Understanding foreign movies and books

[Miss Chicken]

I was reading some reviews of the novel "The Good Muslim" by Tahmima Anan. This novel is set in Bangladesh and it author is Bengali.

Some people who reviewed gave it a low score complaining how the author didn't explain certain cultural facts so that Westerners might understand the book more easily. They also complained that the background to the Bangladeshi War of Independence wasn't given in the book - the reader was meant to already have some knowldge of it. Also certain words weren't translated into English. i assumed that this was because there was no English word for them to be translated to and I just tried to work out what the word might mean. One reviewer also complained that a map of Bangladesh wasn't included in the book.

I am now reading "Bastard Tongues" by Derek Bickerton who is a linguist.

At one point, before he became a linguist, he was teaching English
literature in Ghana. At one point he was trying to explain a scene from a novel - he thinks it was The Mill on the Floss - in which a father drives his daughter and her illegimate child out into the snow. Bickerton found himself explaining snow, also trying to explain why a father would banish his daughter and grandchild just because some words weren't spoken in a church. Then Bickerton realised that all his students thought that the daughter was carrying the child on her back ( as babies are carried that way in Ghana). he had to explain that the baby was being carried in her arms and was told "What a stupid way to carry a baby."

I was once watching a Chilean film. One of the male characters asked the female characters how long ago did she come to Chile from Spain. At first I couldn't understans why her had made this comment, at no point had it been said that she was Spanish but then I realised that she must have had a Spanish accent that Chilean viewers would have notice straight away.

We don't expect The Mill on the Floss to be re-written so that West Africans understand it better. Should we expect books or films from Bangladesh or anywhere else to be altered so that Westerners understand them better?

 

[scotpens]

. . . We don't expect The Mill on the Floss to be re-written so that West Africans understand it better. Should we expect books or films from Bangladesh or anywhere else to be altered so that Westerners understand them better?

No, unless the author wants to include such expository material. But background information that’s unfamiliar to readers outside the author’s culture could be provided in a foreword, an appendix, or a glossary. That’s what I’d do if I were a publisher and I wanted the book to sell more than a hundred copies.

Likewise, if a film deals with cultures and events unfamiliar to the audience, it helps to have a text crawl and/or voice-over narration at the beginning to explain the context.

 

[Kirby]

Should we expect books or films from Bangladesh or anywhere else to be altered so that Westerners understand them better?

Probably not unless the author wants it that way. We westerners aren't the end all, be all of the world (even though we think we are). More often than not the author probably just wanted to write a book for an audience that he knew, his fellow Bangladeshi, and didn't give the western world much thought.

Further, I assume that Stephen King didn't have the rest of the world in mind when he wrote The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. The general frame of reference just wouldn't be there.

As far as the Chilean movie you watched, was it dubbed from it's original language, or were there subtitles?
I've given up on watching anything that has been dubbed. I just hate the way it comes across, and it takes me out of the movie.

 

[Miss Chicken]

The Chilean movie was subtitled. I dislike dubbed movies.

I find that while reading an English translation of a foreign language book I often end up researching something that has roused my interest.

"The Good Muslim" is the second book in what will be a trilogy. While reading the first book in the trilogy (A Golden Age) I ended up researching the partition of India and the problems that led to the war between the two Pakistans.

The more different the culture the more I tend to enjoy the book/movie. For instance I love Mongolian films even if there are a few things I don't understand.