The new language of translated films
General translation | General interest
CINEMA BABEL: Translating Global Cinema, by Abe Mark Nornes. Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2008, 304 pp.,$22.50 (paper)
August 3, 2008
By DONALD RICHIE
Though foreign film is now seen by all, we are still dependent on translation to discover what is going on up on the big screen or on the little tube. This translation of dialogue can be either graphic text (subtitling) or substituted speech (dubbing).
In either case it is because the translation that the viewer must penetrate can be so confusing that the author of this highly original and always interesting book can claim that translated foreign cinema is the new Tower of Babel.