Subtitling Subtleties

PEN America, the Center for the Humanities at CUNY Graduate Center, and the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library presented Subtitling Subtleties livestreamed on the global, commons-based, peer-produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv on Tuesday 14 July 2020 at 9 a.m. CDT (Chicago, UTC -5) / 10 a.m. EDT (New York, UTC -4) / 15:00 BST (London, UTC +1) / 16:00 CEST (Berlin, UTC +2) / 23:00 KST (Seoul, UTC +9).

The global success of Bong Joon Ho's Oscar-winning Parasite confirmed a dramatic shift in what stories movie audiences across the world, and those in the United States, are willing to embrace as "universal." Subtitlers, particularly those who make subtitles in the lingua franca that is English, play a crucial role in rendering films intelligible for such global reception. Parasite's subtitler Darcy Paquet assesses this intricate art with Linda Hoaglund, a bilingual film director and producer and the subtitler of 250 Japanese films, including Miyazaki's Spirited Away and Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, and award winning writer-director Xiaolu Guo (She, a Chinese, UFO in Her Eyes) responds from a filmmaker's perspective.

Speaker Bios:

Darcy Paquet teaches in the International Film Business Academy at the Busan Asian Film School. He is the founder of the website Koreanfilm.org and the author of New Korean Cinema: Breaking the Waves (2010). A former correspondent for Screen International and Variety, in 2013 he launched the Wildflower Film Awards Korea, which celebrates achievement in Korean independent filmmaking. He also works as a program consultant for the Udine Far East Film Festival. Over the years he has done the English subtitle translation for over 100 Korean films, including Parasite (2019), The Handmaiden (2016), and On the Beach at Night Alone (2017). Darcy has been living in Seoul since 1997.

Linda Hoaglund is a bilingual filmmaker whose childhood in Japan inspired the five feature-length films she has completed to date. Born in Japan, the daughter of American missionary parents, she attended Japanese public schools and graduated Yale University. She has subtitled 250 Japanese films, including Seven Samurai by Akira Kurosawa, Spirited Away by Hayao Miyazaki, and Battle Royale by Fukasaku Kinji. She has also translated Kabuki performances by Heisei Nakamura-za at Lincoln Center and essays by Issei Miyake, Ishiuchi Miyako, Tomatsu Shomei, Yokoo Tadanori, Kirino Natsuo, Moriyama Daido, Ando Tadao and other renowned artists and writers. She is currently editing and translating a book featuring designer Taku Satoh's work. She resides in Brooklyn, NY.

After earning an MA at the Beijing Film Academy, Xiaolu Guo moved to London in 2002, and in 2013 was named one of Granta’s Best of the Young British Novelists. Her films include She, a Chinese (2009), which won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno International Film Festival, and UFO in Her Eyes (2011), an adaptation of her novel of the same title. In 2019, the Whitechapel Gallery in London held a complete retrospective of her cinematic work. Her third novel, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers (2008)— first of her books to be written in English—has been translated into 26 languages. Her memoir Nine Continents received the 2017 National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography. Her most recent novel, A Lover’s Discourse, is forthcoming in 2020.

About this Conference and Conversation Series

Translating the Future launched with weekly hour-long online conversations with renowned translators throughout the late spring and summer and will culminate in late September with several large-scale programs, including a symposium among Olga Tokarczuk's translators into languages including English, Japanese, Hindi, and more.

The conference, co-sponsored by PEN America, the Center for the Humanities at The Graduate Center CUNY, and the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, with additional support from the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, commemorates and carries forward PEN's 1970 World of Translation conference, convened by Gregory Rabassa and Robert Payne, and featuring Muriel Rukeyser, Irving Howe, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and many others. It billed itself as "the first international literary translation conference in the United States" and had a major impact on US literary culture.

The conversations are hosted by Esther Allen & Allison Markin Powell.

About HowlRound TV

HowlRound TV is a global, commons-based peer produced, open access livestreaming and video archive project stewarded by the nonprofit HowlRound. HowlRound TV is a free and shared resource for live conversations and performances relevant to the world's performing arts and cultural fields. Its mission is to break geographic isolation, promote resource sharing, and to develop our knowledge commons collectively. Participate in a community of peer organizations revolutionizing the flow of information, knowledge, and access in our field by becoming a producer and co-producing with us. Learn more by going to our participate page. For any other queries, email [email protected], or call Vijay Mathew at +1 917.686.3185 Signal/WhatsApp. View the video archive of past events.