From: cstone@husc8.harvard.edu (christopher stone)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.startrek.current
Subject: Re: Stewart's/Picard's accent
Date: 23 Jan 93 23:23:43 GMT
Article-I.D.: husc3.1993Jan23.182346.19723
Followup-To: rec.arts.startrek.misc
Organization: Harvard University Science Center

Followups to .misc, please

In article <C1A88t.KIs@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> jeffo@uiuc.edu writes:
>Christopher Stone writes
>[after over-quoting my response]
>> You yourself say that we could use subtitles, but realize that [..]
>
>I never said (or "realize") any of your items a, b, followed by 3
>through 6 (your designations, not mine).  Perhaps reading my post
>before following-up would be in order.
>
>I don't find subtitles distracting.

Unfortunately, a lot of viewers do.

> I find dubbing a lot more
>distracting because there are times where I want to hear what the
>actor(s) said in whatever language they spoke.

Yes, I agree that dubbing is not as good as subtitles; but "Family"
wasn't dubbed -- it was spoken in English.

>The visibility of
>subtitles is a trivial issue because borders on letters can easily be
>used.  One translator would be enough for translating the few lines
>various characters would need to say in French (the very first line of
>my post [which you quoted in your response] said that I don't think
>Picard would speak every line in French).  Many 2 hour movies are
>translated with one person, therefore I am confident that the 10-12
>minutes of appropriate dialogue could be translated perfectly well
>with one person.

But it would increase the cost of episodes, and I would rather they
spend the extra money on getting good actors and so forth.  Also,
I believe that they would lose viewers due to subtitling.

>With my French background, I think I could do a good
>job translating the necessary lines.  As I said before, the lines
>could be written in English as they are now, but the lines that would
>be unrealistic spoken in English could be translated to the
>appropriate language (in my example, Picard was in France and Picard
>speaks French fluently, therefore French is the appropriate language
>to speak in this instance).

Unfortunately, though, professional translators develop special
techniques that make their translations a little more accurate
than my Russian ones or your French ones.  More to the point, 
writing the scripts in English and the translating to French is a bad
idea.  In languages classes, for one, instructors must always make
a point of telling their students *not* to write in their native
language and then translate.  Why?  You *always* lose a little of
the original flavor in translation.  Hence Muslims believe the Quran
should, ideally, only be read in Arabic.  Let me give you an example.
Have you ever tried to translate a *joke* into a foreign language?
It's next to impossible, especially if it's a pun or play on words.

>To speak of a particular instance on the show: Picard returned to
>France just after being modified by and rescued from the Borg.  Here,
>he is in France, talking with French-speaking people but most every
>word everyone in this scene says in in English.  It would be far more
>realistic to hire people who can speak French and have them say French
>lines.  Stewart's French might not be the best, but I think that's
>okay.

I daresay that acting isn't just reciting lines, especially in an 
intensely personal episode like "Family."  You have to feel, live,
and breathe the meaning of what you are saying, and you can't do that
if you are reciting lines in a language you don't understand.  That's
why opera singers, who aren't ever actors, try to learn foreign languages.
Also, remember that Star Trek is a weekly series.  Time constrains mean
that Stewart would be hard pressed to learn the meaning of the lines as
well as the lines themselves.  Also, the *audience* would have a tough
time appreciating the emotions and trauma that Picard was experiencing
after getting Borged if they are restricted to subtitles, with no
opportunity to appreciate the inflections in the actors' voices.  Lastly,
Picard, as a Frenchman, would be speaking his native language with
an English accent, which to me is even less realistic than having him 
speak English.

>I can get around limitations imposed by the actors accents
>(accents are difficult to lose anyhow).  Just as Picard should speak
>French in this instance, he should (as should any other Enterprise
>crew member) speak English with one another.  It is the appropriate
>language for the context.  To repeat, I do not think it would be
>realistic for Picard to speak French all the time.

OK, so we're only talking about "Family."  But I still have objections,
as I outlined above.  I heard some rumor that the producers considered
having the actors speak with French accents, but this would have 
amounted to nothing but a parody.
There is one touch I think would have been acceptable, though; have
Picard speak one or two token lines in French at the beginning,
zone into his lips, zoom out, and have him emerge speaking English.
This would give the impression that he has really speaking in French;
the technique was used quite effectively in "The Hunt for Red October."
To me, this would address your legitimate objections while not
accruing any of the disadvantages of your proposal.

>The expense of subtitling couldn't be that great because there are few
>episodes where they would be absolutely necessary (no universal
>translator, no character able to translate [for instance, when Picard
>and Riker were talking about a ship Riker could captain, Picard spoke
>of someone who fluently spoke many hundreds of languages; what
>happened to this character?],

The universal translator requires a small sample of the languages in
question to produce a simultaneous translation, IMHO.  It seemed the
crewmember was a prodigy.

>no part of the story centered on the
>crew figuring out what was being said, to name a few instances).
>Also, the blue titling font used would be sufficient for subtitles.
>In addition, could the cost of subtitling be much more than the cost
>of getting a program closed-captioned?  So much more that subtitling
>would be cost-ineffective?  I don't have any average prices handy, but
>I highly doubt it.

Viewers just don't like to read subtitles, and this would lose
audience ratings.  Also, they would not empathize with Picard's 
emotional upheavals as much if they were reading subtitles
as opposed to hearing his voice in their own language.  I'm sorry,
but most of Star Trek's audience is still here in the United States,
where the populace speaks English.  I don't expect American characters
in French TV shows to speak English; so why should people expect
Picard to speak French for an English-speaking audience?

>Stewart would most certainly be playing Jean-Luc Picard were he to
>speak the appropriate lines in French.  This is simply because,
>Jean-Luc Picard is from France and he was raised speaking French and
>Picard speaks French fluently.

Well, IMHO the French language is alive and well in the 24th century,
but some might argue otherwise, given Data's comments about "an
obscure dialect called French" :)

>The actor is supposed to *act* the
>part of the role, learning new things and doing new things when
>necessary; the role of Jean-Luc Picard should not be twisted around to
>fit Patrick Stewart's liking (when it comes to this fundamental part
>of Jean-Luc Picard).

On the contrary, good actors always mould the roles to their liking.
This is why one Hamlet is not the same as the next actor's Hamlet.
Don't forget, Shatner once said, "I am James Kirk."

>The complaint about typing French, Russian or Arabic on the net has
>nothing to do with the subject matter at hand.  To quickly rebut the
>complaint about "the outright impossibility of typing Russian or
>Arabic [on this net]": if one is using a Russian or Arabic computer,
>it is simple.

My point was that in the 24th century, English might be a lingua franca.
I pointed out that there was already a trend in that direction, just
as in past centuries German and Latin and French have been lingua francas.
Evidence of this is the fact that an international computer network is
in English, and that ASCII -- which determines what appears on the screen
here on the net -- doesn't recognize Cyrillic characters.  On soc.culture.
soviet, people sometimes type in Russian, but with Latin letters!

>> Look how much time that they put into developing the Klingon
>> language.
>
>For me, as I said in my post (had you read it you would have known
>this), I don't care if it's complete jibberish.

Stting the universal translator aside, it would do injustice to the
motivations of alien characters to have them speaking jibberish.

>I care more about the
>scriptwriters reflecting the fact that different cultures develop
>differently.  Part of that development is most certainly a language
>suited to their needs.  In short, different cultures would most likely
>have different languages.

Of course.  See "Darmok" or "Contagion" for evidence of this.  But
complete episodes in foreign languages would be pointless to *viewers* --
not to mention Trekkies who would complain about the inconsistencies
in languages from week to week :)

Chris