on film translations (cont.)

[Eike Exner]

According to Diaz Cintas and Remael in *Audiovisual Translation: Subtitling*,
indirect translation between two languages via English is relatively common
in the global film industry. There are far more English/Finnish and
English/Japanese translators than Finnish/Japanese ones, especially within
the film industry (I mean, how many Finnish films make it to Japan each
year?).

Of course it would be better by far to translate directly from Finnish to
Japanese (since indirect translation only increases the inevitable losses
that come with translation), but film distributors mostly care about their
bottom line, and not what academics and critics will say. (Diaz Cintas and
Remael make the argument that a better translation is better for business,
btw, but either distributors don't understand this or the additional revenue
does not offset the additional costs of direct translation).

So considering that the translator doesn't know Finnish, the Japanese
distributor of course is only interested in making sure that the English
translation (that the Japanese translation is based on) is accurate. From
the logic of capitalism that makes perfect sense, unfortunately.

Best,
Eike



On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 10:54 AM, Eija Niskanen <eija.niskanen at gmail.com>wrote:

> It is not of course an official one, but I wonder, why the practice of
> re-checking and comparing a former translation, if the Japanese decide
> to do the translations based on the English translation of the Finnish
> movie, or a Serbian movie or a Norwegian movie or whatever? I am just
> curious if anybody knows a reason for this practice? I myself would
> consider far more vital to to compare the Japanese translation with
> the original Finnish dialogue, once the translation via English is
> completed. Of course, in an ideal situation they would do the Japanese
> subtitles directly from the Finnish dialogue list...
>
> Eija
>
> On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 10:37 AM, Mark Nornes <amnornes at umich.edu> wrote:
> > I don't quite understand. So the Japanese subtitlers are working of of
> > (translated) English scripts? And these are the versions the Finish
> > producers are considering "official"?
> >
> > M
> >
> > (Sent from my iPod, so please excuse the brevity and mistakes.)
> >
> > On Jun 28, 2010, at 8:46 AM, "Eija Niskanen" <eija.niskanen at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> I am adding to the previous, very interesting discussions on film
> >> translations a practical question: why do the Japanese translation
> >> offices want to do an additional checking on native language -
> >> English, before the translate from English to Japanese? For ex. there
> >> are some Finnish movies coming to Japan, and the Finnish distributor
> >> has provided Finnish and English dialogue lists, of which the English
> >> translation is already producer-approved. Why do an additional check
> >> in Japan?
> >>
> >> Eija
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Eija Niskanen
> Baltic Sea - Japan Film Project
> Kichijoji Honcho 4-12-6
> Musashino-shi
> Tokyo 180-0004
>
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