海外大学字幕プロジェクト

For the seventh and final class of the GUSP course, we held a short session before the viewing of the film. Up until now, the students worked hard to polish their subtitles in preparation for the screening event. This time around, the students had an opportunity to ask the instructor any questions that came up throughout their translation assignments.

One question that came up was in regards to the use of British English versus American English. Jessi, one of the GUSP lecturers, told them that “it really depends on the project” and explained that "we use global English for English subtitles. Though it is standard to use American English, we typically avoid things like difficult slang”. Through such Q&A, the students learned in-depth about visual media translation that connects globally .

The students also received a message from Takuya Ito, the director of the film.

“I am incredibly grateful for this opportunity, and even more so for the subtitling for Wedding 16. I feel that through the English translations, what would typically be heard and interpreted as high school girls talk has changed into something more mature, adding new charm to my film. I am incredibly happy that the world can now watch and enjoy both Maki and Yuri’s journey.”

The English title of the film the students subtitled is Wedding 16, and it will be shown in Belgium. Thanks to all of their hard work, another piece of Japanese media content has made its way across the worldfor English-speaking audiences to enjoy.

While exchanging opinions with one another, the students took on the second half of the story for their sixth GUSP class.

This time around, their subtitles were much more refined than before. An example can be seen through how they changed their previous translation “You got to be kidding!” to “Oh, boy!”. Keeping both the nuance of the Japanese word and the character count restriction in mind, many of them successfully managed to shorten or correct their subtitles to make the flow of the movie smoother and easier to understand.

Also, their translations for the challenging scene that came up during their fourth class where Maki mentioned that her “legs are swollen” were much better this time around. Now that they understood the correct nuance of the phrase, they changed it to “my legs are killing me!” from their previous direct translation “my legs are swollen”.

After translating the scene near the end of the film were Yuri answers the phone and says “moshi moshi” (a phrase Japanese people often say when answering the phone), the students came to realize the freedom they have when it comes to subtitling. For example, instead of simply saying “hello?”, translating it as “mom?” may end up helping the viewers to better understand Yuri’s actions.

The students have shown significant improvement both with their creativity as well as with their word choice corresponding to the story, characters, and specific situations.

Next week is the last GUSP class for the semester. The students will finish the course with a short session where they will finalize their subtitles.

For the fifth GUSP class, the students tried their best to create subtitles for the first half of the movie based on their translations up until now.

With subtitling, it isn’t only about communicating what is being said. A subtitler has to consider the content, length of the sentences and where to break them, and even character count restrictions. This time around, students were asked to modify their translations to fit within a specific character count. To their surprise, it was much more difficult compared to their previous task.

There was one scene in particular that seemed to give them a hard time. The scene shows the bride-to-be Maki talking about how she admires Yuri, and how she “wants to go to Starbucks, line up for Baskin Robbins, and hang out with friends in front of a convenient store, all in a high school uniform”. Maki is talking about a sort of “youth culture” common among Japanese students her age. Under strict character count restrictions, figuring out how to translate lines that include several pieces of information like this one turned out to be a challenge.

The students shared opinions and discussed how to convey the content while both abiding by the rules and maintaining important nuances. They learned the importance of being creative, especially since sometimes things need to be taken out or added in to the dialogue.

For instance, for the line where Yuri shouts “I don’t need any udon!” into the phone, some students thought that it would be more expressive by translating that to “I don’t care!”, a decision that made the instructors feel that the students are “expressing the feeling and emotions of the characters in the movie really well”.

Starting from just the basics, these students really have come a long way. Their skills and sense for translation have gradually improved, and we look forward to seeing them grow further throughout the course.

For the fourth GUSP class, we looked back on the story and focused more on the movie lines and original Japanese.

Even after their first shot at translating the story, the students still found it difficult expressing the film in a single phrase. They realized that being able to convey the story requires a deeper understanding of the content, so they discussed their thoughts and opinions regarding their own group’s translations.

One thing each group found difficult was phrases and words unique to the Japanese language. For example, in the scene where Maki and Yuri run back to the wedding hall, Maki says to Yuri that her “legs are swollen” as she climbs the stairs. Here, she uses the word panpan, which means “full” or “swollen”, but this ends up sounding strange in English. Group 3 translated it quite literally as “my legs are swollen”, which led to a discussion about what we would say in a similar situation in English. A bit skeptical as to whether or not their phrases got their point across, the students tried their best again with the Japanese and aimed for a more natural translation.

For their next class, they will come face to face with the challenges of translating under strict character count restrictions.

In the third class of GUSP, the students split into four groups and shared their rough translations of the first half of the film with the class.

The class began by taking a look at the translations the students created as actual subtitles on the screen. Once the students were able to see their translations as subtitles, they noticed something – even if they had translated everything accurately, their translations didn’t look like dialogue that the characters would say. In some parts, Yuki’s and Maki’s dialogue was too formal, but it other parts it was too slangy, meaning that the tone of their translation was all over the place…

In order to create dialogue better suited for the characters, the students had a discussion about each of their personalities. Yuri is a high school girl who runs away from home to be free, while Maki is a young 16-year old bride who runs away from her wedding to be “normal”. As the students analyzed the actions of each character and how they speak, their personalities became more clear, and with that information they were able to better tackle the issue of how to write their English dialogue. Through this discussion, the students learned the importance of tone and nuance in the character’s lines.

Next week, the students’ assignment will be to translate the second half of the film as they start to think more about what makes a successful translation.

For our second lecture, students were assigned to watch a short film called “Wedding Sixteen”. Based on their own understanding and interpretation of the film, they were asked to translate selected pieces of dialogue that are crucial to the film’s story to the best of their ability.

Being able to identify the main character is vital for understanding the story. After breaking up into four groups, the students engaged in discussion to talk about how they would explain the story in a single simple phrase, as well as identify the main character. As each group presented their findings, it was interesting to see that a portion of the class thought the runaway high school girl Yuri was the main character, while others thought it was the bride-to-be Maki. As it turns out, the main character was indeed Yuri after all.

Afterwards, the students moved on to their actual dialogue translations. One topic that came up during class was the usage of the word “normal” (or “futsuu” in Japanese) which both Yuri and Maki frequently say throughout the film. Yuri, who dislikes her mediocre or “normal” lifestyle, often phrases it in a way that makes it sound like something negative. On the other hand, Maki often uses the word in a sense of wanting to be like a “normal 16-year-old girl”, making it sound like something positive. In this situation, one cannot simply translate this word just one way, so many found it to be a bit of a struggle. In the end, the more these students think about how to convey the story, the more creative their translations will become!

Having learned the fun and importance of word choice, GUSP students will continue to work on translating the films dialogue in order to achieve greater understanding of the story.

25 students gathered in the classroom, ready to take part in the 3rd installment of the Global Universities Subtitling Project (GUSP), where they would take on the challenge of creating English subtitles for the short Japanese film “Wedding Sixteen”. We learned that the students were all fans of Japanese media content, with references to Ghibli films, TV drama “Hanzawa Naoki”, and animated film “Paprika” coming up in their self-introductions.

The subject of the first translation exercise the students did to learn the basics of visual media translation was a Japanese music video. The students first translated two lines of text without any knowledge of what it was, or where it was from. After learning that they were songs lyrics and watching the music video that they came from, they gave their hand at rewriting their original translations, paying careful attention to tone and style. The final translations were then put on the screen over the video, like real subtitles. After seeing them together, it became clear how having the context and background influenced and improved their translations.

After this exercise, the students moved on to two other exercises which focused on the importance of story structure and word choice. Throughout the entire first class, they were able to grasp the essence of visual media translation: “Conveying the emotion and feelings experienced inside a work to an audience that doesn’t speak the original language.” From the next class, the students will put the knowledge they gained to use to translate their short film assignment.