UTF-8__0415396417Translation

DELIA CHIARObottom and right to left, as this is the natural reading pattern of Japanese.Although some translations are kept in this original format, others are ‘flipped’from left to right in translation so as not to confuse foreign readers. Naturally,this practice can lead to inconsistencies with the real world, such as all charactersbeing left-handed. A culturally specific example is that people wearingkimonos in the original manga, where it would be shaped like a y, would bedepicted wearing them the other way around in the flipped version. In Japan,the left side overlaps the right (from the viewer’s perspective) when the personis dead.9.4.3 FUZZY AREASAllusions, songs, rhymes, metaphors, idiomaticity and verbally expressedhumour are also extremely problematic. These features have been labelled asfuzzy because they cross strictly linguistic features with cultural references.9.4.3.1 SONGSIn musicals, as well as films, the words of the songs often contribute to thestoryline. In the case of dubbing, the songs are often translated and sung inthe target language, but they are just as often left in the original, subtitledor left untranslated. The latter is especially typical of Japanese cartoons inwhich audiences suddenly hear a song in Japanese when the rest of the audiois dubbed in another language.9.4.3.2 VERBALLY EXPRESSED HUMOURVerbally expressed humour is notoriously difficult to translate when it is simplywritten or spoken, but on screen it can become especially complex when visualsand vocals coalesce. A clear example of this difficulty can be found in a scenein The Big Chill (1983, Lawrence Kasdan, USA) in which one of the maincharacters, Sam, on being asked by Meg to father her child, replies : ‘You’regiving me a massive headache!’, to which Meg replies: ‘You’re not gonna usethat old excuse, are you? You’ve got genes!’ In response, Sam looks down athis trousers and touches the jeans he is wearing, a bemused expression on hisface. The Italian version of Meg’s final utterance becomes perché hai dei buonigeni [lit. ‘because you have good genes’] but the word geni is monosemous andcan only refer to chemically patterned information (‘genes’). Furthermore, itbears no phonological resemblance to the universal word for denim trousers,‘jeans’. Thus, Italian audiences must have wondered why Berenger shouldtouch and glare at his jeans as he does.Subtitling does not escape the snares of verbally expressed humour either.The main character in The Pianist (2002, Roman Polanski, USA) is calledWladyslaw Szpilman. The language of the film is mainly English with some162