From: jeffo@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (J.B. Nicholson-Owens)
Subject: Re: Stewart's/Picard's accent
Reply-To: jeffo@uiuc.edu
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1993 01:02:39 GMT

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.  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.  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.  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).

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 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.

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?], 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.

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.  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).

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.  Had you read my article before following-up, you would
have read that I said the subtitles would be in English.

> 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.  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.  The use of a non-English language (even
just complete jibberish) to me would be sufficient to tell me that
'these beings don't speak English and it is known that these beings
don't speak English'.
-- 
-- Jeff (jeffo@uiuc.edu)
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