Re Hibari film title

[Aaron Gerow]

>When working on a film 
>which has not yet been given an English translation for the title, how have 
>scholars on this list been proceeding?  Just translate the title in a way 
>you 
>choose (literally, figuratively) to be appropriate?  Since once a title is 
>translated the translation tends to take on a life of its own (e.g., Kamei's 
>film 'Senso to heiwa,' which usually is referred to as "War and Peace" but 
>which Kyoko Hirano insists should be "Between War and Peace").  I think this 
>might have been discussed some time ago on this list but I would 
>appreciate a 
>reprise.

This is an important question and it kind of continues some of the issues 
we talked about during the discussion on romanization. Again, I would 
argue that for the case of consistency, accuracy, and easy of use, 
scholars should keep to some rules when dealing with English titles of 
Japanese film. To me, they are the following:

First, one must do one's utmost to determine if anyone has translated the 
title before. This can be a real pain, but any real scholar must do it. 
When I was editing publications for the YIDFF, I spent hours and hours 
doing that. That means searching databases and existing publications in 
English, some of which can include obscure festival catalogs. Stephen 
Cremin has reflected some of this in his Japanese film database, so I use 
that a lot. In the future, such databases of usable English titles should 
be expanded. This should also remind us that research libraries must do a 
better job of collecting film festival catalogs so that basic things like 
titles can be searched. Most are woefully remiss about this, working 
under the mistaken impression that film festivals are not part of 
scholarship.

Second, even when one finds an English title, one must approach it 
critically. First, one must evaluate the source. For instance, the Tokyo 
Film Festival is notorious for using bad titles for Japanese films in its 
catalog. Since it is a weak festival that acts slavishly to the film 
companies, if some ignorant hack at a film company gives some ridiculous 
English title for an old Japanese film showing in the classics section, 
the TIFF will obediently use that even though the English literature has 
long used a different title (I once had this argument with a TIFF catalog 
editor). Second, one must evaluate the nature of the title. Is it an 
actual release title? Or just some translation someone made up? You have 
to be suspicious of sources like the IMDB, where any fool can submit a 
title. If it is the official release title, you are largely bound to it, 
but if it is just a translation, I think you can voice an objection if 
the translation is bad (while not forgetting to note that this bad 
translation already exists in the literature). One problem that is 
increasing is the fact that, with young directors increasingly trying to 
sell their films abroad, a lot of non-English speakers are creating 
English titles for Japanese films that are grammaticallly incorrect (for 
instance, that are missing necessary "the's" etc.). But if this is a 
release title, you are kind-of stuck with it. Third, you do have to note 
occasional differences in titles: some films end up with several titles 
depending on where they were released or who's been writing about them. 

Third, when you know you have title no one has translated before, you 
should try to translate it accurately according to the title's meaning. 
There is the temptation, especially since some actual release titles are 
different from the original title, to elaborate and come up with 
something "cool," but since scholars are not publicists, the main 
objective should be in transmitting to non-Japanese readers what the 
actual title is (both in romanization and in translation).

I'd like to hear from others what their attitude towards this problem is.


Aaron Gerow
Associate Professor
International Student Center
Yokohama National University
79-1 Tokiwadai
Hodogaya-ku, Yokohama 240-8501
JAPAN
E-mail: gerow at ynu.ac.jp
Phone: 81-45-339-3170
Fax: 81-45-339-3171