Initiatives > Southeast Asian Film Subtitling Project
Spring 2007 saw the introduction of an innovative course designed to train advanced language students in the art of subtitling film from Southeast Asia. With Hawaii’s community language strength in Thai, Lao, Indonesian, Malay, Khmer, Filipino, Burmese, and Vietnamese, CSEAS developed a course to provide advanced language students with another skill set to take with them after graduation and to produce subtitled films for use in a variety of outreach activities. The course began with a ten week seminar on translation for film subtitling taught by accomplished translator John McGlynn, Editor-in-Chief of the Lontar Foundation of Jakarta.
For the length of the 17-week course students were paired in teams comprised of a native speaker of a film's Southeast Asian language and an advanced language student in the film's language (who was also a native English speaker). The teams successfully translated film scripts from five languages and produced time-coded English subtitles on dialogue sheets that were then applied to the films during an intensive end-of-the- semester workshop using specialized subtitling software.
The final subtitled films will be available for classroom use, ongoing community outreach efforts, and to add to the library collection of Southeast Asian films both in Hawai‘i and on the Mainland. Aside from its value as professional skill development, one of the long term goals of the project is to build cooperative relationships with Southeast Asian filmmakers and film archivists. Adding subtitles to their feature films, documentaries, and television programs will extend the range of their screenings to American film festivals and educational centers around the country in order to fulfill the Center’s mission as a National Resource Center for Southeast Asia.
This program is the first of its kind in the nation and is supported by funds from the US Department of Education.
Subtitled Film from Myanmar
In 2008, the University of Hawaii’s Southeast Asian Film Translation Project produced the first subtitled Burmese language film available for public viewing in the United States.
The Legend of Lady Hill is a supernatural melodrama. When young rich city boy, Tun, visits the town Lady Hill and impetuously flirts with a pretty village girl named Thuzar he unknowingly disrupts a village spirit ceremony. When Thuzar’s husband dies in an accident that evening, she and the rest of the village believe it is the vengeful punishment of Ma Ma U, the protective spirit who guards the village. Thuzar and angry villagers blame the recalcitrant Tun and chase him from the village. Twenty years later the repercussions of this sad event are still being felt. When Tun’s son, La Min, visits the same village and meets the beautiful Pha-yaung Ban, all sorts of trouble befalls them. Have the spirits cursed this couple? Or are more terrestrial forces working to keep them apart?
The Legend of Lady Hill is a soap opera love story transfused with Buddhist ethics and Myanmar’s rich religious culture. Scenes rich with traditional music and religious ceremony will please those with an interest in Burmese culture.
Subtitled Film from Vietnam
The University of Hawaii’s Southeast Asian Film Translation Project recently produced two subtitled Vietnamese language films, now available for public viewing in the United States!
BONG SEN (1998) is a remarkable co-production between Algeria and Vietnam. The film won Third Prize at the Seventh Festival of African Cinema in Morocco.
In the 1950s, the French Army sent thousands of indigenes, soldiers conscripted from colonies in North Africa, to fight in the so-called "Dirty War" in Indochina. Set against the growing Vietnamese struggle for independence is a love story involving Ali, portrayed by Algerian actor El-Mellouhi Niddal, and Lien (Nguyen An Chinh), a beautiful Viet Minh guerrilla.
PASSERINE BIRD (1962). The Vietnam Film Institute stumbled upon a deteriorating 16mm print of this lost classic which the Hong Kong Film Archive restored and the Center subtitled. The film offers a lyric view of village level resistance to French colonial aggression in Viet Nam in the 1950s. Nga, a young girl, is thrown into the bitter struggles of her fellow countrymen as images of innocent youth are bled away, turning into the steadfastness of nationalist resolve.