Translation Practices at Tashkent Film Festival
Elena Razlogova
Keynote
Sa., 30.11.2024
15:30
Safi Faye Hall
Free entry
In English with simultaneous German translation
This keynote describes the Tashkent festival as the most ambitious multilingual film translation project of its era. At Tashkent, translators revoiced films via a live performance piped into the movie theatre on top of the original soundtrack. Interpreters translated films made in an array of colonial and Indigenous languages: first, via loudspeaker, into Russian for local Uzbek audiences and Soviet participants, and then, via headphones, from the Russian translation into the other official languages: English, French, and, after 1976, also Spanish and at one point Arabic. Soviet simultaneous film translators kept the original soundtrack audible, reminding the spectators that they were hearing a foreign language, then helped the audience relate to what was depicted by methods of domestication such as reinterpreting jokes and obscenities to match the local context. Skilled translators refashioned film dialogue in real time unbeknownst to festival censors. As Elena Razlogova outlines, although the Tashkent translation system often broke down, it gave access to an unprecedented variety of films and provided a unique experience of cinema for the audience.