Essay in Literary Translation: " Disturbances in Coppola's Lost in Translation: Representation and Dislocation"

“Disturbances in Coppola’s Lost in Translation: Representation and Dislocation”

(July 15, 2018)

Film representations often tend to cater to the standards that which identity and cultural heritages are defined (often than not, stereotyping) in order to properly convey a message. City centers, according to Roland Barthes in his book “The Empire of Signs” (1970) should be a way of recognizing the identity and national schema of a country, but the fact that even Tokyo has multiple centers indicates the multiplicity that is at work. As such, multiplicity in this sense begs for dislocation, of which is prominent in Sofia Coppola’s 2003 film “Lost in Translation”, as we see protagonists Charlotte (Scarlet Johansson) and Bob Harris (Bill Murray) confront the disturbances as represented in the film. The origin of such a disturbance lies in the familiarity of the space and yet the alienation it creates upon living/experiencing the reality it embodies. While there are many ways to create representations, for the purpose of this paper, I will discuss the disturbances of the representations in two categories: the relationship of the individual and the space, and the absence of translation – two prominent features that are presented in this film.

Individual versus Space

Iwabuchi quotes Robins (2000:489): “If the nation is fundamentally about belonging to an abstract community… then the urban arena is about immersion in a world of multiplicity, and implicates us in the dimension of embodied cultural experience … The nation, we may say, is a space of identification and identity, whilst the city is an experiential and existential space.”(2008, 551-552). From this statement, it is clear that space and the individual has a connection, often than not a power-relationship. In the film, this relationship was depicted, but still, there lingers the question of: "should the space influence the individual or is the individual creating the significance of the space?" 

Pronounced throughout the film is this strange relationship of the individual and space. We see this as a form of confinement when rendering the two protagonists against the spaces they dwelled in, such as their bedroom suites, the dizzying bustling cityscape of Tokyo, the working condition of Bob where he is at the mercy of a translator who cannot even give the proper translation, the craziness of the night life scenes of Tokyo, and the seemingly otherworldly appeal of the different agencies of traditional Japanese culture such as the ikebana class, the buddhist temple and the shinto wedding in Kyoto. On the one hand, this relationship is explained as something confining like a cage, especially for the protagonists who cannot understand the local language and that even the retreat to their own bedrooms feels like a solitary confinement within a larger confinement that is the city of Tokyo. Because of this, they are left feeling alienated, not only by the language but by the physical locations. However, on the other hand, this relationship is also of realization as we see how their exploration of the unknown (the exotic – that refers to Japan that is not representative of the hypermodern city of Tokyo in the features of Kyoto and traditional experiences) creates a realization within themselves. This is more prominently seen in Charlotte’s case as the alienation becomes an exploratory experience of her own desires. Meanwhile, for Bob’s case, the unknown refers to exploring beyond the listed agenda and activities in his schedule, such as his adventure with Charlotte throughout Tokyo. Still, the treatment of the spaces remain superficial seeing as how the protagonists didn’t necessarily engage with the elements such as the people or the artifacts associated with these spaces. Thus, it can be correct to note that this film, provided with the same formula or narrative, would remain the same had it been set accordingly in a different country, so long as there is the distinctive hypermodern city representation and the language barrier in place. In other words, there was no real connection of the protagonists and Tokyo as the space, or even Japan as a country. It was merely a setting like a plot device in a novel, and yet it still fails to properly situate the conditions of which the characters would have been presented with its lack of characteristically Japanese cultural artifact that would have been integral to the protagonists’ character development. Of course, this expectation of representation risks falling under the “Othering” discourse in order to justify authentic representation of the Japanese identification in the film.

In another perspective, this particular critique - that which Japan could be have been replaced with a different country – only holds true in the contemporary setting (of our time today), for at the time when this film was produced, or at least to represent the certain time it was filmed for, the most iconic non-western hypermodern city was Tokyo, and while some may argue that London, Paris, or some other European capital may be a substitute, these spaces lack the exoticising factor of a non-western hypermodern city even as simple as the customs, the transportation, the language, the people, and the distance from the protagonist’s home country. It is precisely because Tokyo is so much like a modern day USA city and yet it is populated by asian people, kanjis and characters foreign to the English tongue, and the eccentricity of the traditional culture, that creates a kind of defamiliarizing touch to what would have been treated as normal. But the film fails to explore this dimension and as such, what sense of defamiliarization the protagonists experience is still attributed to their own personal burdens and life crisis.

Absence of Translation

Even with the presence of an actual translator to aid the character of Bob in his work, there is the discrepancy of what is being translated to him and what is actually being instructed in Japanese. And it is even apparent to Bob, himself, that this failure of proper translation is seemingly a passing case and permitted as if he was expected to understand it so easily. In other cases, when the protagonists engage in any form of communication with a Japanese in the film, there is no inter-text subtitle. This directorial decision may actually reflect the experience to the audience. That is to say, Coppola attempts to bring the experience of being “lost in translation” to her audience, which in itself can be an attempt of multi-media translation from film to experiential. As Iwabuchi stated, Coppola’s choice of Japan was due to her own experience of living in Japan (2008, 543). In a way, this can be read as the director's own translation of her experience to film. It may not necessarily be a universal experience, but because of situating, specifically,  two American protagonists that were hampered by the language barrier in an environment that was so similar and yet fundamentally different by custom, it comes off as an adaptation (with the source text being Coppola’s own experience) of the expected transition that is involved, as well as the difficulty of such a transition. However, there were some cases where the obvious lack of understanding between the protagonist and the Japanese in the film becomes a point of comical misunderstanding leading to frustration. This, I would suspect, becomes a point of criticism as if to say that the film did not explore or try to bridge the gap of misunderstanding between the characters, and that because English is seen as the medium of language that the protagonists use, becomes the dominant party in the hierarchy, and the untranslatable Japanese becomes the minority that is constantly failing to communicate.

On the other hand, the fact that the Japanese represented in the film seem to pursue communicating in the native tongue despite talking to a foreigner may speak of the country’s own inability to transition from a homogenous society, especially of a monolingual community. And so, this creates a gap in the power-relationship between the protagonists and the society, itself, relying on would-be interpreters or bilingual friends, which further alienates them from the norm of having their language as the universally spoken and unproblematic one. In effect, this disturbance may actually represent a form of threat against the superiority of the English language, and the negative reaction (such as frustration of the protagonists) is a representation of wanting to arrest the threat and failing. In a critical view, this can be an eye-opener to display the inability of a singular language to have a universal communication– that, in fact, there is no such thing as a "singular superior language", for why are the only ones disturbed by the miscommunications the protagonists of the film and not the Japanese? And in another case, it is even evident throughout the film, that despite having the common language with their respective partners, both protagonists seem to fail to convey the message they want within the confines of their own language. And so, it also raises the awareness of the importance of translation and how it is works beyond language translation as it can affect the power-relationship dynamics of cultures.

In conclusion, the representation of Tokyo in the film accommodates the title of being “lost” in the sense that it has become an urban space that is void of the characteristic Japanese identity found in the stereotyped cultural embellishments of traditional values and aesthetic sense with its concrete jungle, skyscraper backdrop and New York-style bars and entertainers, that it becomes a copy not an original. This representation, however, may be a translation of the director’s own vision and experience. The problem then lies at the fact that the movie received a mixture of acclaims and critics. For, then, that implies that there are those who agree at this perpetuating image of hypermodern urban landscape and self-orientalisation of the traditions in short sequences in the film to conform with the current identification of the nation. Meanwhile, others fault the film’s inability to bridge the cultural (and in extension) language gap that presents as the fundamental obstacle throughout the film. Point in case, this is why Iwabuchi attributes what first may appear to be a transnational indifference portrayed by the characters as well as the film’s production treatment, may actually be more about transnational dislocation as the film, like the setting of Tokyo, struggles in the defamiliarizing identification as well as the cultural gaps presented by experiencing the locale.

However, I do feel that the success of the film is due to its ability to translate beyond the medium (film) and to create the sense of alienation amongst the viewers, for the imagery and the experience undertaken within the filmic universe is explored in its raw form (the absence of the translations and the relationship of the individual and space.) And so, the biggest disturbance of the representation is not the one captured in the film, but the film viewing experience: of knowing any mistranslations, of being confined, and of having to be limited within the perspectives and frustrations of the protagonists. And so, who is lost is actually the audience, and they are lost within the translation of the experiences, where cultural and language difference are part of it, and not entirely just about it.

References:

1. Barthes, Roland. The Empire of Signs. 1970.

2. Iwabuchi, Koichi. 2008. “Lost in TransNation: Tokyo and the urban imaginary in the era of globalization”, Inter‐Asia Cultural Studies, 9:4, 543-556, DOI: 10.1080/14649370802386446

3. Lost in Translation. Directed by Sofia Coppola. Performed by Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray. USA, 2003.