Introduction

[Michael E. Kerpan]

On Thu, 27 Jul 2000,  Markus <amnornes at umich.edu> wrote:
 
> This [children preferring raw Japanese with scripts] is curious. What does it
> mean? How do you actually go about this? What are their ages? Have you ever
> heard of any other kids doing this? If you ask them why they like it that
> way, what do they say.

Luckily, for Ghibli films, volunteers have created script translationsfor every
film but _Our Neighbors, the Yamadas_ (which isn't out on video yet). Some of
these are just functional; others (most notably those for _Princess Mononoke_
and _Only Yesterday_ are fully annotated). The translations are available
through www.nausicaa.net.

Our children are 15, (almost) 12 and (almost) 12.  They say they prefer the
Japanese originals because the video quality seems better.  They think
sub-titles are somewhat distracting (unless they are underneath the picture
entirely in letterboxed releases).  So far, their friends have resisted
the concept of reading 30 (or much more in the case of _Mononoke_) pages of
script as a prelude to video watching. <g>

Michael Kerpan
Boston, MA
kerpan at attglobal.net