogging last summer, I made a reference to Japanese people reading and writing novels on their mobile phones, which was greeted with derision by one of the Angry Young Men taking notes via Hydra. Well naa naa naa.
Joi Itoh notices this New York Times article picked up on Gen Kanai's blog and wonders if there is any link between the lack of expressed emotion in Finnish and Japanese societies and the fact that both countries have been such enthusiastic adopters of mobile phones.
Obviously one point, made in the comments, is that mobile phones allow people to contact each other in a very intimate-seeming way without showing emotion face to face. Although as another commenter notes, it may also be related to the fact the both societies are highly literate, so comfortable with communicating by text.
From the cross cultural consulting work I did last year for a Japanese engineer working in Finland, I would say the Finnish emotional suppression comes across as more cold and dour than that of the Japanese - there is a distinct lack of smiles and the elaborate rituals of hospitality and politeness that you would find as a newcomer to Japan and it makes Japanese people feel very uncomfortable initially.
Just when I thought intercultural uses of information and communication technology was a nice little unexplored niche for me to stumble around in, it turns out it's been given a good academic working over for the past 6 years at least, at the biennial 'Cultural Attitudes Towards Technology and Communication' conference. So can I scrape together the money and the time to attend CATaC '04 in Sweden? I will definitely be forking out 55 Australian dollars for the proceedings of 2002.