Monday, December 06, 2004
Translation-tastic
This is the English blurb for our performance, printed in my favourite magazine (actually).
Drama: Happy Waves, Sad Woman (so that's what it's called!)
Broken are the lead, the music, the noise, the heartbeats and the emotions. From start till the end of this moldy affair, this never changing scene, is more serious than death, this tortured muse at Nell's home. And come see the dumb foreigner speak Chinese.
I added the last bit, but yes, the rest of it was word for word. Righty-oh! I'm not sure where the moldy part comes in, I don't know if it's refering to the theatre in which we're performing, or Yu-ren is about to spring something new on us yet again.
In other news, the movie festival is over, and I'm frickin devastated. The program made a few misprints when it came to whether the movies had English subtitles or not. The World, set in Beijing, was not supposed to have English subtitles (but I went in anyway feeling brave and daring) and it ended up having them. The Motorcycle Diaries, from Argentina, was supposed to have them, but didn't, and a million foreigners sat through the whole thing thinking what the fuck. Anyway for such an apparently high-profile movie festival it was pretty crappy (but typical of this place nonetheless) to make such basic, ticket-sales influencing mistakes. With the Beijing movie, I couldn't help considering the possibility that the predujice against all things Mainland easily had something to do with the mistake. It was probably just my imagination taking the usual roads of cynicism of course, but I raised it with Cathy: "Why did they say there were no English subtitles when there were?"
She answered in one word, free from hesitation or consideration:
"Gu-yi de." (intentional).
Like, before I get into another spill about Chinese culture and the way foreigners are perceived as being to naive or gullible (say, honest?), I'm going to change the subject. Like, dude, if you're going to have a movie festival, have a frickin movie festival.
We rehearse four times a week now. I'm losing weight too, it's mad. I've got my lines half learnt. Hai bu cuo. I'm trying to concentrate on pretending I'm a good dancer. It's tough. Next weekend I'm going to Taipei for a big dinner, yessssssss. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm lots and lots of Chinese food........
¶ 04:57
This is the English blurb for our performance, printed in my favourite magazine (actually).
Drama: Happy Waves, Sad Woman (so that's what it's called!)
Broken are the lead, the music, the noise, the heartbeats and the emotions. From start till the end of this moldy affair, this never changing scene, is more serious than death, this tortured muse at Nell's home. And come see the dumb foreigner speak Chinese.
I added the last bit, but yes, the rest of it was word for word. Righty-oh! I'm not sure where the moldy part comes in, I don't know if it's refering to the theatre in which we're performing, or Yu-ren is about to spring something new on us yet again.
In other news, the movie festival is over, and I'm frickin devastated. The program made a few misprints when it came to whether the movies had English subtitles or not. The World, set in Beijing, was not supposed to have English subtitles (but I went in anyway feeling brave and daring) and it ended up having them. The Motorcycle Diaries, from Argentina, was supposed to have them, but didn't, and a million foreigners sat through the whole thing thinking what the fuck. Anyway for such an apparently high-profile movie festival it was pretty crappy (but typical of this place nonetheless) to make such basic, ticket-sales influencing mistakes. With the Beijing movie, I couldn't help considering the possibility that the predujice against all things Mainland easily had something to do with the mistake. It was probably just my imagination taking the usual roads of cynicism of course, but I raised it with Cathy: "Why did they say there were no English subtitles when there were?"
She answered in one word, free from hesitation or consideration:
"Gu-yi de." (intentional).
Like, before I get into another spill about Chinese culture and the way foreigners are perceived as being to naive or gullible (say, honest?), I'm going to change the subject. Like, dude, if you're going to have a movie festival, have a frickin movie festival.
We rehearse four times a week now. I'm losing weight too, it's mad. I've got my lines half learnt. Hai bu cuo. I'm trying to concentrate on pretending I'm a good dancer. It's tough. Next weekend I'm going to Taipei for a big dinner, yessssssss. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm lots and lots of Chinese food........
¶ 04:57
