New Reference Book: Phonetic issues

[Stephen Cremin]

Thank you for your comments which have been very useful.

>From the emails I've received privately and on the list, I'm tending towards 
the idea of representing "Shall we Dance", for example, as "Shall we Dansu" 
in the romaji.  Of course, it makes the work much easier for me: even 
Japanese nationals can't work out a fair portion of katakana.  But I would 
like to hear from any members who feel differently.  Consistency would 
require representing Paris as "Pari", Shanghai as "Shanhai", China 
(sometimes) as "Shina", etc.  Its too much work for this edition, but 
ideally one also wants a literal translation listed for all 9000 titles 
which could "correct" the katakana.  But what about directors who use 
katakana in their names: is it Kotani Henrii (actually, "i" with a macron 
here I think, and sometimes Henrii Kotani), Kurihara Tomasu and Gattsu 
Ishimatsu?

Actually, I always intended to give both options if/when the work migrates 
to CD-ROM and/or internet so I'm happy to do the conversions now.  And I'm 
very glad to hear that Markus is thinking of creating his own translations 
for Ogawa Shinsuke.  I should have been much stricter in taking on titles as 
"official", given that filmographies in festival catalogues are particularly 
erroneous.  So if anyone else on the list has a preferred translation of a 
directors filmography - that is to say a director that they've particularly 
focused on in your research - I'd be interested in incorporating it over 
time.  (Films with official "export" titles, such as Kitano's "Boiling 
Point", remain however.)  I have all 9000+ titles also recorded with their 
hiragana representation, so sorting them alphabetically into a kanji index 
is a simple process.  (God bless Clarisworks.)

I'm still unsure on the issue of stylistic interpretation.  "undo" or 
"Undo"; "PiCNiC", "Picnic" or "PICNIC".  Presumably one refers to the title 
on the film print rather than the poster (etc) which may reinterpret it.  
(For anyone wondering why I used to record Kurosawa Kiyoshi's "Do-Re-Mi-Fa 
Musume no Chi wa Sawagu" as "Bumpkin Soup", its because that text happended 
to appear on the original video sleeve ... not sure now whether I should 
even maintain that as an alternative title.)  But the British Film Institute 
have migrated to imposing a house style on English titles because films such 
as "William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet" were getting a little too creative 
in their titling.  (The "+" - if that's how you interpret it - has an "&" at 
its centre.)  Although I think they maintain "Se7en" as "Se7en".

There's also been the suggestion that hyphens and colons should go.  "Sazae 
san" and not "Sazae-san".  Does that mean "onna tachi" rather than 
"onnatachi" also?  "Senhime", "Sen-hime" or "Sen hime"?  Perhaps colons 
should remain where a film is in a series - common in roman porno, sorry 
"roman poruno" - as in "OL Nikki: xxx". Presumably, not "O-Eru Nikki"  for 
the same reason as preserving "Shall we" in the romaji of "Shall we Dansu"?  
(Again, I'm ignoring long vowels in this email message.)  There's also the 
suggestion to drop the capitalisation in "MARKS no Yama" where "MARKS" is an 
acronym (if that's not giving away too much of the plot).  I'm against this 
unless some more of you persuade me.

Another issue is when an actor's name appears in the title, "Enoken no...", 
etc.  Is this actually part of the title or just "descriptive"?  I tend to 
keep them.  And "pink" films seem to nearly always have two titles: one for 
the video release, one for the limited theatrical release.  (Reflecting 
different audiences, one presumes.)  Some of Zeze Takehisa's work, for 
example, moves from "pink" cinemas to more mainstream venues, such as 
Eurospace: which release date does one record?  While on the subject, I 
ignore adult videos (AV), even though Mochizuki Rokuro (and various 
actresses) have made the crossover.  But it would be lovely to be able to 
incorporate TV dramas at some point, by transmission date...

Anyway, the book will be an ongoing project with a new edition each year.  
Kinema Junpo already publish a fantastic ?10,000 reference to Japanese film 
directors so mine can only compete in the Japanese market by being lighter, 
cheaper and more uptodate.  The work has time to mature.

Stephen Cremin
The Asian Film Library


______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com