Essay Pinning Japanese down By Linda Hoaglund	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
日本語の英訳で苦労すること 日本の映画に字幕をつけるうえでホーグランドさんが苦労するのが、やはり日本語に特徴的な表現方法。 例えば主語がなくても会話が成立すること、表面的で意味があいまいなやり取りなどです。 ホーグランドさんはそれらの意味を汲み取り、欧米人にもそのニュアンスが分かるような訳文作りに努めています。

In writing subtitles for Japanese films, I aim to escort Western viewers into every nuance of the story. To do this, I must tackle a series of obstacles because the differences between Japanese and English are so profound. Japanese evolved out of a society with rigidly enforced hierarchies of class and sex. It inherently muffles the individual voice, promoting superficial harmony. Passive, mostly devoid of subject, and awash with polite but perfunctory expressions, it can be baffling even to its native speakers. Because of this, I have to tune in to the characters' inflections to grasp their intent and then brazenly move away from literal translation in order to represent what they're actually saying.

In Japanese conversation, two people can convey meaning by exchanging the infinitive form of the verb "to go." "Iku?" "Iku." One has asked, "Will you go?" the other has responded, "I will go," each implying their own pronoun as well as a common destination. This is because the subject is often considered redundant. Yet if a movie is a love story, there's a significant transition when a character abandons the first person, switching to "we," though unspoken in the Japanese. In such cases I confer with the film's director to ascertain that exact moment and reflect it in my subtitles.

Japanese interactions are also filled with seemingly innocuous greetings. "Yoroshiku onegai shimasu," "Osewa ni narimasu," "Otsukaresama deshita." Devoid of subjects, each is supposed to convey a hazy concept of appreciation or indebtedness. Though they are all meant to function as social lubricants, the speaker's tone can betray specific emotional messages. Juvenile resentment, profound desperation, and fawning gratitude can all be funneled into the rote workplace greeting, "Otsukaresama deshita." An attentive translator will mirror the inflection, in anything from "I can't thank you enough for all your hard work," to "I can't wait 'til you're out of my sight.' "

When beginning a sentence with "I" is considered egotistical, a passive stance comes naturally. Conveniently built into the foundation of the language, the passive voice also preserves group harmony. Somehow in Japanese, individuals don't take actions, things just happen. With no subject, nobody's ultimately responsible. But because the passivity is innate, not necessarily intended, I render it into an active English voice, alert to my own Japanese tendency to slip into the passive.

It may be no secret to readers in Japan that even Japanese can find each other hard to understand. It's been confided to me (that passive voice!) that the reason they go out drinking at night is that only with the liberating effects of alcohol are they comfortable saying what really happened in an amicable but ultimately ambiguous meeting. My subtitles feel more like those inebriated but direct exchanges. You can understand what's really going on.

Shukan ST: Oct. 19, 2007

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