Channel 27
PODCAST| Nicolò Comotti interviews translator and reasearcher Jean-François Cornu and Carol O’ Sullivan.
To listen to the interview, click on the ► icon on the right, just above the picture
Jean-François Cornu and Carol O’Sullivan introduced their book The Translation of Films, 1900 – 1950 within the setting of the Deutsche Kinemathek in Berlin. The panel that followed turned out to be an invaluably insightful discussion on the state of Film Translation today, while keeping an eye on its fascinating past.
The Translation of Films, 1900 – 1950: Since the early days of cinema, film translations have had a great influence on people’s perception of movies, but it is an area that few researchers have explored. The Translation of Films, 1900–1950 is the first book-length publication on the history of audio-visual translation. Editors Carol O’Sullivan and Jean-François Cornu introduce this collection of essays offering various perspectives on the translation of films into other languages in the silent movie era and the first few decades of sound films. Following that, director Elfi Mikesch, film restorer Julia Wallmüller, and translator Rebekah Smith will discuss the subtitles created for the 2018 digitally restored version of Mikesch’s Ich denke oft an Hawaii (I Often Think of Hawaii, 1978). A comparison of the new subtitles and the ones from the film’s release year demonstrates how standards and available methods have changed over the years, and illuminates the special challenges in translating an historical film work.
