This month’s installment of Inkstick’s monthly culture column, The Mixed-up Files of Inkstick Media (inspired by From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler), where we link pop culture to national security and foreign policy, is all about the art of translation. Sometimes, a good translation can save our lives.
자막의 장벽, 1인치 정도 되는 장벽을 뛰어넘으면 여러분이 훨씬 더 많은 영화를 즐길 수 있다
“Once you overcome the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films.”
–Bong Joon-ho, director of the Korean drama Parasite at the 2020 Golden Globes.
The contentious battle between those who watch foreign media with English subtitles versus with English voice actors dubbed over extends beyond just my realm of Japanese anime and the realm of your film major friends’ snobbish discussions of Wong Kar-Wai or Alfonso Cuarón. And one’s stance on the issue has broader implications for the nature and development of multilateralism and cultural competency in an increasingly globalized society. Accessibility arguments aside, I’ve personally seen significant developments in the quality of dubbing and translation for the anime I watch over the years, such that I’ve overcome my own petty elitist feelings of “always sub over dub, hands down” and now watch an even mix of shows in both sub and dub.
Now I know I don’t have to tell any multilingual kings, queens, and non-binary royalty out there that translation is truly an art form. An anecdotal pop culture favorite is the story of President John F. Kennedy, who told over one million Germans, “Ich bin ein Berliner” or “I am a jelly donut” in 1963. But did you know that the quip of a story itself even leaves out some cultural and linguistic nuances from the event? Yes, a “berliner” is a name for a type of donut in Germany. But, given the context of the day, the event, and the historical moment of the 1960s, most of the German listeners that day clearly understood what Kennedy meant and paid no mind to how easily it could be misinterpreted. The addition of “ein,” though simultaneously making his sentence susceptible to the jelly donut interpretation, was in truth meant to signify to Germans that though Kenney was not born and raised in Berlin, he considered himself one of them and so would not back down in his support. In addition, though “berliner” is a term used for a type of donut in German, the more regionally appropriate word for a “berliner” is instead “pfannkuchen.”
How we translate one language into another is an extremely political and intentional act, for a multitude of reasons. Bringing it back to anime (as I always do), dubbed shows have come a long way just over the last decade. Many older shows that received dubs really do sound that bad. The acting sounds fake and the chosen voice actor doesn’t match the character on screen anywhere near as well as the original Japanese voice actor. Recent dubs of anime, however, are entirely separate works of art from the original Japanese, due to marked improvements in the English translation’s ability to capture the humor or mood of a scene while simultaneously adjusting it for the culture of the new language’s audience, such as in one character’s flashy entrance in the show “Sk8 the Infinity,” where the character yells “Hey bitches and bros and non-binary hoes!,” or nearly any line spoken by the narrator in the show “Kaguya-sama; Love is War.”
How we translate one language into another is an extremely political and intentional act, for a multitude of reasons.
Early childhood development research once denounced multilingualism in children as unnecessarily slowing down their development. And while it’s true that raising a child from infancy in a multilingual environment can lead to speech delays in their early stages of growth, nowadays many support multilingualism and the benefits it can bring. With respect to foreign affairs, and especially weapons of mass destruction such as nuclear weapons, multilingualism becomes critical. “People who learned a second language in adulthood, exhibit less emotional bias and a more rational approach when confronting problems in the second language than in their native one,” says a TED-Ed video about the benefits of a bilingual brain.
An example with respect to nuclear weapons regards a central term currently serving as the foundation of nearly all nuclear weapons states’ nuclear postures: “deterrence.” In Chinese, the word literally translates to 威慑 (wei1 she4). In English, “deterrence” is typically seen as passive, non-threatening, and self-defensive or, at the very least, as neutral (whether or not it actually is). Conversely, in Chinese the term connotes something much more aggressive and violent, translated by the Chinese-English dictionary app Pleco as “to terrorize with force.” Due to this change in subtext, early Chinese documents discussing their nuclear arsenal disliked and sometimes avoided using 威慑, which in turn led to misunderstandings by the West as to why China did not emphasize a deterrence policy in their nuclear positioning.
Another recent example is in Ukrainian President Zelensky’s speech at the Munich Security Conference on Feb. 19, 2022. Some sources such as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov claimed Zelensky stated outright his and Ukraine’s wish to attain nuclear weapons once more, causing the internet and my Twitter feed to go into a frenzied panic over how this could further exacerbate an already tenuous situation. Others, such as those at The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, were quick to respond that such a translation of Zelensky’s speech is a mischaracterization. Though Zelensky pondered the validity of prior agreements for Ukraine to remain free of nuclear weapons after the fall of the Soviet Union and the country’s subsequent relinquishment of nuclear weapons within its territory in the 1990s, Zelensky did not explicitly state he wants nuclear weapons again, nor does Ukraine acquiring these weapons once more seem likely.
Growing up multilingual is not a resource all receive access to, however. I’m certainly not fluent in Japanese, but have picked up enough about the intricacies of Japanese-to-English translation to have been able to grow a deep appreciation for creative translation choices in both subbed and dubbed anime. Which speaks to the core of my epiphany about subbed v. dubbed shows: It’s not about one language being better than the other, rather, it’s about the quality of the translation and how it conveys the mood, nuance, and layers upon layers of cultural and historical background of a dialogue into a new language with its own separate cultural and historical background. In foreign policy and national security, a robust understanding of the original language in which a speech is given or a white paper written can prevent rapid snowball effects or dire consequences.
A glance at the world’s 77 years of nuclear weapons history shows a dense smattering of pure, dumb luck moments that have saved us from annihilation. And although learning a foreign language in adulthood is notably difficult (to put it lightly), ensuring proper and conscientious translation seems like the least we can do when weapons of mass destruction or tense and precarious international affairs are involved. As Nawal A. Al-Fattah put it: “Foreign language proficiency and intercultural dialogue are the wings of the bird of peace.”
