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INDEXING THE PAST: VISUAL LANGUAGE AND TRANSLATABILITY IN KON

SATOSHI'S MILLENNIUM ACTRESS
Melek Ortabasi a
a
Hamilton College, USA

Online Publication Date: 24 July 2007

To cite this Article Ortabasi, Melek(2007)'INDEXING THE PAST: VISUAL LANGUAGE AND TRANSLATABILITY IN KON SATOSHI'S
MILLENNIUM ACTRESS',Perspectives,14:4,278 — 291
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 278

Indexing the past: visual language and translatability

in Kon Satoshi’s Millennium Actress

Melek Ortabasi, Hamilton College, USA

mortabas@hamilton.edu

Abstract
This paper will re-examine current AV translation practices from a film studies perspective
through director Kon Satoshi’s full-length animated feature Sennen joyû (Millennium Actress,
2001), a film that employs, and expects, a fairly deep and broad knowledge of Japanese history
and culture.
In this film, where the protagonist recounts her life in movies in a realistic historical setting,
cinematic imagery becomes the primary medium of communication. Narrative action and
dialogue, considered the main components of cinema by many viewers, take a back seat. The real
“story” is the history of one of Japan’s proudest cultural products: live action cinema, particularly
that of the “golden age” of the 1950s and 60s.
The aim of this paper is not simply to “translate” for the uninitiated viewer the many
components of Millennium Actress that cannot be efficiently communicated through standard
subtitles. Instead, this film is an ideal vehicle for demonstrating the shortcomings of current AV
translation, which is primarily text-based.
As recent studies show, technology-savvy “fansubbers” are using methods that challenge not
only how we think about subtitling, but the process of AV translation itself, a practice usually
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defined by its tendency to truncate and delete. By examining the English subtitled version of
Millennium Actress in the context of emerging translation strategies and technologies, this paper
will propose a concept of AV translation that rejects this discourse, and more fully incorporates
non-verbal methods of exchange and communication.

Key words: AV translation; subtitling; fansubbing; anime; intertextuality; visual

language; Kon Satoshi; Millennium Actress.

“Every film is a foreign film, foreign to some audience somewhere.”1

The cultural significance of image in Millennium Actress

Sennen joyû (Millennium Actress, dir. Kon Satoshi, 2001) is one of those Japanese
anime features that did not export well, at least economically speaking. Despite
having garnered its share of awards from the film critics, both at home and
abroad,2 foreign anime fans remain respectfully polite. One reason for the
puzzling lack of popularity could be the lack of English-language dubbing,3 a
death knell for any foreign release in US movie theaters — but this rule does
not necessarily hold true for fans of anime, who are more tolerant (and even
desirous) of linguistic and cultural unfamiliarity.4 A more likely explanation is
the fact that the film does not really fit into either the science fiction or fantasy
genres most popular with young foreign fans.5 Yet there is an equally compelling
reason the film has not been widely screened, at least in Europe and North
America. Though Millennium Actress is an anime feature, it seems to demand
more of its viewers than do most other examples of the medium.
The following comment from one French anime aficionado, which reflects the
generally lukewarm reception of the film by the non-Japanese fan community,6
perhaps best explains the difficulty of the film for many viewers. Perhaps
unconsciously, it divides its critique into two categories.

0907-676X/06/04/278-14 $20.00 © 2006 Melek Ortabasi

Perspectives: Studies in Translatology Vol. 14, No. 4, 2006
 Ortabasi. Indexing the Past 279
Here is the gist of it: Chiyoko is a 70-year-old actress who relates her personal
and professional life story to two journalists. It so happens that she spends her
whole life pursuing a man she ran into during her youth; oddly enough even her
movie roles tell the same story. As a consequence, we spend 1 hour and 20 minutes
watching a weepy Chiyoko pursuing a man. Certainly, the film allows us to relive
some of Japanese history, as well as the history of Japanese film. Certainly, the last
few minutes are quite beautiful. But one would expect a more consistent story from
the director of Perfect Blue.7

The more important category, at least to this viewer, is the quality of the film’s
story. “Ouhman’s” judgment is based on an assumption shared by many
film audiences, particularly those raised on the continuity editing favored
by Hollywood. That is: narrative films must above all have some sense of
development as well as unity. Apparently, Millennium Actress does not satisfy
these requirements, probably due to its repetitive plot, which never comes to
a denouement: Chiyoko never finds her man, but never stops chasing (which
this fan also regards as politically incorrect). Ouhman focuses on Chiyoko’s
biography, apparently the main narrative thread, which is driven by the
interview process established between Chiyoko and the two men making a
“documentary” about her life.
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As a second, more minor consideration, “Ouhman” concedes there may be

some slight value to the film due to the culturally specific information that it
communicates (“Japanese history”). He/she clearly considers this other category
as being less important than the plot, a fairly typical viewer response.8 To be
fair, it is true that “Japanese history,” in this case both history in general and the
history of the Japanese film industry, is linked only loosely to the biographical
plot. But if one considers Chiyoko’s love story the main plot, then its conclusion
is postponed indefinitely through Kon’s fluid editing techniques. As Chiyoko
relates her story, it becomes increasingly unclear as to whether she is relating
the truth or is simply lost in her memories of the many movie roles she has
played. However, it is precisely because Chiyoko’s biography lacks consistency
(narratively and structurally speaking) that the non-narrative historical elements
of the film come to the fore.
Through rapid-fire cutting and montage, the periods of Chiyoko’s long life
(from 1923 to somewhere in the late 1990s)9 are represented, as are several
periods of Japanese history before and after her birth (through her roles in
films). This chronological leap-frogging is not indicated in the dialogue except
by very occasional statements by various characters that roughly indicate the
period in question. In fact, it sometimes seems that the characters’ statements are
purposefully vague, allowing the “story” (i.e., Chiyoko’s never-ending pursuit)
to move around in time without constraint. History unfolds as the visual and
literal background as Chiyoko and her interviewers don and doff medieval
and early modern period costume with lightning speed, watch young Japanese
soldiers march off to WWII, star in Kurosawa Akira and Ozu Yasujirô films, and
index “real” history in numerous other ways that are all visually described.
A certain knowledge of local history and culture is of course helpful when
watching any (foreign) film. What is significant about Millennium Actress, and
why it makes a good case study for reexamining the practice of audiovisual
translation (hereafter AV translation) is how prominently it features this cultural
 280 2006. Perspectives: Studies in Translatology. Volume 14: 4

information in the visual channel. It is not an overstatement to say that in

Millennium Actress, “the image resists being subordinated to the text’s meaning,
having instead a logic separate from that of the text” (Hocks and Kendrick 2003:
10). Of course cinema is regarded as a primarily visual medium, but Millennium
Actress goes against the trend of most narrative film, where formal techniques
(like the establishing shot with voiceover) use the image to reinforce the textual
message. Like “Ouhman,” who focuses on the narrative qualities of the film
at the expense of its visual richness, audiences of narrative film often perceive
images as working “via parataxis as a coordinate, supportive structure to textual
information” (Hocks and Kendrick 2003: 7).10 While they constantly deal with
the complex relationship between the verbal and visual channels of film, AV
translators have generally shared this prejudice by focusing almost exclusively
on translating this “textual information.” It is then no wonder that Millennium
Actress, which privileges image over narrative, remains mostly “untranslated”
and therefore misunderstood.

The invisibility of the visual channel in AV translation

For this reason, I am fully agreed with Markus Nornes’ assertion that “now is
the time to reconsider the mode of translation through which our cinematic
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experiences of the foreign are mediated” (Nornes 1999: 17). However, while
Nornes focuses on overturning the notion of “invisibility” that dominates AV
translation, I point instead to a related ideology that is specific to subtitling
practice and theory. This is the fact that the literature on AV translation, of which
there is quite an amount, automatically assumes that the target of translation
is the verbal soundtrack and, possibly, any text that appears onscreen (e.g. a
newspaper headline being read by a character). While the complex relationship
between the verbal and the visual channels of film has undoubtedly bedeviled
many a subtitler, it seems that actually addressing the non-linguistic realm is
something of a taboo.
Like the general discourse on translation, writings on AV translation are
fraught with the language of loss, whether they are prescriptive (“how to
subtitle correctly”) or descriptive (e.g. how movie X has been translated into
language Y). In one of the few theoretical pieces on the subject, Henrik Gottlieb
points out that, unlike the literary translator, the subtitler must reckon with the
“non-verbal channels” of the “polysemiotic” cinematic text (Gottlieb 2001: 87).
Yet he too focuses on the impossibility of compressing all four channels of film
(“music & effects, picture and … writing”) into a new, “additive” channel, the
subtitles themselves. Ultimately, he writes, the “semantic load” of what does
not make it into the subtitles is left to “the non-verbal semiotic channels – or to
deletion” (Gottlieb 2001: 87, 88). From another perspective, however, Gottlieb’s
comments also reveal that, despite the limits of linguistic expression, one can
rely upon the images in film to transmit semantic meaning. However, he does
not elaborate on how much images can “say,” nor how or to what extent the
translator should address this aspect of film.
To begin examining the current role of subtitles in the basic interplay between
the verbal and visual channels, I will discuss a purely narrative segment of
Millennium Actress where Genya, the documentarian, and his assistant Ida first
arrive at Chiyoko’s house. The subtitling on the US DVD release of Millennium
 Ortabasi. Indexing the Past 281

Actress does not stray from the common tendency to focus on the linguistic,11
although it must already contend with considerable difficulty. In this scene,
there is a play on words, one of the most challenging problems for translators.12
By creating a pun that compensates for the lack of homonyms in English (a
dominant feature of Japanese), the translator has tried to preserve the flavor of
the nosey banter of Chiyoko’s middle-aged housekeeper.
The housekeeper, Ms. Mino, is talking with Genya, the documentarian, just
before Chiyoko enters the room for the first time. When Chiyoko overhears
part of her remark to Genya, which reveals perhaps a bit too much about her
mistress’ reclusivity, Ms. Mino quickly backtracks, claiming to have been saying
something else.

Japanese: English translation: Subtitles:

Ms. Mino: Okusama ga Ms. Mino: It’s quite a Ms. Mino: Usually before
yorokonde hito ni au change for Madam to she’ll meet anyone new,
nante dai ihen dakara… agree to meet someone… the earth has to move.

Chiyoko (entering): Nani Chiyoko: What’s Chiyoko: What has to

troublesome, Ms. Mino? move, Mino?
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ga taihen na no, Mino-san?

Ms. Mino: Iie, Okusama. Ms. Mino: Nothing, Ms. Mino: “The earth
Ihen desu yo. I-he-n! Kesa Madam. Quite a change, moves,” Missus. The
no jishin. I was saying. This earthquake... that one this
morning’s earthquake. morning.

The similarity in sound of dai ihen (“quite a change”) and taihen (“troublesome”),
does not come through in either my translation or in the subtitles, though the
subtitler has made an attempt at equivalence by changing Ms. Mino’s first
statement to incorporate the image of an earthquake, as well as using an English
idiom that Chiyoko can repeat almost verbatim, as she does in the Japanese.
Obviously, even a small interchange such as this can raise a number of problems.
The reason I cite this example here is not to comment on the quality or type of
technique used by the translator, but to point out that this dialogue, difficult as
it is to translate, actually has very little to do with what we see onscreen, except
for the fact that Chiyoko is offscreen but within earshot as Mrs. Mino makes her
first pronouncement.
While Ms. Mino and her housekeeper have this conversation, we are actually
watching Genya’s nervous reaction as he hears his idol approaching the room.
This short sequence, near the beginning of the movie, contributes primarily to
plot development: Chiyoko agrees to meet Genya because he claims he has a
very important gift for her. It turns out he has the mysterious key that Chiyoko
always wore on a ribbon around her neck until she lost it one day on the set.
The key is, of course, from the young man she met so many years ago. As we
hear the women’s trivial exchange, we see Genya blushing bright red, “visual
esperanto” for embarrassment or anxiety (Fig. 1).13 Because the women are not
featured, the verbal track becomes the background. We already know that Genya
has admired Chiyoko for a long time because we have seen him watching her
movies over and over; we also know how personally he takes this documentary
project on her life. The blush reveals the depth of his affection for her. In other
 282 2006. Perspectives: Studies in Translatology. Volume 14: 4
words, there has been sufficient narrative development of Genya’s character for
us to understand this sudden reaction, which is rendered visually. However,
there is also another kind of visual language at work here.

Figure 1
Looking at Fig. 1 again, let us focus now on what else the image tells the
viewer. Taken in isolation, the frame singles out Genya’s face, which indicates
that this is what we should be paying attention to. The momentary disjuncture
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between dialogue and image resembles what Scott McCloud calls a “parallel
construction” in the comics medium, where “words and pictures seem to follow
very different courses, without intersecting,” but nevertheless makes sense in
context (McCloud 1994: 154). As the image is part of a sequence, we “know” that
Genya is sitting in Chiyoko’s front parlor, which has been carefully delineated.
We have already had larger establishing shots of the room from several angles,
so we also know that the anxious Genya does not have a view of the hallway
from which Chiyoko emerges. In short, we have understood a great many things
that were not communicated through verbal language.
As the visual analysis of the short scene above demonstrates, understanding
this sort of visual logic requires a certain kind of “cinematic literacy” that, as film
scholar Thomas Levin puts it, “took some time before people began to master,”
historically speaking (Levin 1996: 32). Contemporary moviegoing audiences
are now “habitualized” to the uses of “the rather extensive repertoire of formal
cinematic devices–p.o.v. shot, parallel action, shot-reverse-shot, etc.” (Levin
1996: 32). One might notice that the techniques he describes – some of which are
used in the sequence discussed above – are, if not intrinsically intended to be,
often used for developing the narrative. If the images in this sequence do not
need translation for most viewers, then it is because we already know how this
language works to tell a story. They communicate a significant part of the film’s
message in their own way, even while they are in a close-knit, “contrapuntal”
relationship with other elements.14
Despite the presence of film “language,” however, there are moments in any
film when the images are not simply “received information” (McCloud 1994:
49), that is, fully understood without any explanation even to the viewer with
“cinematic literacy.” As the extensive literature in art history shows, images
have long been used to signify more than the object they represent.15 When Julia
Kristeva coined the term “intertextuality” in the late 1960s, writing that “any
text is constructed as a mosaic of quotations; any text is the absorption and
 Ortabasi. Indexing the Past 283

transformation of another,” she did not limit her definition of “text” only to
the written word (Kristeva 1980: 66). While cinematic images index nondiegetic
knowledge in a variety of ways not entirely dissimilar to that of linguistic systems,
there is one method where the visual can perform with an economy unavailable
to written or spoken language. This is when an image “quotes” another visual
text, whether by reproducing it in a different context or by transforming it in a
way that still resonates with the “source” image. Critically speaking, one might
conclude that such intertextual references are becoming increasingly untethered
in the random access of the so-called “digital age.” Nevertheless, intertextuality
of any kind still has very practical consequences for a translator.
AV translators, who have presumably had their hands full just trying to deal
with dialogue and on-screen text, have left viewers to their own devices when
it comes to this kind of visual intertextuality. Those who do acknowledge that
“non-verbal signs” are a significant component in film tend to look at them in
relation to the constraints they place on translating the verbal code (Delabastita
1989: 199, 201). Similarly, while there is work on different strategies to translate
cultural content of films, it concerns itself only with linguistic aspects (e.g.
Ramière 2006; Nedergaard-Larsen 1993). Finally, since cultural references are
in any case “traditionally regarded in the literature as being ‘untranslatable’”
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(Ramière 2006: 153), this holds even more true for visual cultural references,
since their mode of transmission itself is regarded as beyond the scope of AV
translation practice.
The sheer abundance of visual intertextuality in Millennium Actress thus
poses a challenge to this AV translation standard, which “pares down the
film primarily to narrative movement” (Nornes 1999: 24). Unlike the blushing
Genya, whose state of mind would be recognized instantly by a large cross-
section of moviegoers almost anywhere, many other visual “quotations” tend
to be of a distinctly cultural nature, since it is a film not only about Japanese
film history, but the history of Japan as realized in visual media (including film,
woodblock prints, print publications, photographs, etc). As mentioned above,
these visually charged sequences are largely autonomous vis-à-vis the narrative
and the dialogue. The result is a stream of important visual but non-narrative
information that, to fully comprehend, requires prior experience of the sources
being invoked. Needless to say, standard subtitling practice has no purchase on
them. The complexity of the film is reduced to a two-dimensional synopsis; the
visual references go unnoted, and probably unnoticed.

“Thick translation”16 and cinema: two examples from Millennium Actress

To restore the multidimensionality of the film, I have chosen to explicate two
visually complex scenes to demonstrate the inability of the current subtitling
to “translate” them for the viewer. The first example we might call a homage
or a mild parody, but in any case it is a quotation of the 1957 Kurosawa Akira
film Kumonosu jô (Throne of Blood), which is itself probably the most famous
adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The Throne of Blood sequence in Millennium
Actress begins abruptly when Chiyoko, suddenly dressed in a medieval noble
woman’s costume, bursts onto the balcony of a castle, accompanied by Genya
and Ida. Anyone who has seen the Kurosawa film will recognize the dramatic
setting, but the kinship with the other film is cemented with an almost identical
 284 2006. Perspectives: Studies in Translatology. Volume 14: 4

reproduction of one of the film’s most famous shots. Ida is pinned against the
wall, paralyzed by the terrifying sight of flaming arrows piercing the wall
around him (Fig. 2). A quick glance at Fig. 3 reveals that he mimics actor Mifune
Toshirô’s pose, shot from exactly the same angle, in the famous death scene.

Figure 2
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Figure 3

Despite the drastic transition between this sequence and the previous one (which
is apparently from Chiyoko’s debut film, set in Manchuria), she and Genya
seem totally unfazed by their sudden entry into a new setting and historical
moment. When Chiyoko says, “What is the meaning of this?” she is referring
to the hordes of samurai storming her castle, not the fact that she has jumped
back several centuries, and from Manchuria back to Japan. Only Ida is bothered
by the disjuncture in time and space and complains, “Where’d Manchuria
go?!” His statement is, incidentally, the only verbal clue for viewers as to the
current whereabouts of the characters. Like Ida, the uninitiated viewer may
feel disoriented because of the rupturing of narrative conventions in this scene,
which draws attention away from the characters to the setting itself. Even more
significantly, we notice that Genya and Chiyoko, who are “in the know,” are
quite aware of the intertextual game they are playing, implying that there must
be viewers who share their knowledge. Of course, to be one of those viewers,
 Ortabasi. Indexing the Past 285
one must have a working knowledge of: medieval Japanese history, dress and
architecture; the huge genre of samurai films; and more specifically, Kurosawa
Akira’s contribution(s) to it.
The other example is also a homage to a film, but one that places the film in
its contemporary social setting. Again, in order for the scene to have historical
resonance, we are required to have extra-linguistic and non-diegetic knowledge.
In a montage sequence that visually describes Chiyoko’s career after WWII,
we see her move effortlessly from one static photograph-like scene to another,
ending in a romantic pose with a co-star that transforms into a movie poster in
the next scene (Fig. 4). While the basic visual punning here is apparent to anyone
who has seen an old photograph or a movie poster for a romantic drama, the
sequence’s reference to an actual film is privileged information. The poster is
another “quotation,” as is revealed by this publicity shot for Kimi no na ha (What
Is Your Name?, 1953), in which the costars embrace at exactly the same angle to
the camera (Fig. 5).
Significantly, the poster does not take up the entire frame. But that there is a
dialogue between the poster and its surroundings may be apparent only to the
most alert viewer, and probably only one who is aware of the quotation. What
someone unfamiliar with the original hit, which had two sequels, cannot know,
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is that it created a national craze for the so-called “Machiko wrap,” named for
the protagonist. Unlike the original publicity shot, Chiyoko sports this famous
wrap.17 Several women in the foreground imitate the style, subtly indicating the
huge popularity of Chiyoko’s film and thus the pop-cultural importance of its
source.

Figure 4

Figure 5
 286 2006. Perspectives: Studies in Translatology. Volume 14: 4

The film adds yet another historical layer with the protest going on in the
background, which at least for the viewer familiar with postwar Japanese history
brings to mind the social unrest of this period, such as the 1959-1960 Ampo
demonstrations.18 Such viewers would have no difficulty understanding that
these two seemingly unrelated visual layers reference roughly the same period
of modern Japanese history. One could complain that the subtitler neglected
to translate even the onscreen text: the banners proclaim “SOLIDARITY
AGAINST” some unknown cause, but remain undecipherable to someone who
cannot read Japanese. The movie title on the poster, a thinly veiled reference to
the melodramatic plot of the original, is also left untouched (Meguriai = Chance
Meeting). However, a literal translation of these words would do very little to
help the viewer with no contextual knowledge realize that outside sources are
being indexed. Here, a different sort of translation seems necessary, one that
probably cannot be supplied by standard subtitles.

Rethinking the “V” in AV translation through new technologies

Until now, there has been a gap between the two discourses vital to translating
film. Though they write in 1985, film scholars Ella Shochat and Robert Stam are
still correct that “[w]hile contemporary theoretical work has concerned itself
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with film as language, little attention has been directed to the role of language and
language difference within film” (Shochat and Stam 1985: 35). This is still true of
verbal linguistic difference, but one could say that differences in visual language
have been neglected even more. Much of classical film theory has assumed that
the formal aspects of film are universal, or universally understood.19 However,
because the visual techniques unique to film necessarily co-occur with other
elements (be they linguistic or cultural or both), they do not necessarily tell
all to any viewer. On the other hand, apparently unbeknownst to most film
scholars, AV translators have produced a good amount of practicum-based
commentary on the necessity and difficulty of translating the verbal aspects
of cinema. Unfortunately, by focusing on the linguistic, they have pretty much
ignored or given up on translation problems that involve the non-verbal aspects
of cinematic form. I have tried to bridge these gaps in understanding through
my “thick translations” of the shots or sequences mentioned above.
Given that this much translation is sometimes necessary to fully “explain”
what is happening in the frame (or larger units of the film), it seems crucial
that we rethink the current text-based idea of AV translation, which allows one
or two lines of text on screen that remain only long enough for the viewer to
read them. Though he does not use the term, Markus Nornes pointed out in
1999 that fansubbers had already adopted some methods of “thick translation”
— sometimes by adding so much text onscreen as to completely obscure the
image (Nornes 1999: 31). These titles often go far beyond translating dialogue
and onscreen text, as does the “gloss” in Fig. 6. This image, from a fansubbed
trailer for Miyazaki Hayao’s Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi (Spirited Away, 2001),
shows that someone did outside research on the cultural significance of the
vaguely folkloric figures floating in the background, since their meaning is not
described in the clip by voiceover or any other textual method.20
 Ortabasi. Indexing the Past 287

Figure 6

While it goes a long way to supplying what has so often gone unstranslated,
this technique, like many of the others adopted by fansubbers, is based on
much older book technology (footnotes, prefaces etc).21 It certainly suggests “a
completely new viewing protocol” (Nornes 1999: 32) where the viewer can stop
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and start the video at will (now old news, of course), but in practice it does
not significantly depart from the linear subtitling model. Ultimately, it also falls
short of book technology itself, which has designated space, separate from the
main text, for such explicative additions. However, given that we now have the
technological ability to manipulate media more than ever before, it has become
realistic to imagine methods of translation that can incorporate a wider range of
explication by moving beyond the superimposition of text on the frame.
As the image-occluding gloss in Fig. 6 demonstrates, a “thick” translation
philosophy that takes into account the visual as well as the linguistic should
perhaps not always occur in real time, that is, onscreen while the movie is
running. In fact, it is not practical in movie theaters, where it may make more
sense to stay with the linear model and instead introduce more “abusive
subtitling,” as Mark Nornes proposes (Nornes 1999). Interactive, “annotated”
movies in the theater are perhaps beyond current technology – but not beyond
the digital format. Since now more films are viewed in their digital format (i.e.
online or on DVD and other home-use formats) rather than in the analog mode
of the movie theater, the film industry, as well as AV translators, would do well
to remember that “because so much of the visual culture is digitized, it need
not be presented, or viewed, in logical or linear progression. It can be snipped
into bytes and juxtaposed with other images” (Marcum 2002: 194). But despite
the audience’s increased ability (and desire) to “manage complex text/image
relations” (Nornes 1999: 32) and even manipulate those relations, most cinematic
productions (and their translations) still assume a passive viewer.
Right now, it seems that the film industry has a great opportunity to engage
with the “new media” phenomenon by making cinema more interactive. On
DVD releases, viewers can already choose what section of the film they wish to
see, and in what language. DVD’s often have “extras” including the director’s
commentary and “behind-the-scenes” mini-documentaries — even quizzes or
games. All of these features make use of hyperlink navigability, familiar to all
 288 2006. Perspectives: Studies in Translatology. Volume 14: 4

who have surfed the Internet or played a video game. However, besides the
basic function of chapter selection, this navigability is rarely extended to the
film track itself. Given the ability of hyperlink functionality to “introduc[e] a
spatiality beyond that of the two-dimensional page” — or filmstrip, for that
matter — most current DVDs are not yet taking full advantage of the technology
(Strain & VanHoosier-Carey 2003: 259). However, this is starting to change.
Consumers of cinema seem to be driving some of the technological innova-
tion in DVD navigability, and their motivation comes from a desire for access
to more film-related information. Anime fans, for example, with their vocal de-
mands for a more “authentic” viewing experience, have already “pushed DVD
distributors to make greater use of the format’s capabilities” by demanding
thicker translation of their favorite titles (Cubbison 2005: 46). In a sort of tech-
nological step beyond the example in Fig. 6, distributors have started to embed
(pop-)cultural, linguistic and/or historical information into the film track.

The recent DVD edition of Akira allows for a “capsule,” an icon of a drug capsule
that appears on the screen, at which time the viewer can press the enter button on
the remote and receive additional information, while the series Excel Saga allows
for a similar inclusion of cultural references through an optional popup, much like
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VH1 Network’s 1990s Popup Video series (Cubbison 2005: 51).

The first example bases its strategy on videogame technology, where users
frequently choose from several options on screen to gain more information. The
second is an enhanced version of older technology in the sense that the user
can enable or disable the popups at will. Both examples use basic hyperlink
technology to add depth to the viewing experience, offering the viewer more
knowledge, and more control over, the visual text.22
Film scholars too have tried to take advantage of user-friendly technologies
to encourage a more multimodal way of watching film. In an effort to have D.
W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation (1915) taught in more U.S. college classrooms, Ellen
Strain and Gregory VanHoosier-Carey developed an extensive multimedia
project, titled Griffith in Context: A Multimedia Exploration of D. W. Griffith’s
Birth of a Nation.23 The two-CD-ROM set features “a hypermedia filmstrip with
temporal annotations or links that provide entrance to scholarly voice-overs…
illustrated with archival material and contextualizing images” (Strain and
VanHoosier-Carey 2003: 264). The basic idea is to “translate” for students the
historical, cultural and social intertextualities of the film, of which they might
otherwise not be aware.
What is truly innovative, and appropriately cinematic about Griffith in Context
is the navigable filmstrip that constitutes the interface. As students scroll along
the filmstrip frame by frame, possibilities for further explication appear above
and below the strip according to four categories: “Filmic technique,” “Historical
Re-creation,” “Racial representation,” and “Literary Origins” (Fig. 7). Setting
aside whether these are the best or only categories for analysis, what this project
demonstrates is a form of explication that keeps the film itself at center stage (as
it were). While the film now occupies less of the screen and must share it with
other menu items, viewers can enter into the world of the film itself to find out
more, rather than venture into a totally different, analytical space divorced from
the film (as is the case if one watches, say, a documentary about a film). It is the
 Ortabasi. Indexing the Past 289

film itself that serves as interface, not a metatextual “menu” screen.

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Figure 7

This innovative “translation” effort also highlights the fact that understanding
film is not necessarily a problem of linguistic ability. The standard view of
AV (and other) translation often assumes that there are only two negotiating
parties, defined by linguistic boundaries: the source and the target. If cinema is
composed of (at least) two languages, one verbal and one visual, then translation
becomes not only more complex, but a negotiation among more than two sides.
For example, we can assume that native speakers of Japanese will understand
the verbal channel of Millennium Actress. But are they also the “ideal” audience
for the visual text? In an interview on his latest film, Papurika (Paprika), Kon
indicates that this is probably not the case.

Interviewer: I loved the scene where Konakawa explains to Paprika what “crossing
the line” means in filmmaking, and he’s dressed like Akira Kurosawa, with the
trademark hat and dark shades.

Kon: I’m happy that you picked that up. I think it’ll be the overseas festival audiences
who will react to that and not the young anime fans of Japan, who probably won’t
recognize him at all (Gray 2006).

The non-Japanese interviewer, who clearly belongs to the more cinematically

knowledgeable “overseas festival audiences,” spots the visual intertextual
reference to Japan’s most famous director. Granted, he is not representative of a
very large group, but the fact is that one does not have to understand Japanese
to “get” this reference. Instead, one has to have a different set of knowledge, one
that is cultural and historical in nature – as well as visual. In fact, it is a sort of
knowledge that the Japanese target audience of the film may well not have, as
Kon acknowledges. One could even say that there are two target audiences for
 290 2006. Perspectives: Studies in Translatology. Volume 14: 4

this film, which may well overlap in some cases, but are nevertheless processing
two different sets of information – one visual, one linguistic.
While cinema has long had strong traditions in various nations, it is, and
always has been, an international medium.24 It is undeniable that “when a text
is exported into a different cultural environment composed of a different pool
of cultural resources, it might not produce the expected interpretations,” but
because of film’s growing internationalism, it is equally true that in “the current
era of intense media saturation and intertextuality… texts respond to each other
and combine to create a pool of cultural meaning” (Darling-Wolf 2000: 137).
Certainly, AV translators won’t be out of a job anytime soon, but the increasing
internationalization and proliferation of interactive media means that their
traditional role as link between “original” and “copy” is increasingly in flux.
With the greater availability of interactive features that explicate the film for
the domestic (in this case English-speaking) viewer, an expanded sort of AV
translation that takes advantage of the same features may even start to blur
the boundary between (interlingual) translation and (intralingual) explication.
Indeed, “every film is a foreign film, foreign to some audience somewhere.”
Yet it is not only the linguistic about film that may be foreign, nor is it easy to
assume what any given audience will understand simply based on national or
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linguistic identity. AV translators should begin to think of themselves not only as

interlingual mediums, but also as ambassadors of the cinematic medium in all its
complexity. Audiences’ movie viewing habits are changing along with advances
in digital technology. By making use of the increased navigability of the digital
format, AV translators too have the potential to affect how audiences watch
movies — and possibly even change their perception of what is “foreign.”

Notes
1. Ian Balfour and Atom Egoyan, as quoted in Fenner (2006: 95).
2. Millennium Actress actually made the circuit of international film festivals even before
it was released in Japan. The premiere was at Montreal’s Fantasia 2001 festival, where it
won “the Best Animation Film category, as well as the Fantasia Ground-breaker Award.”
Patten lists this and the impressive list of other festivals attended and awards gained in
his review of the film (2004: 366).
3. The English subtitles on the US release are a slightly edited and polished version of
those that were on the original region 2 release, which were undoubtedly prepared for
the film’s many pre-release foreign film festival screenings. Manga Entertainment Ltd.
released an English-dubbed version in the UK in September 2005, but the viewers on
amazon.co.uk do not seem impressed with the dubbing.
4. Laurie Cubbison notes that many anime fans actually see their “engagement with
anime … as a form of resistance to Western popular culture (Cubbison 2005: 45).
5. Fernando Gil, who has made a very short “fandubbed” clip of the film (available on
YouTube, at http://youtube.com/watch?v=h2q2jC_ie1A) commented that the film “didn’t
seem like the type of anime that most folks who are into fansubs nowadays would rush to
download” (Personal email, December 4, 2006). There are no English fansubs of the film,
probably due to the fact that subtitles were already available on the Region 2 release.
6. The 44 reviews of the film on a fan forum, AnimeNfo, gave the film a general rating
of 8.6 out of 10. While viewers praised the quality of the animation (average score, 9.2),
they did not actually enjoy the overall viewing experience as much (average score, 8.5).
They also rated the “story” comparatively low at an average score of 8.3. www.animenfo.
com/review.php?id=1185&n=kqzxhd&t=millennium_actr&type=anime. Accessed April
25, 2007.
7. Comment from “Ouhman,” Amazon.fr user (translated from the French). www.
amazon.fr/Millennium-Actress-Satoshi-Kon/dp/B0007U1O30/sr=8-1/qid=1165563510/
 Ortabasi. Indexing the Past 291
ref=sr_1_1/402-1820342-9506508?ie=UTF8&s=dvd Accessed September 1, 2006.
8. Teachers of film such as Ellen Strain and Gregory VanHoosier-Carey note that students
“expect a story to be visually conveyed to them and are neither aware of nor concerned
about 1) the technical means by which film conveys meaning or 2) the film’s meaning
in terms of any historical or cultural context outside of their own personal experience”
(Strain and VanHoosier-Carey 2003: 265).
9. We can assume these dates since she is born during the Great Kantô Earthquake of
1923, is described as being in her seventies and dies at the end of the film.
10. Though they are describing the interrelationship of text and image on the Web, their
summary could be equally well applied to the way images are generally seen in relation
to text in most mixed media, including film.
11. It is even rather conservative in its translation of on-screen text. For example, though
it translates the rather innocuous content of a billboard obviously advertising a movie
starring Chiyoko (“Chiyoko Fujiwara – The Madonna”), it neglects to offer translations of
banners proclaiming Japanese Pacific War victories in China.
12. Rachele Antonini discusses the difficulties of subtitling culturally and linguistically
specific humor in an English sitcom screened in Italy. Most of her examples involve
punning or wordplay (Antonini 2005: 217-221).
13. Robert Stam and Ella Shochat use this term to describe the shared visual language of
silent film, which to some extent crossed national and linguistic boundaries (1985: 46).
Genya’s “pantomime” here has a similar effect.
14. I use Theodor Adorno and Hans Eisler’s term for describing sound-image relations,
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described by Levin as “emphasiz[ing] the autonomy of both the acoustic and the visual
and their reciprocal enrichment through a logic of montage” (Levin 1996: 35).
15. See, for example, the classic study of visual meaning by Erwin Panofsky: Studies in
Iconology; Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1939.
16. I borrow Kwame Anthony Appiah’s term here, which promotes the detailed
description of cultural features of a text (Appiah 2000).
17. While actress Kishi Keiko is not wearing the wrap in this particular photo, there were
other publicity shots in which she did.
18. Many citizens protested the renewal of the US-Japan Security Treaty.
19. There are of course exceptions to this rule, such as Noël Burch’s now classic 1979
study of Japanese film, To the Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in the Japanese Cinema
(Berkeley: University of California Press). Interestingly, while Burch points to crucial
formal differences in the film of, for example, Ozu Yasujirô, he credits the differences to
a unique “Japanese” sensibility on the part of the director, thus nationalizing (rather than
internationalizing) these techniques.
20. Fansubs by Ian Roberts, Eisuke Ishibashi and Tom Jordaan. The image is taken from
Roberts’ site, www.absolutedestiny.org/sen.html. Accessed Dec. 2, 2006.
21. Cintas and Sánchez list a variety of techniques adopted by fansubbers that are not
part of the traditional AV translation repertoire (2006: 47).
22. The next stage in DVD interactivity is already available as of 2006. Although it is
limited to early adopters of HD DVD technology, there are now several next-generation
DVDs that feature “U-Control” or “Blu-Wizard,” competing navigation formats that
allow you “to create your own user-selected menu of a supplemental content, and
customize how you watch it.” Although the number of DVDs with these features are few,
and the supplemental materials still rather limited, this is likely the direction in which
DVD interactivity will develop. For more details, see “First Look: Sony’s ‘Blu-Wizard,’”
an article from High-Def Digest, from which the above citation was taken. http://bluray.
highdefdigest.com/feature_bluwizard_110906.html (accessed January 12, 2007).
23. An online tour of the product, which is published by W. W. Norton and Co., is available
at http://griffith-in-context.gatech.edu/giccover.html (accessed November 22, 2006).
24. As Rosalind Galt remarks, “few films dealing with European history treat the history
of a country other than the filmmaker’s own.” It is no secret that (and Millennium Actress is
no exception) most “film[s] about a nation” are still “national film” in the loose sense that
the implied audience is assumed to share the national historical perspective portrayed
in the film (Galt 2005: 5).