As you know, during the cultural festival I went to Hokkaido and met many international students from all over the world. One of whom was from Britain. He asked me what is my favorite film, to which I replied BIOHAZARD (バイオハザード）. And then, he said " you know? the film called like this in Japanese is dubbed RESIDENT EVIL in English." I was surprised to notice that and decided to research on this. As to the film, which originated in a Japanese game, when the game was imported to occidental countries, it was named RESIDENT EVIL. And that is why the film has the same name.
Seeing films from America and Europe imported to Japan, you will easily figure out they have Japanese names. For example, we watched The Big Sleep in the class, which is named "三つ数えろ, Count to Three" and City Lights, "街の灯". And even though some movies in Japanese have the same (or alike, because of the difference in pronounciation between Japanese and English) title as those in English, they are named in Katakana, Top Hat, " トップハット", Paper Moon, " ペーパー・ムーン", and The Modern Times, " モダン・タイムス" not having the in Japanese version.
Who decides Japanese names? The answer is distribution companies. Movie distributors purchase not only the right to broadcast films but also that to name them. And since English characters are less familiar to the Japanese than Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana, they are likely to re-name.
But sometimes, titles in Japanese do not go with their stories, which movie companies in Europe and America are afraid of and make contracts to rename their movies only in Katakana with Japanese distributors. And also in Japan, there are some who do not like films with terrible names in Japanese, saying they are nonsence.
Now, English is intelligible to many Japanese. And I think movies from foreign countries need not be dubbed in Japanese, maybe Katakana is okay. Films mistakenly dubbed in Japanese would just confound spectators and benefit little to them. If movie distributors have time to discuss film titles in Japanese, they might as well make inpressing trailers.
This is Chiaki
ReplyDeleteI could enjoy reading your article!! It is very interesting topic!!!! I also agree with you, the movies' title need not to traslated into Japasese especially Kanji and Hiragana.
This is Shoko. It was surprising to me that Biohazard was translated as Resident Evil!!! I think Biohazard is already in English.... translating title into Japanese is really tough thing.
ReplyDeleteWhether the title is in English or Japanese depends on whether the English title (in katakana) will be understood and attractive to Japanese viewers. If not, they change it to make it more attractive.
ReplyDeleteUsually translation means that the title becomes something totally different - see Natsumi's blog #10 (Group P).
Ms. MacGregor