3 Japanese fantasy cinema titles needed

Mon Mar 22 18:11:19 EDT 2010

Tenkosei subs are 'fansub' (not included in the legit release) and were made recently , not sure it fits your research criteria. As for 40/50s fantasy film, i doubt there were subtitles made at that time (you will find dub at best imo, Warning From Space may be the first english-dubbed japanese sci-fi movie)

----- Mail Original -----
De: "Claudia Anderson" <204172 at soas.ac.uk>
À: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
Envoyé: Lundi 22 Mars 2010 23h05:44 GMT +01:00 Amsterdam / Berlin / Berne / Rome / Stockholm / Vienne
Objet: Re: 3 Japanese fantasy cinema titles needed

Also in reference to the DVD of the 1982 film Tenkosei - I have found the film on Amazon here http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E8%BB%A2%E6%A0%A1%E7%94%9F-DVD-%E5%A4%A7%E6%9E%97%E5%AE%A3%E5%BD%A6/dp/B00005HXBN/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1269295311&sr=8-1 I am able to read the Japanese, but it does not seem to mention anywhere anything about the subtitles - would anyone know whether this version comes with subtitles, or whether there is another version? 

On 22 March 2010 21:47, Claudia Anderson < 204172 at soas.ac.uk > wrote: 

Hello all, 

As further research into this project, I have found that investigating postwar films (40s and 50s) may also be useful. For this, does anyone know where I can get a copy of a film from this era (preferably of fantasy genre, but I am imagining such films are elusive, so any films that have some relation to this genre are also good) with the original subtitles? If anyone knows any good titles, I could at least try and obtain a film by DVD - but if anyone knows where I could find original subtitles for films of this era, that would be a great help. If such materials are in fact almost impossible to find - any literature of that era that looks closely at film subtitle translation (such as journals) would also help. 

Regards, 

Claudia 

On 5 March 2010 14:55, Mark Nornes < amnornes at umich.edu > wrote: 

All of the historical pieces for Japanese cinema are in the Cinema Babel footnotes, and they're pretty much autobiographical. A 'how-to' literature also sprang up from the 1990s on (I don't know if it's before that). 

As for the rest of the world, it seems most secondary literature is social scientific and so they're interested in studying how it works at the time of writing, not what happened in the past. But this probably a good thing, as it means you can do original work. To the degree you can track the work of the linguists and psychologists, you can have a fairly precise sense for how subtitling was done at a given moment. 

Markus 

_________________________________ 
A. M. Nornes 
Chair 
Department of Screen Arts and Cultures 
University of Michigan 

6525 Haven Hall; 505 S. State Street 
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Phone: 734-763-4087 
FAX: 734-936-1846 

On Mar 5, 2010, at 9:28 AM, Claudia Anderson wrote: 

Thankyou Mark for the point on the celluloid subtitles. I have another related question on the comparison of subtitle translation over time - I have struggled to find much more literature beyond 'Cinema Babel' that examine subtitle translation over time, particularly for Japanese cinema - does anyone know what other literature there is on this subject? 

Regards, 

On 4 March 2010 18:21, Mark Nornes < amnornes at umich.edu > wrote: 

Dear Claudia, 

Be careful if you are making claims about the translations vis a vis the historical contexts of the films. Subtitles for DVDs are generally different than the original release subtitles. And I suspect that in this genre, most fantasy films from Japan were dubbed into English in the 60s and 70s. To be confident, you would want to use a video where the subs were burned or printed onto the celluloid. Even then, you would want to be careful. 

An alternative would be looking into the BFI or other archives for any distributor collections. They might have materials like the original subtitle list on paper. I saw materials like this in the Academy library (though not for Japanese film). Even better, if there are any of those distributors still around ask them directly. And if you can identify translators by name, they might actually have scripts in their own files. 

Good luck. I look forward to seeing your work! 

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 Mar 3, 2010, at 6:06 PM, Claudia Anderson wrote: 

Hi all, 

I have posted here regarding the same research project before, and I have got to the stage of doing my own close analysis of subtitle translation of 3 films in different eras. However, I am not so au fait with the range of fantasy films on offer, so I would be eternally grateful if somebody could suggest 3 Japanese fantasy film subtitles, one film from the 60s, one from the 80s, and one from this decade, and ones that have been subtitled into English. I am also looking for the scripts of the original japanese dialogues, and should be able to find them myself, but if anyone has links to those as well, that would be ideal. I have chosen the genre of fantasy due to its tendency to lend itself to opportunities for 'creative' translations. 

Regards, 

Claudia 