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      in Television

      Embrace the Insightful Gibberish of ‘Pingu’

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      This children’s show teaches everyone, even adults, to find meaning in made-up language. In the unreal early days of the pandemic, when it seemed foolish to try to comprehend the enormity of what we were collectively living through, a clay penguin reacquainted me with the clarifying power of gibberish. “Pingu” is a stop-​motion children’s television show about the titular character, a penguin tyke who lives with his family in a little igloo village at the South Pole. Initially, the episodes appear to be light five-minute affairs about the small dramas of toddler penguinhood: Pingu spits his veggies into the toilet; a municipal penguin employee turns Pingu’s play area into a parking spot. But with a balance of farce and sentiment, the show also gestures toward some of early life’s more complicated realities — sibling rivalries, parental punishment and the loneliness of childhood. Created by the German animator Otmar Gutmann, “Pingu” premiered in Europe in the early 1990s and became a worldwide phenomenon; but unlike other global cultural crazes, the show did not need to be dubbed or subtitled. Nothing could be lost in translation because there was nothing to translate. Every “Pingu” character speaks the language of Penguinese, which sounds like Thai, Indonesian, Italian, something in between or something else entirely. Yet, despite the lingo’s seeming inscrutability, it is mysteriously — hilariously — comprehensible. Take the following scene: Pingu finds himself caught between a whistling kettle, a ringing phone and his father gruffly dictating commands at him. His eyes dart around the room — kettle, phone, dad, kettle, dad, phone, kettle. The overwhelmed little penguin’s voice rises from confusion to panic to wails of despair, and he dissolves into a puddle of tears, covering his watery eyes with tiny flippers. Pingu’s mom then waddles into the frame, and with motherly resolve, takes the teapot off the boil, hangs up the phone in a nonnegotiable tone and gives the blubbering Pingu a pat on the head. We, of course, don’t know what any character has actually said. But based on body language, vocal inflection and a recognizable family dynamic, viewers intuit the scene’s meaning. Each of us conjures our own associations — in my case, maternal competence, paternal annoyance — to complement the story. The result, straddling the boundary between familiarity and strangeness, is the magic of “Pingu.”The language of ‘Pingu’ is built upon the wisdom of children: The border between sense and nonsense is poorly guarded. Rewatching the show after 25 years was an oddly unmediated, even moving experience, like dreaming or getting stoned. Emotions became sounds, language lost its hard edges and I recovered a small glimpse of childhood perception. My first brush with “Pingu” came when my Canadian cousin, a more cultured toddler than I, once brought a VHS tape of the series with her during a visit. I dimly remember watching an episode on a Sunday morning, while squeezed together in bed with my family. The show was a revelation. “Pingu” did not speak two languages, one to children, another to adults. There was no hierarchy of comprehension, no winking jokes meant to soar over young heads to keep the adults in the room vaguely interested. The language of “Pingu” is built upon the wisdom of children: The border between sense and nonsense is poorly guarded. There is raw, ridiculous power in expressing oneself through noise alone. It’s a truth adults tend to forget. As we age, we are asked to convert our emotions into more socially acceptable forms of articulation. But sometimes we have feelings that speech is ill equipped to convey, which demand audible expression nonetheless, in the form of yowls, bleats and groans.The art of speaking without words is known as “grammelot.” It’s a tradition that had its high point in the raucous early professional theaters of Commedia dell’arte (which inspired Molière, Rossini and Puccini) but may go back as far as the Greco-​Roman mimes. Theatrical troupes made up of professional actors and the occasional charlatan traversed Renaissance Europe performing plays in improvised language. Their gibberish often served as a form of mutual intelligibility with audiences, both literate and not, with whom they otherwise couldn’t communicate. In their vowel-rich dialect, these actors spoke through the ascending and descending scales of real language without using real words, tapping into a subterranean world of sense. And so it is with “Pingu,” which extends the democratic conceit of grammelot from the stage to television, accessible to all regardless of education or age. Carlo Bonomi, the Italian clown who voiced every character on “Pingu,” practiced grammelot as a young man and was perhaps one of its best living representatives until his death this August at 85. Today grammelot has largely disappeared and is kept alive only by a handful of troupes around the world. But in one of the strange, unpredictable ways cultural forms from the distant past weave themselves into the contemporary moment, it lives on in an anthropomorphic clay penguin.“Pingu” enjoys a second life online, where it is tailor-made for internet meme culture. There are “Pingu” NFTs and Maoist “Pingu” YouTube videos, and a Google search for “noot noot” — the sound Pingu makes when he feels strongly about something — returns more than 1.3 million results. But the untranslatable original maintains its sway over me. Watch it, and you’ll realize that the preverbal is not just the province of tots but a reservoir of meaning that lies just beneath the surface of our consciousness — if only we stop to listen.Gabriel Rom is a freelance journalist based in New York City. More

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      in Theater

      Six Lyrics That Show Why ‘Hamilton’ Is Tough to Translate

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      A direct transfer of words was never going to work for such a complex show. So the team involved got creative.How does one translate “Hamilton” into another language? That was the challenge facing Sera Finale, a rapper-turned-songwriter, and Kevin Schroeder, a seasoned musical theater translator, when they were asked to collaborate on a German version of the show — the first in a language other than English.The project turned out to be just as complicated as they had feared: complex rhyme schemes, elaborate wordplay and so many songs. There were drafts and demos and revisions; a member of the “Hamilton” music team, Kurt Crowley, learned German to help coordinate the process, and ultimately Lin-Manuel Miranda, the show’s creator, had to approve or reject each line.Here are six lyrics that demonstrate some of the challenges the team faced as they sought to preserve the meaning and melody of the original, but in a language with different sounds and syntax. The first line is the original English lyric; the second is the German lyric; and the third is the so-called back translation, which is what the German words literally mean in English.Avoiding HyperboleBurr: How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a/Scotsman, dropped in the middle of a forgotten/Spot in the Caribbean by providence, impoverished, in squalor/Grow up to be a hero and a scholar?“Alexander Hamilton” (English)Gino EmnesBurr: Wie wird ein Bastard/der vom Schoß einer trostlosen Dirne kroch/Aus ’nem gottverdammten, verlor’nem Loch in der Karibik/Ohne Titel, ohne Mittel, ohne Werte/Am Ende doch ein Held und ein Gelehrter?(How does a bastard/Who crawled out of the lap of a bleak harlot/From a goddamned, lost hole in the Caribbean/With no title, no means, no merits/In the end still become a hero and a scholar?)“Alexander Hamilton” (German)Gino EmnesThese are the first words from “Alexander Hamilton,” the musical’s opening song, which introduce the title character with a description of his humble upbringing. The challenge here was to maintain the original lyric’s directness without overstating the case or demeaning the West Indies. The original proposed German lyric referred to Hamilton as a “Bastardblag,” an arcane word meaning bastard brat, to his mother as a “Hure,” meaning whore, and to the islands of Hamilton’s upbringing as “verdreckten,” meaning filthy. Miranda thought those words went too far, and asked for them to be dialed back. “The first draft was almost Trumpian,” he said, alluding to a coarse phrase the former president used to refer to Haiti, El Salvador and some African nations. “To me that’s not the intent of the lyric. I never wanted to comment on Nevis, or St. Croix. It was just this really small part of the world. That’s an example of something that could easily get lost in translation if you’re not on it.”✣ ✣ ✣Quoting Rap SongsBurr: Ah, so you’ve discussed me/I’m a trust fund, baby, you can trust me.“The Schuyler Sisters” (English)Chasity Crisp and Gino EmnesBurr: Schiess mich über’n Haufen, doch/Du bist’n Babe, ich möcht’ dein Badewasser saufen.(Shoot me down but/You are a babe, I’d like to drink your bath water.)“The Schuyler Sisters” (German)Chasity Crisp and Gino EmnesThe original “Hamilton” score includes a number of quotations from American hip-hop songs. Most of them were cut from the German version because the translations made them unrecognizable. But, in an effort to accomplish the same effect, the translators inserted several quotations from German hip-hop songs into the German score. In a section of the song “The Schuyler Sisters,” when Aaron Burr flirts with Angelica Schuyler, the translators found a place to insert a phrase meaning “You are a babe, I’d like to drink your bath water,” from a 1995 German song “Ja klar,” which was a hit for Sabrina Setlur, who rapped as Schwester S. Miranda, who listened to each German song quoted before approving the citations, said he views “Hamilton” as a love letter to hip-hop, as well as to musical theater, and that he considers the hip-hop quotations as a point of entry for some audience members. “A hip-hop fan who comes in, maybe, with their arms crossed, hears those references and goes ‘OK, the person who wrote this obviously loves this culture and loves the music’,” he said. “And so we wanted to continue to reflect that.”✣ ✣ ✣New ImageryAngelica: So this is what it feels like to match wits/With someone at your level! What the hell is the catch?/It’s the feeling of freedom, of seeing the light/It’s Ben Franklin with a key and a kite/You see it right?“Satisfied” (English)Chasity CrispAngelica: So kribbeln Schmetterlinge, wenn sie starten/Wir beide voll auf einem Level, offene Karten!/Das Herz in den Wolken, ich flieg’ aus der Bahn/Die Füße kommen an den Boden nich’ ran/Mein lieber Schwan!(So that’s how butterflies tingle when they take off/We’re on the same level, all cards on the table!/My heart in the clouds, I’m thrown off track/My feet don’t touch the floor/My dear swan!)“Satisfied” (German)Chasity CrispThe original language is packed with American metaphors and idioms that just don’t translate. So the translators were given license to come up with their own turns of phrase. This example is from the song “Satisfied,” in which Angelica Schuyler, preparing to toast Hamilton’s marriage to her sister, recalls the first time she met him. The images are completely different (and the references to Ben Franklin are gone) but the meaning remains. “That section sounds fantastic, and gives the same feeling of falling in love for the first time,” Miranda said. “The metaphor may be different, but it keeps its propulsiveness.”✣ ✣ ✣Prioritizing MeaningEliza: You forfeit all rights to my heart/You forfeit the place in our bed/You sleep in your office instead/With only the memories/Of when you were mine/I hope that you burn“Burn” (English)Ivy QuainooEliza: Du nahmst dir das recht auf mein Herz/Den Platz hier in unserem Bett/Ich lösch unser leben komplett/Dir bleibt nur die Asche/Du warst einmal mein/Ich hoffe du brennst(You took the right to my heart from yourself/The place here in our bed/I am erasing our life completely/All that’s left for you is the ashes/You used to be mine once/I hope that you burn)“Burn” (German)Ivy QuainooThere were many moments when Miranda et al. allowed the German translators to bend the original meaning in order to preserve lyricism and melody. But there were other moments when they insisted on literalism, and the end of the song “Burn,” in which Eliza Hamilton expresses her outrage at her husband’s infidelity, was one of those. The translators initially sought to have Eliza repeat “brenn’n,” a shortened form of the word for “burn,” throughout the song. But that meant changing the final line of the song from words meaning “I hope that you burn” to words meaning “All this shall burn.” Miranda rejected that idea, insisting that Eliza direct her anger squarely at her husband. So now the song ends with “brennst,” which is not a perfect echo of the word used earlier in the song, but which preserves the original meaning: “You burn.” “I really just wanted to make sure the last line was personal: ‘It’s not about the world — it’s about you. This is what you did, and these are your consequences’,” Miranda said.✣ ✣ ✣Protecting ChoreographyHamilton: Teach me how to say goodbye/Rise up, rise up, rise up/Eliza“The World Was Wide Enough” (English)Benet MonteiroHamilton: Weitergeh’n und Abschied nehm’n/Frei sein, frei sein, frei sein/Eliza(Move on and say goodbye/Be free, be free, be free/Eliza)“The World Was Wide Enough” (German)Benet MonteiroIn the show’s penultimate song, “The World Was Wide Enough,” Hamilton dies. As that moment nears, he repeats the phrase “Rise up,” perhaps alluding to ambition, or revolution, or perseverance, and pictures his wife. The German translators at first proposed a lyric that preserved the internal rhyme of the lyric, but altered its meaning, using the word “leise,” which means quietly, and which beautifully echoes the name “Eliza,” to replace “Rise up.” But choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler objected, because the movement at that moment has the ensemble becoming more active — more “rise up” than “quietly” — and he felt it was important to preserve the relationship between the words and the movement. The translators went back to the drawing board, and came up with something less poetic but more protective of the dance concerns. “The complicating factor is that Andy choreographs to lyric, so when the lyrics underneath the movement have changed, what adjustments have to happen?” Miranda said. “I’m trying to keep those connected.”✣ ✣ ✣A Pointed AdditionHamilton: America, you great unfinished symphony, you sent for me“The World Was Wide Enough” (English)Benet MonteiroHamilton: America, durch deine Brust pumpt Sklavenblut, Moral und Wut.(America, through your breast is pounding the blood of slaves, morality and rage.)“The World Was Wide Enough” (German)Benet MonteiroThe German translators saw an opportunity to interpolate a reference to America’s troubled history with slavery. “Our version is kind of a German perspective on America,” said Kevin Schroeder, one of the translators. “He’s saying ‘unfinished symphony,’ and that also implies there are some flaws.”Audio production by Arjen Mensinga and More

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      in Movies

      Foreign Films, English Titles and the Dilemma Distributors Face

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      Leave as is? Translate? Change altogether? A movie’s success doesn’t depend entirely on what we call it, but it can have a big effect.Two years ago, international film releases in the United States reached a new pinnacle with the crowning of Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite” as best picture at the Academy Awards. But before “Parasite” or any other non-English-language film even hits theaters, a basic question has to be settled: the title.Distributors say the title can be the first impression a movie makes on prospective audiences, and so they give it a great deal of thought. How do you translate the original title? Do you add a word or two to clarify? Or do you leave the Spanish or Korean or French as is?Titles have been a consideration at least since the influx of foreign films in the 1950s and ’60s. When a title sticks, it has a way of enduring: it’s hard to imagine Michelangelo Antonioni’s “L’Avventura” being translated as simply “The Adventure.” The cryptic title “The 400 Blows” didn’t prevent people enjoying that film’s riches. (It’s a reference to a French idiom “faire les quatre cents coups,” commonly rendered as “to raise hell.”)The Korean title for “Parasite” was essentially the same word, and more often than not, a straightforward translation makes sense, said Richard Lorber, the president of Kino Lorber, a major distributor of international films.But occasionally a title is changed for clarity. The French coming-of-age drama “Water Lilies” (2008) had a completely different French title for its romantic story centered on three teenage girls who swim at the same pool.The original name translated as “Birth of the Octopuses.” “It’s a tricky title,” Lorber said.The Korean title for “Parasite” was essentially the same word.Neon“Water Lilies” was proposed as an alternative by the film’s sales agent, the professional who sells the rights to distribute films in specific territories like the U.S. The new title (still evocative but a little more straightforward) stuck for the release, which was the debut feature of the director Céline Sciamma (whose latest, “Petite Maman,” opened in the spring).Sometimes a translation or alteration of any sort is unnecessary. The 2020 Brazilian thriller “Bacurau,” another Kino Lorber release, is named after the fictional town where the action takes place.And an English translation may not capture the full meaning of the more evocative original. The title of Pedro Almodóvar’s 2006 “Volver” (“to come back” in Spanish) was not translated for its U.S. release by Sony Pictures Classics, unlike, say, his 1999 drama “All About My Mother.” (Almodóvar’s name recognition no doubt aided the profiles of both films.)Whatever the reasoning, distributors agreed that they didn’t assume a non-English title was an obstacle for audiences.“I think the resistance to foreign titles and foreign-language films has certainly been eroded for the better, along with the resistance to subtitles,” said Ryan Krivoshey, who runs Grasshopper Film. He pointed to the success of the Oscar-winning “Drive My Car” and the prevalence of foreign series on Netflix. Grasshopper Film recently distributed “Il Buco” (literally, “The Hole” in Italian) and even has a forthcoming release with a Latin title (“De Humani Corporis Fabrica”).On a wider platform like Netflix, foreign films and series can vary as to whether they are translated, left alone or rephrased.The five-season hit series “Money Heist” received a makeover from the original Spanish, which translated as “The House of Paper,” while the dystopian thriller “The Platform” was originally “El Hoyo” (“The Hole”). But for a number of foreign features it has acquired, Netflix leaves their lyrical titles more or less intact: “Happy as Lazzaro,” “Atlantics” (tweaked from the French, “Atlantique”), “I Lost My Body.” (A Netflix representative declined to comment.)Carlos Gutiérrez of Cinema Tropical, a nonprofit that specializes in presenting Spanish-language cinema, saw a shift in titles at the turn of the millennium.“I think ‘Amores Perros’ opened up the door that it was cool to leave a title in Spanish,” Gutiérrez said of the 2000 film from the future Oscar winner Alejandro González Iñárritu (“Birdman”). Shortly thereafter, “Y Tu Mamá También” was released to widespread acclaim, opening up more doors.The French coming-of-age drama “Water Lilies” (2008) had a completely different French title, which translated as “Birth of the Octopuses.”Koch Lorber Films, via PhotofestGutiérrez also saw a growing potential Spanish-speaking market for films going by their original titles.“After the census of 2000, I think this country realized that there was a big consuming Latinx group that we were not tapping into,” Gutiérrez said, noting that the openness to original-language titles lasted even as the box office share of international features shrank.The journey for many international releases begins at festivals. A sales agent might have already determined how a title is translated or marketed, anticipating the first wave of reviews and other coverage.Last fall, two films directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi crossed over from festivals to open commercially in the U.S. “Drive My Car” shared its name with the Haruki Murakami source material (a story that also used the Beatles song as its title, but transliterated into Japanese); it went on to win the Academy Award for best international feature. But Hamaguchi’s second release in 2021, “Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy,” used an extension of the original Japanese title, roughly translated as “Coincidence and Imagination.”The film had already received admiring reviews and recognition, even if some saw an echo of a long-running game show in the title.“Often your feelings about the title per se are secondary to its awareness out in the market, and that’s fine,” Maxwell Wolkin of Film Movement, the movie’s distributor, said. The extended title stayed.The right to change a title might not even be contractually granted to a distributor when it acquires a film, or the approval of the director or producer may be required. But distributors offered up examples of the delicate calculus involved in connecting films with potential audiences: punching up the recent Norwegian oil-rig thriller “North Sea” to the more vivid “Burning Sea” or retaining the Spanish title for the 2019 family drama “Temblores,” partly to avoid referencing a 1980s horror film about underground worms (“Tremors”).Once in a while, a film openly adopts an established title but puts its appeal to entirely fresh uses. Bi Gan’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” (2019) is a mind-expanding riff on film noir that features an hourlong sequence shot in a single take and rendered in 3D.Despite the name, it’s not an adaptation of the Eugene O’Neill play. Adding to the mystique, the film’s Mandarin-language title echoes that of a Roberto Bolaño story.“Everybody sort of scratched their head,” Lorber said of the O’Neill reference. “But Bi Gan just liked that play, and he liked the name, and he just wanted to go with it. And the film stood out on its own.” More

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      in Music

      Bringing Attention to the Maori Language, One Song at a Time

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      “Waiata/Anthems,” Lorde’s “Te Ao Marama” EP and a host of other projects are aimed at revitalizing the Indigenous language of New Zealand via music.In August, Lorde released her third album, “Solar Power.” Three weeks later, she put out an EP called “Te Ao Marama,” with five songs from the record translated into Maori, the Indigenous language of New Zealand. The second release was no mere afterthought — it was part of longtime conversations in her native country about boosting a language that not long ago experts feared could die out.“Pakeha artists have been lending their support to the language revitalization movement for years, and as someone with global recognition, I knew at some stage I would do the same,” Lorde wrote in an email, referring to non-Maori New Zealanders. “But ‘Te Ao Marama’ didn’t come from a place of duty. I am richer for having sung in te reo” — which means “the language” in Maori — “and also for having made the connections that made doing so possible.”When the musician and producer Dame Hinewehi Mohi, one of the primary engines behind the musical Maori revival, performed the New Zealand national anthem at the 1999 Rugby World Cup in Maori rather than English, she got “such an adverse reaction from a minority of people,” she recalled in a recent interview. Twenty years later, she assembled “Waiata/Anthems” (waiata means “song”), an album of English tracks performed in Maori that includes a translation of Benee’s “Soaked” and Kings’s “Don’t Worry ’Bout It.”“Before this,” Mohi said, “there were only a handful of artists recording in te reo Maori.”The public’s response to the album astounded her: “Waiata/Anthems” debuted at No. 1 on the New Zealand charts in 2019. The work, and interest in Maori music, has not subsided. This year, the public broadcaster TVNZ released a documentary series that followed different artists translating and recording their songs in Maori for a second installment of the project. More than 30 tracks in Maori were released as a playlist, eight of which made it into the local Top 40, and two in the Top 10.Awareness and celebration of Maori music is mirroring a shift in attitudes toward the language across New Zealand. The country’s European settler government suppressed Maori beginning in the mid-1850s, punishing children who spoke their language at school and deliberately dispersing Maori families in white neighborhoods to assimilate them, creating far-reaching whakama, or shame, around it. By 1987, when Maori was finally declared an official language, the vast majority of its remaining speakers were older.In recent years, there has been a resurgence of supporters, including Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who said in 2018 that her newborn daughter would learn both Maori and English. Newscasters now greet in Maori; weather reporters call places by their original, Maori names; supermarket signs tell you where the “chicken/heihei” is. Kotahi Rau Pukapuka, an endeavor that aims to publish 100 books in Maori over the next 25 years, is already far ahead of schedule. Mohi’s idea to bring attention to the language via contemporary music was pragmatic: More than half of the Maori population, which make up nearly 17 percent of the total population, is under 30 years old.But who sings in Maori, and how, has also become a flash point. Lorde was criticized in the wake of her EP’s release by those who argued that white speakers are privileged to do so without having to address the trauma of the Maori people; or said that the EP is a painful reminder of how many Maori haven’t had access to their own language. Other observers called her project “a pop culture landmark we should welcome” and “a very powerful international statement about the currency of the language.” Mohi had approached Lorde about working on the original “Waiata/Anthems” because “you want the biggest audience” exposed to Maori, she said.Singing has always been a large part of Maori culture: In formal meetings, it is compulsory to sing after your speech (these “songs” are more like chants). Songs are used to pass on information, including “telling the grandchild what deaths he needs to avenge, what things he needs to remember, the important features of tribe history,” said Sir Timoti Karetu, an expert on Maori language and culture.Maori people sing other songs — love songs, naughty songs, insulting songs — in everyday life, too. “We sing no matter where we are,” Karetu said. Music helped keep the language alive even when the government’s restrictions were in place. Maori people adapted with the times, writing new tunes highly influenced by Pakeha melodies. “We’ve borrowed the tune and done our own thing,” Karetu said.“It’s very easy to do a literal translation, but that’s meaningless to both cultures — it’s just words,” said Sir Timoti Karetu, an expert on Maori language and culture.Cameron James McLaren for The New York TimesBic Runga, a Maori singer involved in both “Waiata/Anthems” releases, said, “There’s a really big shift in awareness here.” She was in the process of reconnecting with her roots when Mohi approached her for the first album, which included her song “Sway,” made famous by the movie “American Pie.” Though Runga had only absorbed little bits of Maori in elementary school, as a result of doing “Waiata/Anthems,” she’s been connected to more fluent speakers and is trying to incorporate Maori into her emails, like opening with “tena koe” instead of “hi.”Runga has tried writing a song in Maori, although it’s not as simple as translating the text directly. “It was kind of spooky — it was about talking to death,” she said. When the lyrics were getting checked, she found out she’d been using the literal translation for death instead of the personified word — Maori is a very metaphorical language associated with a worldview that is more connected with nature, and doesn’t necessarily follow Western assumptions.“It’s very easy to do a literal translation, but that’s meaningless to both cultures — it’s just words,” Karetu said.“There’s a really big shift in awareness here,” the musician Bic Runga said.Dave Simpson/WireImage, via Getty ImagesAn example of its nuance can be found in Lorde’s “Hine-i-te-Awatea,” or “Oceanic Feeling.” Hana Mereraiha, who translated it, said she was granted creative license for the three songs she worked on; the album “Solar Power,” with its dedication to the sun and everything living under it, was quite Maori in spirit already.“There’s a really beautiful concept in te ao Maori, that of kaitiakitanga,” Lorde wrote. “It refers to an understanding that people and environment are interconnected and dependent on each other’s care to thrive.”The final line of the third verse of “Hine-i-te-Awatea” refers to the Maori idioms “paki o Hewa” and “paki o Ruhi,” which both mean fine weather, referencing the deities Hewa and Ruhi — “paki o Ruhi” is associated specifically with summer. Its last part, “te ao marama,” is a translation of the equivalent line in the English version, “I can make anything real,” as it refers to when the god Tane separated his father (Rangi-nui, the sky) from his mother (Papatuanuku, the earth), and brought light into the world.Mereraiha “broadened the universe of the song so that all the spiritual presences I could always feel but could never articulate were there,” Lorde wrote. “The Maori version feels like the original to me now.”Hana Mereraiha is a translator who worked on Lorde’s EP project, among others.Cameron James McLaren for The New York TimesSince Mereraiha started translating, she has worked with around 12 artists, and is writing and singing as well. “Dame Hinewehi has opened up many pathways into the music industry,” she said.The Maori singer Marlon Williams, who made a brief appearance in “A Star is Born” in 2018, decided to write his next album completely in Maori. Like Runga, Williams didn’t really speak Maori until a few years ago — he attended a kohanga reo, a total immersion preschool, and took some Maori at high school, but none of it stuck.For Williams, learning the language fresh has helped his songwriting. “I’m not aware of the errors I’m making,” he said, so he’s “not weighed down by them.” He relies on a collaborator, Kommi Tamati-Elliffe, a hip-hop artist and Maori lecturer at the University of Canterbury, to check over his work and find solutions when phrases aren’t working.“We’re on another awkward step on the globalization ladder where everything is mixing and melding,” Williams said. But he believes listeners don’t need to understand the lyrics for the songs to become big hits. “I don’t know any more Spanish after listening to ‘Despacito,’” Williams said. “Things that exist in the pop realm sometimes are their own thing.”Language revitalization is “a never-ending battle,” Karetu said. “All of us who have been colonized by somebody else are struggling for our languages to survive.” But, when it comes to songs, he’s more positive. “Waiata will never die. I think waiata will go on forever and ever.” More

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      in Television

      Iceland Has a Request for Disney+: More Icelandic, Please

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyIceland Has a Request for Disney+: More Icelandic, PleaseDisney brought its streaming service to Iceland last year. Now, the country’s education minister has sent a letter of complaint over the lack of Icelandic dubbing and subtitling.Iceland’s education minister urged Disney+ to work with the country’s efforts to preserve its language.Credit…Steven Senne/Associated PressFeb. 3, 2021Updated 10:05 a.m. ETREYKJAVIK, Iceland — Iceland, like much of the world, has embraced Disney’s popular streaming service, Disney+, since it arrived there late last year, with characters from Mickey Mouse to Mulan now available to watch on demand in homes across the country.But there is a problem, the government says: None of the movies or shows are dubbed or subtitled in Icelandic.The country’s education minister sent a letter of complaint to Bob Chapek, The Walt Disney Company’s chief executive, this week, urging the company to cooperate in the country’s efforts to preserve its language.“We work hard to maintain it, especially among children and young people who are heavily exposed to other languages daily, mainly English,” the minister, Lilja Alfredsdottir, wrote in the letter, which was also posted on social media. She noted that, particularly for children, it is vital to have as much exposure to the language as possible.Since then, the campaign has picked up steam, with many Icelanders adding their voices to calls for their native tongue to be featured. The move is part of a broader push to preserve the Icelandic language, a source of identity and pride for many, that some fear is being undermined by the widespread use of English.“I have never experienced reactions this strong,” Ms. Alfredsdottir said in an interview after publishing her letter on Facebook. “People are clearly passionate about our language.”The Disney+ service offers subtitles and audio dubs in up to 16 languages, according to its website, although the availability varies by title. The company also says it plans to add more languages as the service becomes available in more countries.The service’s uptake has risen steeply during the pandemic as people across the globe spend more time at home. By December, the company had reported about 87 million subscribers worldwide, after only a year in operation.And Icelanders have long adored Disney characters, many of whom are given names in Icelandic: Donald Duck is Andrés Önd, and Winnie the Pooh is Bangsímon.Many of Disney’s classic films were also dubbed into Icelandic when they were first released. But those versions are absent from Disney+, and people in the country want to know why.“I do wonder why they don’t at least offer the old versions,” Thorarinn Eldjarn, an author who has translated dozens of children’s books into Icelandic over his long career, said in an interview. “Either they think Iceland is too small and unimportant to bother with, or they assume everyone understands English.”Icelandic is a version of Norse that has remained largely unchanged on the island nation since it was settled about 1,100 years ago. But many people worry about the future of the language, which is spoken by only a few hundred thousand people in an increasingly globalized world.Some protections have been put in place: Local broadcasting rules require foreign shows to be subtitled at all times. But that has not been extended to streaming services, and exceptions are also made for international sports events.Among the nation’s children, English is being embraced at a rate that few people could imagine even a decade ago.Some of Iceland’s youngest children now speak English without an Icelandic accent.Credit…Lucas Jackson/ReutersSchools have had to rethink their curriculum because many students can no longer fluently read volumes from the Sagas of Icelanders, the medieval literature that chronicles Iceland’s early settlers and is considered the bedrock of the language.And many Icelanders have made the point that without the preservation of ancient Icelandic scripts and people’s ability to read them, some of the best-known tales of Norse mythology would have been lost. (That would mean no foundation for the lucrative Marvel Thor series, which is streamed on Disney+ and based on the Norse god of thunder.)Now, some of the country’s youngest children speak English without an Icelandic accent, and when communicating in Icelandic their syntax is influenced by that of English.Evidence also suggests that young Icelanders’ vocabulary is shrinking and blending with English, particularly regarding technical terms. Some people, for instance, will know the English word civilization but not necessarily the Icelandic equivalent (it’s “siðmenning”).Even so, researchers who have documented the effects of globalization on Icelandic insist that the status of the language is still strong.Ms. Alfredsdottir said she planned to follow up with foreign media companies, but declined to say whether streaming services could face fines for not adding subtitles.“I believe we can appeal to mutual interests,” she said. “If Disney embraces Icelandic, I am sure people will reward them for it with a subscription.”Disney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The absence of Icelandic has not been a deal breaker for other streaming services. Roughly 70 percent of Icelandic households in the country subscribe to Netflix, according to a 2020 Gallup poll — among the highest rate in the world — and its shows mostly do not have Icelandic subtitles.But Eirikur Rognvaldsson, a professor of Icelandic, said the influence of English on children, particularly with Disney+, could be problematic.“Disney films have catchy songs and phrases that children tend to repeat,” Mr. Rognvaldsson said.Much depends on the duration of exposure, he said, citing a large three-year study of 5,000 people from age 3 to 98, that he is involved with.He also said that interactive use of English tended to have more of an influence, such as when video game users chat with players around the world. “Too many children are not exposed enough to their mother tongue,” he said. “And that is causing a range of learning difficulties.”Yet some in the country are working to counter the digital trend.“We are already experimenting with automatic subtitle captioning,” said Johanna Gudmundsdottir, who leads the research center Almannaromur, with a team of 60 experts working to save the language from “a digital death.”The government has allocated $23 million for the project, which is being open-sourced so that tech companies can add Icelandic as a language option without much groundwork.Ms. Gudmundsdottir said the technology still needed to advance to a level of translating English audio in real time. She added, “We will get there.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More