Japan Distributors & Dub

[Mark Nornes]

I had to check this out. There are a bunch of articles in the newspapers, all inspired by the distributor's PR effort. 

They estimate the "Cho Nihongo Fukikae-ban" is attracting twice the normal audience for a dubbed version, or about a fourth of the tickets for Shutter Island. 42% of the prints were the dubbed version (188, as opposed to 264 subtitled prints). The PR asserts a difference between a stiff language of translation for the script (翻訳調のセリフ回し), versus something smooth and transparent. A motive for this is to attract young people who have drifted from the habit of going out to Western films. Here's a quote from the official website:

As everyone knows, the trick to enjoying mystery films is devoting oneself to solving riddles. But because of subtitles you carelessly miss important scenes!  Everyone's experienced this kind of regrettable moment. You don't see through the characters to recognize the criminal by "understanding the subtitles," but by paying attention to "faces" and "the movement of eyes." 

It goes on to assert that Japanese are used to subtitles, but dubbing is actually the mainstream in most of the world (debatable, of course). Furthermore, in the present day when young people are no longer used to reading books, you often year people complaining that they get tired, or can't read fast enough. But there are still people who can't quite handle dubbing, and that's why they created Super Dubs. 

They follow this with two lists: 

What sucks about dubbing: 

Image and sound just don't fit. 
The sense that the nuances of the original aren't coming through
Strange translations
Unnatural Japanese 

Super Dubbing is: 

Gets rid of the gap between Sub/Dub (Toda Natsuko's in charge!)
Only uses professional voice actors
Gets rid of "translator Japanese" and uses only words that don't feel strange
Uses easy to understand names for characters (I'm curious about this one)
It's a dubbing aimed specifically at adults

They follow this with an interview with Toda Natsuko. 

Why is there a sense of strangeness with dubbed versions, even though it's in Japanese?
Dubbing is a very unique literary style. A basic principle is that the movement of the lips speaking English much match up with the Japanese. This is something that cannot be changed. It is the fate of dubbing. Daily conversation and Japanese dubbing—it's the same Japanese, but so different that if you close your eyes while watching a present day drama in Japanese, and then play the Japanese dubbed version of an American drama, the difference is clear even if your eyes are closed. It's that kind of difference. 

So what were you attempting with Super Dubbing to deal with this difference?
For example, Leonardo de Caprio, who plays Teddy, faces a woman working in the hospital and asks, "Were you a nurse?" If you change this to natural Japanese, just saying "Kankoshi?" However, in English when you say "Were you a nurse?" your lips move three times. 

Ah, she goes on to say the obvious. You have to add some words to keep the lips and voice matching. It's not worth translating. 

In another interview, she says that she replaced the English medical terminology with Japanese words that are easy to understand. This is typical of Toda and a great example of domesticating the foreign work to sell as many tickets as possible. There are words that many English speakers don't understand, but they get excised to essentially dumb down the film and make it as accessible to as many people as possible. And in this case it's explicitly about drawing in the teenybopper crowd. 

It's interesting that Toda Natsuko is trotted out to be the face of Super Dubbing. In her many books, she goes to great lengths to attack dubbing and champion subbing as the only reasonable mode of translation for cinema. I'd like to see an interview with her press her on this about face. Could it be a principled shift, or is she just taking the money and running?

In the end, it seems that the only real difference is that they're trying harder. 

Markus




_________________________________
A. M. Nornes
Chair
Department of Screen Arts and Cultures
University of Michigan
6525 Haven Hall; 505 S. State Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-1608
Phone: 734-763-4087
FAX: 734-936-1846





On Apr 13, 2010, at 6:04 AM, M S wrote:

> Hi everyone,
> 
> According to some reports, Scorsese's Shutter Island is doing good at the box office, thanks to a "super Japanese dub" version which seems to attract a broader audience (youth, women...). 
> 
> Are dub versions becoming the norm for foreign films in Japan? And about this "super version", is it something special or just marketing?
> 
> Thanks for you help,
> 
> Michael
> http://wildgrounds.com

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