| 1. | (12 posts) | Future of Takahata |
| 2. | (4 posts) | Lost in the Translation |
We looked at 57 posts by 34 different contributors.
No intro, read on.
The other half of Studio Ghibli (what's his name again?) hasn't been in the spotlight for several years, leading Naoki to wonder about Takahata's future plans, "Because of big succes of Mr.Miyazaki, there may be no chance to Mr. Isao Takahata, the other leading Gibli artist, and fellow animator to make their movies. . . I do believe that his works deserve more respect, even in US. And I thought "Yamada" was work of art of digital anime. Does someone know what is his new plan at Gibli?"
Chris Kuan added, "I think you would be surprised at how many people actually prefer Takahata's works to Miyazaki's. I don't know whether this is merely because of the source material (that is, Miyazaki tends to make work based on his own ideas, whereas Takahata tends to make movies out of other people's ideas), but it seems to be fairly common. Or at least, not uncommon."
Agreement from Michael Kerpan, "I prefer "Grave" and "Only Yesterday" over anything by Miyazaki, and would rate "Yamadas" and "Goshu" alongside "Totoro" and "Nausicaa" (and Kondo's "Whisper")."
Julio Gea-Banacloche translated a small portion of an interview between Miyazaki and the French newspaper "Liberation",
Interviewer: "What's the status of your partnership with Isao Takahata, the co-founder of Studio Ghibli?"
Miyazaki: "We have gotten older, and Isao has regained his independence, we no longer alternate [projects] at the Studio"
Interviewer: "Will "Yamada-kun" be his last Ghibli film?"
Miyazaki: "I think so."
More from Micahel, "Does this mean no more films from Takahata at all -- or no more GHIBLI films from Takahata?
A (perhaps somewhat related) question for visitors to the Ghibli Museum --
In all the promotional materials for the Ghibli Museum (that I've seen), only Miyazaki projects seem to be featured. Is this really mainly just a Miyazaki Museum?
Solo Aldragon noted, "Miyazaki words only means that he think that the Ghibli studio will no longer product Takahata films. So maybe Takahata will make new films, but it will *probably* be with another studio."
Deborah Goldsmith answered the museum query, "The things I remember that related to specific works:
The rest was more generally on animation, with cels, etc. from various Ghibli movies. I wasn't paying enough attention to remember if there was material from non-Miyazaki movies. The two ekonte books I remember thumbing through were Sen and Mononoke Hime. There were several others, but I don't remember what they were. *^^*;;"
Michael asked for impressions of "The Story of Yanagawa's Canals" documentary, and Mike Arnold wrote, "I saw it and it was kind of dry, not the most interesting documentary I've seen. Although I complain about some of the things he says in speeches now and then, I do agree with other list members about Takahata's talent as a director, and it would be a terrible waste if he has trouble making films from here on."
Thread padding? Nah. In between the "Was Nausicaa vegetarian?" thread Julio Gea-Banacloche wrote, "That whole scene, BTW, has some of the most painfully overwrought language in the entire Dana Lewis/Toren Smith half of the translation. I hadn't looked at the English version in years, and I did just now, and it was incredibly painful to read. I have to try and get it out of my memory again, now..."
Which prompted clammorings for details which Julio supplied, "I may be stepping into controversial territory, especially since Lewis and Smith have a reputation (largely of their own making) as being *the* best translators that anybody could wish for, but anyway.
The fact is that, for some reason, they had the notion that they had to "embellish" the English translation, making people speak in a "colorful" way. Sometimes--very rarely--this worked OK. Most of the time, it didn't, and too often they made decisions that are completely
arbitrary. For instance, somehow they decided that the wormhandlers' speech should be written in a funny angular font. I can't imagine what they were trying to convey with this or why, since in the original their speech is written with a normal font, just like everybody else's. They also speak normally, not with broken sentences like phony indians in an old B-western movie. . . *Nothing*, as far as I can tell, is archaic, or even that funny, in the innkeeper's original speech. And yet, they give him lots of weird phrases like that. Like later on, when talking about the gold coins, there was absolutely no reason to translate "kitanakute" as "befouled", when kitanai is just the normal, everyday way to say "dirty." . .
To get a feeling for just how much Lewis and Smith added to the original, just compare the way people speak in the second half of the
translation (Matt Thorn's half) to the way they speak in the first half. The difference is just incredible. Thorn's translation takes
much fewer liberties (essentially, none) with the text, and it is a lot more like the "literal subtitles" that we all seem to favor around
here.
Interesting since most (US) anime fans rely on translators to extract the full meaning of a work. Hard to judge the quality of a translation if you don't know the source material, but that's another ball of wax.
Chris Kuan spotted a blog with photos of the Studio Ghibli Museum (where taking photos is officially discouraged). He also found mention of a new R1 DVD in the works for "Grave of the Fireflies". While on that topic, Hanno Mueller sent word that the film is receiving an award in Germany. Gregor Menasian posted his impressions and some US DVD news from the SFIFF. More SFIFF thoughts from Warren Savage. Yes, even more SFIFF coverage, this time from Clarrisa Smith.
That's all (s)he wrote.