Princess Mononoke: Understanding Studio Ghibli’S Monster Princess

Nicholson, Jennifer E. "The Translation and Adaptation of Miyazaki’s Spirit Princess in the West." Princess Mononoke: Understanding Studio Ghibli’s Monster Princess. By Rayna Denison. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017. 133–150. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 1 Oct. 2021. <http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781501329753.ch-007>. Downloaded from Bloomsbury Collections, www.bloomsburycollections.com, 1 October 2021, 21:10 UTC. Copyright © Rayna Denison 2018. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher, and provide a link to the Creative Commons licence. 1 33 Chapter 7 T HE TRANSLATION AND ADAPTATION OF MIYAZAKI’S SPIRIT PRINCESS IN THE WEST Jennifer E. Nicholson In 2009, 10 years aft er the Miramax release of Princess Mononoke in dubbed English, author Neil Gaiman was interviewed about a particularly interesting aspect of his involvement in the translation project. When interviewer Steve Biodrowski mentioned ‘ issues with Miramax’ about word choices in the translation, Gaiman responded that they ‘got to keep “samurai,” ’ which had at once point been ‘warrior’, but that their script ‘lost “sake”; “sake” became “wine.” ’1 Th e word is used in passing, once, in the scene where the Lady Eboshi apolo- gises to the men making rifl es, and promises to ‘have wine sent down later’. If the script had used sake instead, what would change? At fi rst glance, any anxiety about the word’s translation seems unnecessary. While sake is a particular kind of rice wine, diff erent to ‘wine’ in the way the word is more commonly used in English, Eboshi’s off er remains equivalent across the two languages: she will make sure they receive a drink aft er their work is done. Conversely, sake , unlike Western wine, can be served hot or cold, has a much higher alcohol content, and, while it is a specifi cally Japanese type of wine, can refer to the equivalent English word ‘liquor’. If the fi lm’s audience is Anglophone, and predominantly American, are these details necessary, or do they detract? What begins as a question of preference – the extent to which Miramax and others wanted to retain what Biodrowski calls a ‘Japanese fl avour in the dialogue’ 2 – becomes a source of anxiety not only about this particular instance of translation, but about translating meaning at all. Anxiety about translation is a cornerstone of discourse concerning repre- sentations of Japanese media in Anglophone countries. Princess Mononoke , or もののけ姫 ( Mononokehime , Hayao Miyazaki, 1997), displays this even in its title, where mononoke (spirit or monster) is left untranslated, and the princess’s name left unsaid. Th is is one of several instances where the fi lm’s international publicity relies on an adaptation that drastically alters the refreshing aspects Miyazaki portrays. His work is visually stunning and cinematically advanced for 1997 (as discussed by Rayna Denison in this book’s introduction). Th e fi lm’s 99781501329760_pi-220.indd781501329760_pi-220.indd 113333 111/1/20171/1/2017 44:21:08:21:08 PPMM 134 134 Jennifer E. Nicholson bildungsroman narrative is familiar yet new for a Western audience, rejecting the tired plotline of a young protagonist’s search for a romantic counterpart, alongside the gendered expectations that accompany it. However, Miramax’s translation and adaptation of the script greatly aff ect the fi lm’s representation for Anglophone viewers. I suggest that this exemplifi es the mononoke of translation anxiety. While ‘the 21st century is a translation century’, and Gaiman’s translation work can be commended for its international accessibility, the transformed fi lm is a limited version of the original.3 However, young viewers particularly have engaged enthusiastically with the fi lm, a fact not unnoticed by Miyazaki himself: ‘I realised, “. this is something that children must see,” because adults, they didn’t get it – children understood it.’ 4 I propose that the fi lm’s unstable status between languages provides a position for spectators, particularly young viewers, to recognize the shift ing subjectivities in our translation century. I will argue that the mononoke of translation anxiety is exemplifi ed by the extensive transformation and adaptation of both language and culture evident in parallel comparisons between the Ghibli and Miramax versions of Miyazaki’s 1997 fi lm. In particular, the fi nal Miramax script, written by Gaiman with assis- tance from translator Steve Alpert, exemplifi es the cultural division between the versions. While Princess Mononoke off ers interesting commentary on human- ity’s relationship with nature, it does so diff erently in its distinctive Anglophone iterations. Th e two versions, Mononokehime and Princess Mononoke , cre- ate a sense of cultural vertigo for the Anglophone viewer who has seen both, enhancing the sense of instability that is frequently present in translated works. Th is fi nal point of instability will allow me to draw conclusions concerning the prevalence of uncertainty in what Avadesh K. Singh calls today’s ‘translation century’, 5 through what Susan Napier describes as ‘the cinema of deassurance’.6 Singh suggests that those ‘who would survive in this knowledge century . [are those] that will learn from others’. 7 As such, the fi lm invites cross- cultural understanding, particularly in young viewers, even as it presents violence and plurality, rather than a fairy tale ending. Th ose translating Princess Mononoke for an English audience were required to have their work approved by Studio Ghibli prior to its Western release. In an interview only two months aft er the dubbed fi lm’s release in America, Miyazaki told interviewer Toshifumi Yoshida that ‘the deal [with Miramax] from the beginning was that there would be no cuts’. 8 While both Alpert and Gaiman strove for a text that would ‘give a new identity to this Japanese fi lm’, Rayna Denison suggests that ‘Miramax undertook . a project of indigenisation for Princess Mononoke’ s American release.’9 Th e eff ect was both translation and adaptation, as the fi lm shift ed fl uidly between Japanese and American languages and cultures. As mentioned above, mononoke is not the princess’s name, but to the Anglophone viewer of Princess Mononoke this is not immediately evident. Th e girl’s name is San – homonymous with both 三 (three) and さん , an honorifi c 99781501329760_pi-220.indd781501329760_pi-220.indd 113434 111/1/20171/1/2017 44:21:08:21:08 PPMM 1 35 Th e Translation and Adaptation of Miyazaki’s Spirit Princess 135 that follows Japanese names10 – and is separate to her identity as part of the spirit world. In the English title, her name, the marker of identity, is lost because of a diff erence in the way the two languages work. Having the honorifi c ‘princess’, while leaving mononoke untranslated, makes the English reader think that her name is ‘Princess Mononoke’. As in Jacques Derrida’s discussion of Babel, where ‘it is in translation that we most oft en read [the narrative] . [so a] proper name retains a singular destiny, since it is not translated in its appear- ance as proper name’, 11 San’s name is obscured. Her name marks her as the third child of the wolf goddess, Moro, and as the respected princess, soon to be inheritor, of the forest. Although she is human, she is the bridge between humans and nature, seemingly neither one nor the other; San is a third category of forest inhabitant, and thereby a spirit- human residing in the natural world. Mononoke , by contrast, obscures her actual name with an untranslatable ‘name’, and thereby obscures her identity by merging it with her role in the narrative. Th is hindrance to translation exemplifi es the overarching eff ect of the fi lm’s English transformation for the West. Th e title exemplifi es a marketing choice that evokes Disney princesses, even though the fi lm is directed at slightly older audiences. While an artful fi lm in its own right, Miramax’s Princess Mononoke is more prominently an adaptation than a translation of Miyazaki’s work. ‘What’s It Mean?’: 12 Translation as Acculturation Th e Miramax transformation of Princess Mononoke exemplifi es the cultural divide between their audience and Ghibli’s, alongside the anxiety of translating its language. Th e result is a script that alters or reduces the narrative in some scenes, and over- explains in others. Gaiman’s explanation of his process in interviews reveals how the Miramax translation is a signifi cantly altered version of the fi lm. Given a raw, word- for- word translation by Alpert, Gaiman says that he ‘translated the translation into lines that [voice actors] could say’. 13 Th is resulted in the diff erences expected in a translation project, such as when Alpert’s literal translation gave the phrase ‘his head is mine’, and Gaiman ‘would be wondering, hang on, does “His head is mine” translate in this context as “He’s mine to kill,” or do they literally mean, “I’m going to be keeping his head as a trophy?” ’.14 Gaiman also comments that he sometimes wanted to make the translation more elegant, and that jokes in particular had to be changed in order to cross the cultural boundaries between audiences: ‘why something is funny doesn’t necessarily translate. You have to go and fi nd something that is the emotional equivalent .’ 15 Th is creates an interesting parallel with Napier’s review of anime fans at the University of Texas, where she quotes an anonymous student: ‘Disney animation is “pretty,” but it lacks the emotion of anime.’16 Th is question of emotional equivalence in translation greatly aff ects the Miramax fi lm; the emotional intensity characteristic of Miyazaki’s work is altered by changes in the script.

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