Howl's Moving Castle

[innerSpaceman]

I don't want the list of exceptions, but I DO want Lani's (or Alex's) list of over-your-stupid-American-heads mythic Japanese folklore items ... so's I can enjoy Spirited Away even more than I already do.

[Alex]

Well, I don't know that I will ever again be able to distract her from World of Warcraft long enough to actually watch an entire movie.

But she did address some of the untranslated (though not so much the differently translated) elements of the movie in our review of the DVD.

The relevant paragraphs:

One notable disadvantage for American audiences is that the characters' Japanese names all reflect their personalities in one way or another. The "No Face" spirit is the only one whose Japanese name is translated into English, and it is a good example of how the name should indicate what that character is. To lose one's name or one's identity is to lose one's face to the world. And this is illustrated by No Face, who has no name or identity, and is lost without the acceptance of others.

"Kamaji," for example, literally means "old man of the furnace," while "Haku" means "white" and "Boh" means "young boy."

One rather significant explanation lost in the translation is what happens to Chihiro when Yubaba steals her name. In the name-stealing scene, Chihiro spells out "Ogino Chihiro," her surname and given name, in Japanese kanji characters. The kanji for "Chihiro" uses two characters meaning "a thousand fathoms" — indicating her tremendous depth of character. When Yubaba robs the second part of her name ("fathoms"), all Chihiro is left with is the character for "thousand": She has been converted from one of depth, to one that is scattered and confused, amid a swirl of a thousand broken pieces.

Finally, it was almost impossible for the translators to sufficiently explain the critical importance of the seal, and the significance of its theft. In traditional Japanese society (and even today to a certain extent), contracts and letters were never signed with a signature, but with a family's official seal. To steal another person's seal was to steal his very identity, not at all unlike modern-day identity theft where a hacker opens credit cards in a victim's name. Official seals were etched out by master carvers, and the little nicks and strokes were scrutinized just as fingerprints are today whenever there was a dispute as to the legitimacy of a contract authorized by the stamp of a seal. The translators instead did what they could, to refer to the seal as a "golden seal," thereby giving it the value of a family heirloom treasure.