mverta
マイケル・バータ
As I mentioned before, I supervised the English subtitles, and whomever said it was exactly right: we targeted non-fan Westerners with no knowledge of Ultraman. There are hopes that this film would help indoctrinate people new to the franchise; people like me.
So the question is, would literal translations have made that big a negative impact? The answer is: yes, we felt so. Certainly the subs we received which had clearly been done by non-native speakers were borderline unintelligible in many places, and certainly not colloquial, nor particularly good "writing." There was going to be a trade-off: something approaching good English, colloquial dialog, or direct Japanese translation. We knew the hardcorers would re-sub it anyway, and we decided to keep the goal on bringing in a wider audience. For what it's worth, working with me on it was a top Hollywood writer, who is a life-long, die-hard Ultraman fan. Owns-an-apartment-in-Tokyo kinda fan.
I remember doing the re-mix for Cowboy Bebop, which went through the same thing - the English crew was great, and the dialog totally colloquial, but not dead-nuts accurate. Some people, whoo boy they got rattled by that. But tons of new fans came to the series.
In any case, certainly if you can TELL the subtitles aren't always literal translations, because you can read Japanese, you're definitely not who the subs were targeted at. Buy it, re-sub it, and celebrate the opportunity to reach out to a wider audience. That's my take on it. When I came to the project, there was no plan to do English subtitles at all, but I wouldn't shut up about it, especially the whole time we were in Japan - I really felt it was important to do, even though apparently it could be quite expensive. I even told them that no shortage of fans would do it for free. Turns out, two did
Ultimately, I don't want to take credit for what was clearly a good call, but I, for one, am glad to be able to show the film around town as is.
_Mike
So the question is, would literal translations have made that big a negative impact? The answer is: yes, we felt so. Certainly the subs we received which had clearly been done by non-native speakers were borderline unintelligible in many places, and certainly not colloquial, nor particularly good "writing." There was going to be a trade-off: something approaching good English, colloquial dialog, or direct Japanese translation. We knew the hardcorers would re-sub it anyway, and we decided to keep the goal on bringing in a wider audience. For what it's worth, working with me on it was a top Hollywood writer, who is a life-long, die-hard Ultraman fan. Owns-an-apartment-in-Tokyo kinda fan.
I remember doing the re-mix for Cowboy Bebop, which went through the same thing - the English crew was great, and the dialog totally colloquial, but not dead-nuts accurate. Some people, whoo boy they got rattled by that. But tons of new fans came to the series.
In any case, certainly if you can TELL the subtitles aren't always literal translations, because you can read Japanese, you're definitely not who the subs were targeted at. Buy it, re-sub it, and celebrate the opportunity to reach out to a wider audience. That's my take on it. When I came to the project, there was no plan to do English subtitles at all, but I wouldn't shut up about it, especially the whole time we were in Japan - I really felt it was important to do, even though apparently it could be quite expensive. I even told them that no shortage of fans would do it for free. Turns out, two did
Ultimately, I don't want to take credit for what was clearly a good call, but I, for one, am glad to be able to show the film around town as is._Mike
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