Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-zzh7m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T13:41:00.394Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Question of Translation in Taiwanese Colonial Cinematic Space

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2011

Kuei-Fen Chiu
Get access

Abstract

This essay studies the practice of cultural translation in colonial Taiwanese cinematic space. Just as the Japanese translation of Western cinema brings into play traces of Japanese otherness, the Taiwanese translation of the Japanese translation disrupts the Japanese monopoly on the meaning of cinematic experience in colonial Taiwan. A key figure in this complex cultural translation was the benshi, a translator who performed alongside the screen to interpret the film for the audience. This study argues that an overemphasis on the interventional power of the benshi's word does not do justice to the complex role of the benshi as a translator. In spite of its inscription of the cultural specific in the cinematic space, the presence of the benshi is also a reminder of an unfulfilled desire: the desire for the (foreign) image and the desire for the other. Insofar as the act of translation is a critical engagement with the challenges posed by the other, a simplistic celebration of local resistance does not help us fully address the complexity of cultural translation that defines the mediascape of the modern age.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 70 , Issue 1 , February 2011 , pp. 77 - 97
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

List of References

Anderson, Joseph L. 1992. “Spoken Silents in the Japanese Cinema; or, Talking to Pictures: Essaying the Katsuben, Contextualizing the Texts.” In Reframing Japanese Cinema: Authorship, Genre, History, ed. Nolletti, Arthur Jr., and Desser, David, 259–310. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Anderson, Joseph L., and Richie, Donald. 1982. The Japanese Film: Art and Industry. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Benjamin, Walter. 1996. “The Task of the Translator.” In Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, vol. 1, 1913–1926, ed. Bullock, Marcus and Jennings, Michael W., 253–63. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Benjamin, Walter. 2002. “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility.” In Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, vol. 3, 1935–1938, ed. Bullock, Marcus and Jennings, Michael W., 101–33. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Bhabha, Homi K. 1994. “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse.” In The Location of Culture, by Bhabha, Homi K., 85–92. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Burch, Noel. 1979. To the Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in the Japanese Cinema. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Pei-huo, Cai. 1971. Taiwan minzu yundongshi [A history of the Taiwanese nationalist movement]. Taipei: Zili wanbao.Google Scholar
Guo-fu, Chen. 1985. Pianmian zhi yen: Essays on Film by Chen Guo-fu: Chen Guo-fu dian-ying wen-ji [One-sided views: Essays on film by Chen Guo-fu]. Taipei: Taipei Film Archives.Google Scholar
Chiu, Kuei-fen. 2007. “The Vision of Taiwan New Documentary.” In Cinema Taiwan: Politics, Popularity, and State of the Arts, ed. Davis, Darrell William and Chen, Ru-Shou Robert, 17–32. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Chow, Rey. 1995. Primitive Passions: Visuality, Sexuality, Ethnography, and Contemporary Chinese Cinema. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Cowie, Elizabeth. 1999. “The Spectacle of Actuality.” In Collecting Visible Evidence, ed. Gaines, Jane M. and Renov, Michael, 19–45. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Dym, Jeffery A. 2003. Benshi, Japanese Silent Film Narrators, and Their Forgotten Narrative Art of Setsumei: A History of Japanese Silent Film Narration. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press.Google Scholar
Shozo, Fujii. 2005. “The Rise and Fall of Taipei Cinema League: Film Revolution in 1930s Modern City.” Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 17 (2): 81–92.Google Scholar
Gerow, Aaron. 2001. “The Word before the Image: Criticism, the Screenplay, and the Regulation of Meaning in Prewar Japanese Film Culture.” In Word and Image in Japanese Cinema, ed. Washburn, Dennis and Cavanaugh, Carole, 3–35. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hidenori, Okada. 2002. “Probing a Void in Documentary Film History: The Rise and Fall of the Nippon Eigasha Jakarata Studio.” Documentary Box, no. 20 (September). http://www.yidff.jp/docbox/20/box20-3-1-e.html [accessed May 20, 2006].Google Scholar
High, Peter B. 2003. The Imperial Screen: Japanese Film Culture in the Fifteen Years’ War, 1931–1945. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Hiroshi, Komatsu. 1992. “Some Characteristics of Japanese Cinema before World War I.” Trans. Ehrlich, Linda C. and Okutsu, Yuko. In Reframing Japanese Cinema: Authorship, Genre, History, ed. Nolletti, Arthur Jr., and Desser, David, 229–58. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Lee, Cheng-liang. 2006. “The Cinema Practice in Japanese Occupied Era,” Router: A Journal of Cultural Studies, no. 2:127–66.Google Scholar
Cheng-ji, Li. 2004. “Zhimindi Taiwan meiti shiyong yuyan de zhongceng gouzao” [The multi-layered language structure in media communication in colonial Taiwan]. In Kuajie de Taiwan shi yen-jiu [Transcending the boundary of Taiwanese history: Dialogues with East Asian history], ed. Wakabayashi, Masahiro and Wu, Mi-cha, 201–40. Taipei: Bozhongzhe wenhua.Google Scholar
Su-shang, Lu. 1961. Taiwan dianyin xiju shi [A history of cinema and drama in Taiwan]. Taipei: Yin-hua.Google Scholar
Su-yuan, Li, and Ju-bin, Hu. 1997 Zhong-guo wu-sheng dian-ying shi [A history of Chinese silent film]. Beijing: Chinese Films.Google Scholar
Mamie, Misawa. 2001. Zhimindi xia de yinmu: Taiwan zongdufu dianying zhengce zhi yanjiu 1895–1942 [Colonial screen: A study of the Japanese government’ film policies in colonial Taiwan, 1895–1942]. Taipei: Chien-wei.Google Scholar
McDonald, Keiko I. 2005. “An Embarrassment of Riches: The Impact of the Classical Stage on Early Japanese Cinema.” In Theater and Film: A Comparative Anthology, ed. Knopf, Robert, 73–96. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. 73–96.Google Scholar
Noh, Kwang Woo. 2001. “Formation of Korean Film Industry under Japanese Occupation.” Asian Cinema 12 (2): 20–31.Google Scholar
Richie, Donald. 2005. A Hundred Years of Japanese Film. New York: Kodansha International.Google Scholar
Robertson, Roland. 1995. “Glocalization: Time-Space and Homogeneity-Heterogeneity.” In Global Modernities, ed. Featherstone, Mike, Lash, Scott, and Robertson, Roland, 25–44. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taiwanese People's Newspapers [Taiwan Minpao]. 1996. November 21.Google Scholar
Yi-jun, Wei. 2007. “Zhanho Taiwan yuanzhu minzu de wenxue xingcheng yanjiu” [A study of the postwar formation of Taiwanese aboriginal literature]. PhD diss., National Cheng-kung University.Google Scholar
Wen-xing, Wu. 1987. “Rizhi shiqi Taiwan zongdufu tuiguang riyu yundong chutan” [A preliminary investigation of the Japanese language movement promoted by the Japanese colonial government in colonial Taiwan]. Taiwan Fengwu 37 (1): 1–31.Google Scholar
Yang, Xiang. 2004. “Minzu xiangxiang yu dazhong luxian de jiaogui: 1930niandai Taiwan huawen lunzheng yu taiyu wenxue yundong” [The intersection of national imagination and the mass movement: Taiwanese language debates and the Taiwanese language movement in the 1930s]. In Taiwan xinwenxue fazhan zhongda shijian lunwenji [Crucial events in the development of Taiwan new literature], 21–47. Tainan: Taiwan Literature Museum.Google Scholar
Jong-zhong, Ye. 1967. “Wo kang dianying de gushi” [My film-viewing experience]. In Xiaowu Dache ji [Small houses, big cars], 35–39. Taichung: Central Books.Google Scholar
Jong-zhong, Ye. 1971. Taiwan minzu yundong shi [A history of Taiwanese nationalist movement]. Taipei: Zili wanbao.Google Scholar
Lung-yen, Ye. 1997. “Taiwan de dianyin bianshi” [Movies Benshi in Taiwan]. Taipei wen-xien [Taipei documents], no. 121:173–76.Google Scholar
Lung-yen, Ye. 1998. Rizhi shiqi Taiwan dianyingshi [A history of Taiwanese movies in the Japanese ruling period]. Taipei: Yu-shan-she.Google Scholar
Hong-zhi, Zhan. 1988. “Minguo qishiliu nian Taiwan dianying xuanyan” [A movie manifesto in the seventy-sixty year of the Republic of China]. In Taiwan Xindianying [Taiwan new cinema], ed. Xiong-ping, Jiao, 111–18. Taipei: Shibao.Google Scholar