Entry 6 : Communication Technology In Films

Alright, for my sixth entry, I will be discussing about the communication technology in films. Most of the movies today are using technology to communicate. Whether it is a simple call from loved ones, or a ransom call from a terrorist, mobile phone tends to have an interesting way to tell a story.

In Die Hard movie, the protagonist, John McClane communicate with Hans Gruber, the leader of the terrorists through a walkie talkie. This is one of the iconic scene that build up the characters without having them meeting each other face to face yet. When they finally meet up, the tension of the situation starts to grow as McClane does not know how Hans look like. By using walkie talkie, voice are the only thing that the characters in the story can hear. Hans was playing smart as he changed his tone of voice to cover up his identity, and passes himself off as an escaped hostage. 

Another example of using communication technology as a plot device is the movie called Phone Booth. It is a 2002 American film that literally uses the phone booth as the main location from the start to the end of the story. The story is about a mysterious sniper called a publicist named Stuart Shepard from a phone booth and being pull into danger as Stu is the target himself. With the film confined within the phone booth area, it does a fantastic job in showing how the sniper speaking to Stu through the phone and the presence of intensity of the whole situation. The sniper character will need to show his emotion through his voice without even giving the audience any screen time of him until the very end. 

However, the long shadow of communication technology may provide some difficulties to tackle with. Technology has become so advanced that the film directors have to keep up with it in order to write a believable story. From an article written by Joe Queenan, he stated that the film directors "won't pretend their characters lack the most basic, obvious information-gathering and communications skills, because it leaves such a gaping hole in the middle of the story"(Queenan, 2011). 

This will somewhat explain why some recent films like Inglourious Basterds, Robin Hood and more have been set in the past, as the story won't be ruin by the modern communication technology. We have no problem in believing in vampires, ghost, monsters and other extraterrestrials, but as Queenan put it, "it is impossible to get anyone to believe that a character in a horror film or thriller would not be armed with the technology needed to foil the depredations of his rampaging, bloodthirsty stepfather"(Queenan, 2011). 

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References & Resources:

Favorite Scene of Alan Rickman from Die Hard. (2016). [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mklnXM3LIXo [Accessed 25 Jun. 2016].

Queenan, J. (2011). The movie plots that technology killed. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/jul/28/technology-killed-film-plots-hollywood [Accessed 25 Jun. 2016].

Entry 5 : Constructed Language in Films and Video Games

For this entry, I will be talking about the constructed languages for films and video games. We have been making up languages for communication for a very long time, and now in film industry, we are coming up with languages that we do not use it in the real world. Constructed languages, also known as conlangs, is "a language that has a phonology, morphology, syntax, and sometimes alphabet attributed to an individual human inventor" (Adelman, 2014). The are quite a lot of films that uses conlangs, like for example: Star Wars, Star Trek, The Lord Of The Ring, Avatar and more.

For these science-fiction and fantasy films, new languages are constructed for characters and races in their own fictional world. To further creating an even more believable fictional world, various conlangs are spoken by different races and they often cannot understand each other without their very own translation. Linguists, or the conlangers are actually hired to construct a language for video games and movie production. From the articles and videos, I understand that creating a new language are not simple as translating one language to another. The language has to be relevant to the time period of which the characters are living in. It also needs to be pronounceable and learnable for the actors.

From the interview of David Peterson, he had this to say about creating a language for a fictional race, "Who is speaking this language? Who are the people? Where are they from?"(Academy Originals, 2016). By understanding the backstory of the race, linguist can  create believable Conlangs that does not seem out of character.

Conlangs did not just used in films, it applies to video game industry as well. Like films, if the game setting is in a fantasy/science-fiction world, like they would different languages for different races. Most notably are games like Mass Effect and The Elder Scroll V: Skyrim. It would immerse the player into their lore-rich world in the game. 

However, not all the video game languages can be translated. Take The Sims series for example, the language ( Simlish ) that they used, it does not have any define meaning. According to the creator of The Sims, "using real life languages such as English would cause the dialogue to be repetitive and would be expensive translating the entire dialog Sims may say"(The Sims Wiki, n.d.). They did tried using Native American language, but at the end they decided to use nonsense language so that whatever that is spoken by the Sims could be left to the player's imagination. From it, they achieved something interesting, which is to prevent the dialogue to be repetitive as the language does not have a specific meaning. You can check out the video about the Simlish below.

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References & Resources:

Academy Originals, (2016). Credited As: ConLangers (How to Create a Language). [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0knxW76bDuI [Accessed 21 Jun. 2016].

CNN. (2012). A history of Hollywood's invented languages. [online] Available at: http://edition.cnn.com/2012/04/06/tech/the-history-of-created-languages-in-pop-culture/index.html [Accessed 21 Jun. 2016].

The Sims, (2009). Simlish Behind the Scenes. [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yW4nfveKW5s [Accessed 22 Jun. 2016].

The Sims Wiki. (n.d.). Simlish. [online] Available at: http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Simlish [Accessed 22 Jun. 2016].

Entry 4 : Subtitles and Dubs In Multilingual Film

The concept of dubbing in films are to localize it for the specific country that are not familiar with the language it is used. Many voice actor around the world will record a new voice track to replace the foreign language of the movie. As Herbst said, "It may well be considered a truism that one cannot translate one dialect into another, because if this is attempted cultural anchoring will suffer and the image will be belied."(Heiss, 2004). But there is exception to genre like comedies, which is known to have a more unusual solutions in film translation.

There are also multilingual film that pursue authenticity (Inglourious Basterds). Having different characters purposely speaking in their native tongue, the dubbing required will be quite challenging as some of the language. To make a scene in the movie even more realistic, like for example, those dialogue that does not serve the narrative purposes and only part of the multilingual environment, it is not necessary to translate it.

The subtitler needs to be aware of this in order to decide what can and must be subtitled, and what need not or must not – unless the decision has been made by the client and is contained in the translation brief (Díaz Cintas and Remael, 2007: 58).

Language plays an important role in movie experience. Having subtitles in one language for a multilingual film will produce translation mistake. Due to cultural differences, the audience will easily overlooked when they are watching it in a single language subtitles. By using both subtitles and dubbing, it will simply present the film with the diversity of its culture.

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References & Resources:

Heiss, C. (2004). Dubbing Multilingual Films: A New Challenge?. Meta, 49(1), p.208. 

Available at: https://www.erudit.org/revue/meta/2004/v49/n1/009035ar.html [Accessed 13 Jun. 2016].

Knowledge about how different countries have provide different rules of dubbing a film.


Cabrera, J. (2013). Subtitling multilingual films: the case of Inglourious Basterds. [online] ResearchGate. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257947990_Subtitling_multilingual_films_the_case_of_Inglourious_Basterds?enrichId=rgreq-0a9d626d23597c65dea27d14e2907ce5&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzI1Nzk0Nzk5MDtBUzoxMDQ3NzQ2OTk1ODU1NDhAMTQwMTk5MTY0MzYxOQ%3D%3D&el=1_x_3 [Accessed 13 Jun. 2016].

Gave me an insight of how the subtitles are being applied to the film.

BBC News. (2016). Hollywood dubbing: The German Bruce Willis and other invisible stars - BBC News. [online] Available at: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21523643 [Accessed 13 Jun. 2016].

Helped me to understand how voice actor are used for dubbing and how they try to mimic the original actor.

Entry 3 : Realism In Languages

Alright, so today I am going to focus on the Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds film, which I just rewatched. It is a German-American war movie set in an alternate history of World War II where a special squad of Jewish soldiers were tasked to kill Nazis and also taking down Hitler himself. This is a good example of a multilingual film as few languages (English, German, Italian and French) were heavily used throughout the movie. As I mentioned before in my previous entry that when it comes to war films, it worked very well in showing the soldiers from different country in a more believable approach. 

From the very first scene, it shows the cruel German Colonel Hans Landa subtly interrogated a French farmer into giving away the Jew's hiding spot. At the beginning the German Colonel was speaking French to the farmer, so it would make him appear to be much more like a friend and welcome by the farmer.     Later on as Hans started his interrogation, he politely asked the farmer to speak in English as the German Colonel does not speak well in French...or so it would seem. At the end, we learned that the reason he requested the farmer to talk with him in English so that IF there are Jewish hiding in the farmer's house, they will not understand a word that they speak and will not try to escape. This scene really shows the potential of how the effects of language can be use in a form of communication advantage. For me, the conversation built up tension between these individuals and how they seamlessly switching from French to English, solidify and enrich the realism of the story and the world they lived in. Throughout the movie, German and Jewish mostly will speak in their own native language. Thus, making the characters feel more grounded.  

According to José Javier Ávila-Cabrera's article where he cited from Discovering a genre: The polyglot film :

The polyglot film […] is naturalistic: languages are used in the way they would be used in reality.

They define geographical or political borders, ‘visualise’ the different social, personal or cultural

levels of the characters and enrich their aura in conjunction with the voice (Wahl, 2005: 2).

Subtitle and dubbing actually play a very important roles in multilingual films. I will be talking more about it in my next blog. 

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References & Resources:

Cabrera, J. (2013). Subtitling multilingual films: the case of Inglourious Basterds. [online] ResearchGate. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257947990_Subtitling_multilingual_films_the_case_of_Inglourious_Basterds [Accessed 11 Jun. 2016].

Provided me more information of the effects of language in a multilingual environment that is shown in the narratives of the movie.

Hoad, P. (2010). A Prophet shows us a multilingual future for cinema. [Blog] theguardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2010/jan/28/jacques-audiard-a-prophet [Accessed 11 Jun. 2016].

Helps me understand how multilingualism is used in films.