originally published on nwasianweekly.com
October 25, 2003

BACK TO ANN-MARIE STILLION: WRITING

In “Lost in Translation,” Bill Murray’s character (right) struggles to understand the language and culture that surrounds him in Tokyo. Photo provided by Focus Features

Lost in translation, but finding a way

By Ann-Marie Stillion

I wanted to see the movie “Lost in Translation” for two reasons. Bill Murray’s flat and funny delivery never fails to charm and delight me for one thing. Mournful and moony, Murray pratfalls with the best but the understated quip is his raison d’etre.

The other more important draw to this film was the possibility of watching what happens when divergent language and culture converge with grace and humor. I had read that the director, who also wrote the film, Sofia Coppola, had traveled to Japan quite a bit, and that the film was a kind of valentine to Tokyo and its people.

I was looking for some resonance with my own everyday situation of living and working in a culture much different from my own.

For those unfamiliar with all that goes on at our papers: This Seattle-based company produces two newspapers each week, a Chinese-language paper and an English-language paper. I work for the English one, but we share staff and resources. As a result, I spend a great deal of time working within a foreign language and culture, even though I am physically only a few miles from my Seattle home.

Also, because we are located in Chinatown/International District, at any given moment every person in the room could reflect an entirely different heritage, language and experience. In short, every day in our neighborhood is a little “lost in translation.”

Almost two years ago, not long after I came to the Northwest Asian Weekly, for example, I had an intern working with me whose English was so new that he trembled with fear when he spoke. When we discussed an ad or a software detail, or anything that required more than pointing, I almost couldn’t bear to witness his fright.

One morning, I was burrowed away on the computer sorting out image files when he stuck his head over the cubicle wall. He announced with a clear sense of authority, “One person find you at the door!” I looked up, staring at him for some visual clue of his meaning. He motioned to the front hall. Oh, I said, someone is here to see me. I chuckled at the amusing poetic version of my colleague’s new English skills. Michael’s translation was precise from his language, but was barely comprehensible in mine.

A few months later, at a large luncheon, I asked a supervisor what she needed me to do next. “Put the brochures on the copper tables,” she said, motioning, and hurried off. I stood staring at the sea of white tablecloths, trying in vain to grasp her meaning. I never did that day. It was only later, in the context of another conversation, that I realized that it was the “corporate”-sponsored tables that were in need of those brochures.

“Lost in Translation” relishes such communications and renders those fragile human moments with humor.

Early in the movie, Murray sits patiently “listening” to the Japanese director speak at length on his direction for the scene. But when the translator utters only one short sentence, the actor muses out loud that the director must have said something more.

I could relate to the actor’s consternation.

Although there still may be people on earth who live snug within their cultural and linguistic cocoons, mostly we are swimming in a milieu of sound, expectation and reality — part of which we can only guess at. The global village has produced the necessity for understanding one another that is at once challenging, intriguing, thought-provoking and, yes, sometimes irritating.

In “Lost in Translation,” we have a chance to see ourselves straining to understand what is being said beyond language and easy cultural clues. Murray’s character is an American actor with a high-priced contract and has a powerful incentive to strain for the intention of the speaker; the highly paid Japanese creatives charged with coming up with the shot are working their edge as well.

In real life, we must strain for these meanings in our jobs and our relationships both personal and planetary — even when big dollars aren’t on the table.

When a Japanese photographer and the American celebrity are shooting a magazine ad, the two creative professionals must find a way to understand each other. At first, the photographer presumably describes to the actor what he wants. (Coppola thoughtfully leaves subtitles out of the movie.) The photographer is speaking English, but it’s sort of like my former intern’s version of English. A sense of doom hangs over the pair for a moment.

The photog realizes that he’s not getting what he wants. Then he starts to reel off the names of some of the great stars in American movies. Murray’s character “gets it” and begins mugging. Voila! Rapport is created. The two men might not have one kind of language but they certainly have another — the language of movies and popular culture.

It is this process of finding out about ourselves outside of the boundaries of common language and culture that the director returns to again and again.

I enjoyed the movie’s close-call romance, shots of frenetic Tokyo and, of course, Mr. Murray. But I left the theater with something truly useful. I left with a well-told story on the frontier of global culture in which we might play and laugh and learn from each other — if we try.