Sojourner的spaces有篇有趣的文章，说到中国文化的翻译问题。没有考证过这个问题，不过我想，中国人似乎喜欢意译大过音译，是不是也与我们历来翻译外文的习惯有关？我们讲求信达雅，因此，大多数人更喜欢“激光”而非“镭射”，虽然随着港台文化席卷大陆，大家也开始管“公交车”叫“巴士”。
——刚才简单地做了些搜索，却发现我的这个观点未必成立。百度百科上这篇关于意译的文章里列举了很多最早为音译而现在为意译的词语，读来倒是颇引人发笑的，譬如说“哀的美敦书”、“奄巴萨托”、“伯里玺天地”这样的词。万幸这样的音译没有成为主流……（补：我又想，这大概也是与中文的习惯有关，中文的词汇以两个字为主，蕴含丰富的成语也大多才四个字，因此在中文里以许多字去表达一个词汇的意思是非常不符合审美的——因此流传下来的音译词（人名、地名等除外），也大多是两个字的词，如“芭蕾”、“沙发”）
我一直有一定的文化优越感，认为中文多用意译，而我们的东亚邻国日韩则颇多采用音译（主观印象），说明了我们语言的优越性。我并不知道这是不是事实（因为你听一个完全陌生的语言的时候，自然会更多的注意到其中你能够辨识的音译词，用通信的词汇就好比在噪声中检测到了信号），但这种心态想来是颇典型的国人心态。
顺着我原来的想法，倘若中国人果真素来是认定意译好过音译的，那么我们去向别人推广我们的文化的时候，会不会我们也更偏好于意译？
另一个可能的解释是，在这种语言的互动中，谁是主动的。昨天在某个节目上听到/看到说日本寿司在东京奥运会之后开始在世界各地流行起来，观点是奥运会增进了外界对日本的了解，也让外人爱上了寿司。我没有考证这种说法有多大水分，不过今天随意google几下，也看到了寿司70年代开始在美国流行的说法。因此我想，寿司的普及是与日本经济的增长导致的文化出口密切关联的。当国家的经济开始腾飞，外人自然而然地会对该国的文化开始感兴趣，也愿意去花时间了解该国的语言。而中国在二十世纪的大部分时间里没有这种实力，因此我们的文化输出需要采用对方更容易接受的方式（意译）。
但我想问题并不太大。随着中国的经济起飞，自然地也会在出口各类商品的同时出口中国文化。固然很多方面可能晚了日韩一步，但我想在一些问题上“正名”的机会总是有的，因为这个东西和其它很多事情一样，谁的声音大谁就会被记住，而且人的记忆是非常短暂的，脑很容易被洗。
说到中餐的菜名，的确是颇难翻译的，一个原因倒也正是因为中文菜名的五花八门。在印度的时候，去的一家东亚餐厅，里面的中餐倒都是音译的，只是用的既非港式、也非台式的写法，说是大陆拼音但也不对，牛肉愣是写成nu ru之类的东西，实在令人啼笑皆非。
另外，想起来其实中餐也有音译输出的，特别是港式的点心系列，外国人也是叫起来非常开心。
Caché is not an easy film to appreciate, and it is one that will easily splits its audience into two camps (those who love it and those who hate it) while inciting heated discussions on Internet forums.
If you’ve seen the film, then the reason for the above mentioned phenomena is simple. Caché is a film with an open ending and lots of references and metaphors, leaving the field open for all kinds of interpretations. As such, some will see it as pretentious (and the open ending a cop-out) while others will praise the wisdom of the director in leaving it open.
For myself, I’m quite indifferent. I like the film’s non-conventional approach, and the interesting character study it offers, but I’m not a particular fan of its open ending – I felt the lack of a resolution gave the film a rather strong detached feeling (which I had felt throughout the viewing experience), and for whatever reason I didn’t really like this cold detachedness (maybe it made the whole film feel pretentious?).
6/10
Over the weekend, Danwei has a post linking to Maomy’s blog which talks about an interesting search result, specifically searching Carrefour (in Chinese) on Baidu and Google.cn returns no results.
I tried this at work today, and Baidu still returns no results (displaying “results not displayed due to possible violation of laws” in Chinese), while Google.cn is working. I will try again at home tonight, just out of curiosity, since my office network is setup to go through our Hong Kong server and hence technically I’m surfing from Hong Kong.
To some extent this is certainly a comical situation (though I’m sure Carrefour doesn’t find it funny), and it again highlights issues of the Internet in China. But what I found to be important about this censorship in particular was the government attitude it revealed, which shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone of course.
“Government attitude” is quite a buzzword in China these days, especially in the local stock market. The huge rise last week (after a straight 50% drop from the highest point last year) was the outcome of a series of government interventions, which analysts and the press duly called making clear the government’s attitude. Popular catchphrases talk about how you prosper if you follow the government’s attitude, and vice versa (serious consequences if you don’t).
Back to the topic, though I’m put off at the heavy-handedness, there is perhaps little to criticize on the attitude itself (save for its arrogance and disrespect of the people etc., maybe?). The irrational spike of nationalism ironically poses a serious risk to China and the Olympics, and Beijing has once again decided to calm the crowds.
David Cronenberg, the cult turned mainstream director, has a knack for exploring the intersections of violence, sex, technology, media and reality. Having only randomly seen some of his works (and much more familiar with his recent flicks, A History of Violence and Eastern Promises, which people say mark a sharp change in style), I’m awestruck with the director’s visual imagination in Videodrome.
Starring James Woods as Max Renn, the president of a lewd cable channel, the film follows his discovery of a SM-theme show called Videodrome. Max is fascinated with the show, how real it looks, and unknowingly stumbles into a dark and twisted conspiracy, which ultimately leads to a mind-boggling transformation of Max himself.
Cronenberg lays out for the audience a series of stunning images, exploring the realms of reality versus hallucination and flesh versus machine, and throwing in a good dose of violence Cronenberg style. The film’s obsession with reality and flesh is reminiscent of Cronenberg’s 1999 film eXistenZ - indeed, that later film could be said to be covering much of the same ground, albeit from a different angle with a slightly different focus. What eXistenZ doesn’t cover, and Videodrome does, is a direct criticism (in a satirical format) of modern media’s corruption of man, and Max Renn is certainly representative of the sleazy profit-driven media executive that films like Network portray so well.
This is not the type of film for leisure after-hours. It is disturbing in content and demanding in attention, though it is also ultimately rewarding. I felt one viewing certainly didn’t do it justice, though the heaviness of the content means that I won’t be looking forward to revisiting this film any time soon.
7/10
I just finished reading Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, which is a depressing yet fascinating read. It’s depressing, since the ill-fate of Chris McCandless – the 24 year-old who went into the wild – is given from the start. But the book’s painstaking reconstruction of the young man’s life thereafter is fascinating to read.
Being a self proclaimed utilitarian, I inherently disagree with McCandless’ worldview, and I think he could have done more for society (more utility) with his education and intellectual capacity. However I do respect his worldview, and his pursuit to find inner meaning. Unfortunately for this talented young man, who was quite similar to my age when he died (which adds a layer of comparison and retrospect for me), he took too many chances and nature took its toll.
Fracture aims to be one of those smart thrillers with plenty of twists – you know, The Usual Suspects kind of film. It pulls together a credible cast, in the form of Anthony Hopkins and Ryan Gosling. And it has a script good enough to offer an intriguing first act. Because of those elements, the film passes as a competent thriller; however, it is far from excellent.
Anthony Hopkins is Ted Crawford, a successful aeronautics engineer who shoots his unfaithful wife in his own house and calmly waits for the cops to arrive. It seems to be an open and shut case, which is perfect for Willy Beachum (Gosling) of the D.A.’s office, who has just landed himself a job in a top law firm and is just waiting to move. However the sly Crawford has a few cards up his sleeves, and soon starts pulling surprises in court – leading to a dangerous mind game between the two that make up the rest of the film.
For a film like this to work, there must be at least two elements. First, the twists must be genuinely clever, so there is that Eureka moment. Second, there must be compelling acting and/or a competent narrative so that we actually care about what the twists are. In the case of Fracture, the twist is decent, though somewhat of a stretch (there are gaps unexplained), and the characters are rather tiring, which is a miss. Gosling actually throws in a decent performance, as the hot shot who doesn’t like to lose; it is Hopkins that is sleepwalking somewhat, in a role that is all too familiar. Ted Crawford is more or less a more sane and reserved Dr. Hannibal Lecter, and it’s tiring to see him throw out lines that are supposed to convey his super intelligence and downright evil nature.
Despite all my rantings, though, it’s really hard to pick out any faults in particular, which in other words means that this is a solid film. It’s just that the film is not original enough for my liking – the genre has been well explored before, and the actors don’t give us anything new.
6/10
Cloverfield, the much talked about horror film of the start of the year, is a clever mashup of existing material, and solidly executed – the result being a economic and effective film with good cult potential.
It’s hard to miss the film’s signature style – the narrative is literally told in the first person as we witness the horror of a monster attacking New York through the perspective of a handheld owned by Rob, the main character. For the first ten to fifteen minutes, the film basically introduces us to the characters, who are all at a party (Rob’s farewell party, since he’s going to Japan) – Rob and Beth who are sort of dating and having a fight; Jason (Rob’s brother) and Lily (Jason’s girlfriend); and finally Hud (Rob and Jason’s buddy) and Marlena (girl that Hud has a crush on).
Then all hell breaks loose. Buildings tumble down, and brief images of a big creature while everyone scrambles for cover occupy the screen. People decide they have to get out of Manhattan – but Rob insists on going to get Beth, who is trapped in her apartment. And thus begins the nightmarish trekking downtown, which leads to more sinister moments.
Essentially, the film is War of the Worlds meets The Blair Witch Project, coupled with plenty of images that can be seen as having references from 9/11 footages. The film is not especially creepy, due to the not-so-subtle nature of the monster involved and a complete lack of a music score (which is quintessential to Hollywood horror films it seems), but does enjoy the novelty factor of its presentation. As such, it is quite engaging material, especially due to quality of its special effects (which enjoy an added layer of realism thanks to the handheld), and not a bad choice to spend 80 minutes on.
7/10
Shanghaiist has a new post on an western volunteer being attacked by Chinese protesters outside Carrefour. To be simply put this is ridiculous. People need to calm down now – or we may really escalate things beyond control. Unfortunately the Chinese government is stuck between a rock and a hard place: stand by and watch things get out of hand, or step in and run the risk of the protests shifting toward other issues – which means the government will probably not do much. I’m really worried how this will play out.
先说说抵制家乐福的事情。说实话事态的发展出乎我的意料，没想到全国各地都有颇大的声音。看到了一两张照片，也着实事夸张了一些（譬如几十辆大卡车把商场门口堵得水泄不通）。这让我原本比较中立的立场有所改变，我现在反对这种抵制，因为已经发展到了近乎不可理喻的境地。用报纸常用的口气来说，大家应小心被别有用心的人利用了。——对于政府而言，现在的情况也着实是个难题需要处理，今晚的新闻联播也多是理智爱国、用爱国热情为祖国踏踏实实工作之类的片段。
昨天去爬长城，一来踏青二来陪Janet及其台湾华裔朋友Frank。原计划是再去爬野长城，但是路线上出了点问题，索性停在了慕田峪。爬长城不必说了，现下桃花盛开，正是登高的好时节。说个小细节，在长城上Janet几次友好地和外国人说话（譬如说互相帮忙拍照），问到对方国籍得到的总是一副讳莫如深的笑而不答。我于是隐约怀疑国人近期对他们太过热情了，尤其是对法国朋友。
于是想起上周坐地铁回家，地铁上一个大妈使劲儿和一个德国帅哥搭讪，一路穷追猛打地问“你知道希特勒吗？”那个大妈可能的确有点精神问题，因为后来说的话越来越离谱，以至于全车厢的人都在看她，而她旁边的一个女生数次要和她顶嘴但是又忍住了。
想说的只是，无论这些友人来自何方，来到这里即是客，我们应该热情接待，热情交流，但最根本的是应尊重对方。不是每一个外国人都想和你讨论政治，也不是每一个外国人都想接受你的教育，而我们若想改变其对中国的成见，恰是不应该以过于积极甚至骚扰式的手法来进行。
What a sleepwalk of a film. Jumper, starring Hayden Christensen of Star Wars fame, is a complete misfire that loses all interest and value after the concept has lost its novelty. Perhaps the only virtue the film has is its short running time – the film barely touches 85 minutes.
Christensen is David, a young man with a very cool ability – teleportation. He can go anywhere he wants in an instant, as long as he has seen it before. Unfortunately he’s not the only one with such abilities, and there are people hunting them (a Da Vinci Code type of cult that has spawned centuries apparently… big yawn). The bad guy is Samuel Jackson, who despite his coolness in other films is completely off track in his role.
And of course David has a love interest, a girl who he claims “it’s always been you… since I was 5″, which he must protect. Very inspiring stuff. I’m sure the trailer is the only thing worth spending your time on for this totally forgettable flick.
3/10
Recent Comments