Thursday, April 10, 2008
My Professor on Japanese News Report
It's not only cool to see your professor on a TV news report, but also fascinating to watch how another culture presents him. The video clip above shows my professor Paul Levinson on Japan NNN-TV News talking about Obama's oratory skill. Here are few small things I notice:
1. In the beginning of Professor Levinson's comment about Obama's speech, he says, "I will give Obama a 98. You know, once in a while, he slips off, but he is really superb. I would give Hillary an eighty." However, in the Japanese translation, we can only see that "Obama's speech is 98 points, and Hillary is 80 points." It seems like only the scores matter.
2. The pronunciation of "writer" in Japanese is "laita," which sounds like "lighter." "Speech" is prounced "supiichi; "Hillary" is "Hilaly;" and "Obama" is--"Obama." Ohhh Yehhhh!
3. My school--Fordham--in Japanese is "Huodamu." I believe no Japanese will hear about Fordham unless I prounce it Huodamu.
If Japanese people value so highly the first hand information that they even come to America and interview my professor about his opinion on the US election, why can't China and Taiwan do the same thing? I gotta produce some video clips about the US presidential election for Chinese, so they don't have to tolerate the mishmash of China Central Television's reports.
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2 comments:
Japanese news programs almost never translate everything. I don't like it too much because when I watch in Japan I realize that some subtle, important point is lost. Language is only useful in translation if it tries to be as precise as possible. Time and space make it difficult to translate everything, but I think it's important.
The problem is, the time for celebrity news is seen as equally valuable to real news. Even in Japan. (Especially in Japan.) NHK news is very good. Everything else in Japan makes me want to cry.
The news that interviewed Dr. Levinson is NNN, or a group of Nippon Television, owned by the famous Yomiuri Shimbun. Their news, and most other private news companies, avoid anything useful and only treat issues superficially. Most Japanese, I think, don't pay attention to their own democracy. Even worse that the United States, which is scary.
I wish all the news companies would be better, but it will never happen.
Mike,
I can't understand why NNN takes so much time interviewing our professor but then treated their valuable footage carelessly. Adding one more line to translate all the interviewee's words shouldn't affect the length of their video.
Mike, if you think most Japanese news companies treat issues superficially, then you will find that TV news reports in Taiwan are all craps. Everything we see on TV has to do with the rating. Whether it is a political scandal or the controversial speech of a presidential candidate, as long as it can generate huge amount of viewers, TV news program will play this same news over and over again.
Maybe we have the same situation in American. This is how capitalism works.
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