Dubbing vs. subtitles

A nun leads me through a 10,000 square meter shelter, which lies within a grid of red-sanded roads. Juicy tropical plants surround this fenced-off miniature village outside Ho Chi Minh City. She introduces me to the AIDS patients who live here, points to the 15 orphaned children who spend their days here going to school, painting the little metal carousel and ripping the weeds out of the front courtyard while awaiting their nearing death. 

The nun  shows me the ad hoc operating room. A faded baby blue statue of Maria stands guard as volunteer doctors come here to perform surgery on patients who suffer from AIDS-related sicknesses. Then she points to the crematorium where the remains of patients are burnt if they have no relatives that could take care of them.

She lifts her hand, her finger wandering from urn to another in the glass cabinet that is embedded into the crematorium wall. 

"This one died after a year."

"This is the mother of the girl you saw earlier."

"Look at the date here. She came in one day and died the next one,"

she said. 

In Vietnamese. 

This is where my problem begins. 

The colors were rich. The children's eyes large and dark brown. The male patients skin and bones. Fifteen kids chanting a song together. The grommet of the metal playground swing squeaks faintly in the background. 

And then a tonal language that makes no sense to most people who might see this video. 

 

Subtitles are like yet another element.

There are interviews, sound, visuals and now text. As someone who grew up bilingual and was forced to learn three more languages in her life, I tend to think that subtitles are friendlier, less intrusive and leave in the voice of the character. 

But subtitles are running commentaries, slight interpretations because there is no such thing as a translation. They are another factor, they are content. An additional, intellectual content that imposes itself on top of other visual and aural information. Full immersion in a story cannot be interrupted by white text trickling down on a screen, can it? 

And then dubbing? Dubbing brings in a whole other element. You need to find a different voice to add on top of the original voice of your interviewee, corresponding in gender and - to create the illusion of authenticity - in ethnicity. It's a way of making a story flow, of getting the audience to stay on the topic. 

So comprehension of a story, flow of a story therefore overrules authenticity?

There's no one rule (and looking for answers from other news media like the Washington Post or even on our own site seems to confuse me even further). 

But in a story where the content of the speeches is as important as the visual and aural understanding of a place, I guess, I'd go for dubbing. 

Any comments much appreciated. 

Philanthropic genocide

Admitting Karen refugees from the overcrowded refugee camps in Thailand by the ten thousands the U.S. is committing cultural genocide, said a Karen Burmese political asylee and a volunteer Karen translator from New York.

She says so because she believes that many of the newly arrived refugees will lose their Karen identity over the generations. That the language of this small ethnic minority, whose population is estimated to be between three and six million, will die out as refugee children and parents adapt to their new surroundings in the U.S. That the Karen will not be able to sustain, breed and evolve their cultural heritage in exile. That the Karen culture and heritage might be extinct if there is no political intervention in Burma. 

The Karen are an ethnic minority mostly living in the slim Karen state that is nestled between Thailand and the Southern tip of Myanmar. They are also an ethnic minority that has been purged by the Burmese military junta for fighting for independence since 1948. The Karen National Union, a group of ethnically Karen rebel troops, is considered a terrorist group by both the military junta and the United States.

In the past years, thousands of Karen refugees are now finding new homes in places like New York City, Fort Wayne, Indiana or Elizabeth, New Jersey. Many of them had been living in refugee camps along the Thai-Burmese border for up to 20 years. They fled persecution in their homeland; rape, murder, arbitrary taxation, displacement. For up to 20 years they have been waiting to return to their home country but, alas, the junta is as stubborn as it was twenty years ago during the student protests that were crushed with gun fire and tanks.

To a certain extent U.S. has accepted this sad fact. They have accepted that the 150,000 refugees living along the Thai-Burmese border might not be able to go back to Myanmar in the foreseeable future. And so, one year ago, the Bush administration committed to taking in up to 20,000 Burmese refugees per year from Thai refugee camps.

And that, to the asylee, is cultural genocide.

She echoes a sentiment often expressed by several Myanmar refugees. Many lament that thousands, both well-educated activists and poor farmers, are leaving the country, shifting a successful coup against the junta out of reach by exporting any potential opposition leaders or cultivators of ethnic cultures.

She also hints at the dissatisfaction that many in and from Myanmar feel with the international community. In a recent article in the New Yorker about Myanmar, one interviewee said:

"The only solution is for the U.S, to drop a bomb on Naypyidaw [a city in the heart of Myanmar]. That's the only way!"

What has been done after more than 45 years of a Myanmar under military regime is that the U.N. moved Myanmar onto the top of their agenda in recent years. Yet, as the restricted access for aid to reach Myanmar during the Cyclone has shown, this administrative move has done little to change the situation.

But what can be done? Economic embargos on the country by Western countries seem ineffective when other Asian countries are still doing business with Myanmar. And placing the burden of a(nother) military mission to bring democracy to a dictatorship on the U.S. might be a lot to ask, considering the current economic crisis and the political struggles that come with that.

And though the asylee's comment is extreme she poses an interesting question:
How do you continue to foster and develop a culture that has been exiled from its breeding ground?

Can you resuscitate a language, an ethnic identity, a way of life that is more and more solely existing in the past?

And to come back to those people that the Burmese Karen asylee was speaking about:
How can those, who are beginning a new life somewhere else, carry on traditions, manners and beliefs on foreign soil without a critical mass of their own people and without access to the homeland that provides exposure to their ethnic group?

Returning to the family with a camera - this time for recreational purposes

See the little baby in the middle? That's Aung He, who's staring at our Master's project with his big, dark eyes. He was still in Linday Ko's belly when we filmed the video project about their family.

It was a great relief to seem them laugh at what we did and we'll hopefully be able to give them a few DVDs, which Linday said she'd send to her mother in Thailand.

Finally, I feel free to hug her without thinking I am compromising my journalistic 'objectivity'. Though I do not believe there is such a thing as complete distance from your 'subject' when you're reporting on them for so long, it's much harder to report on someone whom you greatly care about.

There were always these question: If they need someone to speak to someone on the phone should I jump in? Should I help pregnant Linday with basic tasks or even try to help when their children are having difficulties in school? Should I get involved, insert myself into the story when I notice that bills, taxes or similar issues are not being taken care of? It's a delicate balance between doing what is only human and doing what you need to do to get an accurate portrayal of your characters.

I had to go against my natural instinct a lot and am glad I can simply bring by a box of chocolates now without having to second guess it. In some ways this reveals my sympathy for them, which of course has been somewhat counterproductive when it comes to getting the real picture. But I was very grateful for having good editors and excellent, smart Master's Project partners who'd caution me to film the little mischief Lulu too much and concentrate more on the oftentimes reserved and taciturn Taw Ko.

In any case, I've grown to like this family a lot and hope that they might have found a liking in me as well.


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