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Every remake is a test of cross-cultural translation

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 Original title: Every remake is a test of cross-cultural translation

The film “Door Lock” follows the female protagonist’s “other” perspective and the usual psychological suggestion music used in horror films, creating a terrible situation in which women living alone may encounter danger at all times, and whether this is a woman’s conjecture, self-suggestion, or a profound reality reason? The film did not delve into this, and instead looked for the murderer behind the scenes. In the end, the film ended up with the “four differences” in which all the issues were not fully explained.The picture shows the stills of “The Door Lock”

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How the remake can make audiences who like the original work relive the classics and feel new, and how to make audiences who don’t know the original work accept localized storytelling is the key to testing the cross-cultural “translation” skills of editors and directors.

Localized translation requires not only following the national cultural traditions, cultural habits, and value attribution, but also considering the political, economic, and social environment of today’s society, as well as the audience’s cultural psychology, cultural consumption habits, aesthetic expectations and other comprehensive factors. The remake provides a cultural soil suitable for its growth, rather than a simple and crude transplant regardless of the cultural context.

The film “Door Lock”, a remake of the Korean movie of the same name, failed to win general recognition from the audience in terms of in-depth analysis of the theme content and artistic innovation of audio-visual techniques. After comparison, some fans even thought that the film was not as good as the original Korean version.

Interestingly, the Korean version of “Door Lock” itself is also a remake of the Spanish film “When You Are Sleeping” released in 2011. The protagonist is a severely mentally ill patient who can’t see other people’s happiness. The story of using the duty of the building security guard to keep the spare key secretly destroying the happiness of others, with a strong European cultural reflection. The Korean version of the remake retains the main bridge where the male protagonist hides under the victim’s bed, and when she is sleeping and fainted, she quietly leaves in the early morning. The narrative focuses on the change from the Spanish version of the perpetrator to the victimized woman being bullied. From the content point of view, the story structure of the new film “Door Lock” is closer to the Korean version. At the same time, the villain male protagonist’s character also has the Spanish version of personality split and hysteria, but in the end the theme is superficial, the characters are instrumental, the narrative is chaotic, As the plot lacks realistic logic, word-of-mouth continues to decline while the director is out of control of the film.

In recent years, there are not a few domestic remakes that have also encountered “Waterloo”. “Huainan is orange, and Huaibei is orange” has become a subtle portrayal of most remakes in a cross-cultural context.

In the current lack of excellent scripts, remaking other countries’ films is a safe way to operate the film.

Applying the mature story structure of the original work that has been tested and popular in the market, through localized adaptation and more friendly local celebrity interpretation, it not only reduces the development cost of the original work, but may even use the popularity of the original work to reduce the cost of publicity. “Innate advantages” attract audiences. In the current lack of excellent scripts for local films, buying overseas small and medium-sized high-cost box office films for a second remake seems to be a safe way to operate the film.

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Taking Hollywood in the United States as a reference, many film industry giants are well aware of this. The remakes of “Girl with Dragon Tattoo”, “Never Enter”, “Untouchable Lovers” and “The Grudge” have all achieved success. Martin. Scorsese is a remake of “Infernal Affairs” from “Infernal Affairs”, and won many awards including Oscar for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay. Most of the Hollywood remakes retain the basic story structure of the original, delete and modify the folklore details with distinctive foreign cultural characteristics, adjust the relationship between characters and expression methods, and add values ​​that are in line with the cultural background of European and American audiences, just as “Rolling Stone” evaluated “Infernal Affairs”. A fully Americanized film and a successful Hollywood remake complete the localized adaptation of the film relatively completely. But even with a mature industrial production system, Hollywood has also produced low-rated remakes such as “High School Musical”, “Midnight Ring” and “Uninvited”.

In fact, it is not easy to make a cross-cultural film adaptation. The original word-of-mouth bonus is like a “double-edged sword”. While raising the expectations of the film, it also hides a lot of “minefields.” On the one hand, the remake does not mean “copying” or “translating” the original almost intact. Remakes such as “Troublesome Family”, “Late Night Canteen”, “I Know Women’s Heart”, and “Hide and Seek” suffer from lack of innovation and over-reliance on the original. The plot does not conform to Chinese culture and national conditions, and the content is mechanically copied, which eventually forms an unrecognized “sand rice”. ; On the other hand, if the original jade is in front, too many remakes or inappropriate magic changes will be considered by movie fans as inconsistent with the original settings, and good IPs were wasted for nothing, such as “My Best Friend’s Wedding” and “The Bride” “Combat”, “Destined”, “Worry-Relief Grocery Store” and other films have lost the essence of the original work in the adaptation and turned into mediocre works. In addition, audiences who are accustomed to watching overseas films are not necessarily the same as audiences who pay for the remake. How to make audiences who like the original work relive the classics and feel new, and how to make audiences who do not understand the original work accept localized storytelling is a test. Choreographer is the key to cross-cultural “translation” skills. Once the problems of retention and deletion in the adaptation process are not dealt with properly, it will result in “cottage” works in which the remake will overturn and the buyer’s show is inferior to the seller’s show.

In a sense, the remakes of various countries are like participating in a “proposition” contest based on the original film. For example, the Italian film “Perfect Stranger” has sold adaptation rights in more than 30 countries, and domestic scholars have specially written papers that have compared multiple versions of remakes in Greece, Spain, Turkey, South Korea, Hungary, Poland, and China. . In this cross-cultural adaptation competition of ideas, art, and technology, the remake of the Chinese version of “Incoming Call Frenzy” can only be said to be unsuccessful. The regular narrative in the film cannot support too many related social issues, and the audience’s resonance is not as good as it is. The original work is timeless and long.

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An excellent remake that can satisfy the audience’s double expectations for the genre itself and the original creation

At present, the number of domestic commercial film remakes is the largest in the United States, South Korea, and Japan. Considering the recognized industrial standards and global influence of Hollywood films, as well as the relatively close geographic culture of Japanese and Korean films, this choice seems reasonable. However, the remakes such as “Little Wish”, “Crowd Crowd”, “Keep Talking”, and “The Manhunt” are still far from the original, so we have to delve into the key to commercial film remakes.

The core reason why genre movies endure is that each genre contains a myth in the audiovisual spectacle that is similar to “eternal questioning” about the fundamental problems of human civilization, such as gender relations to romance movies, and technological anxiety to science fiction. Movies, justice and freedom to gangster movies, etc. Since the birth of genre movies, they have been good at constantly renewing themselves, absorbing cultural characteristics of different eras and regions, and adjusting their core “motifs”, thus attracting generations of audiences from different cultural backgrounds and rushing to similar themes.

In this sense, cross-cultural adaptations of commercial films must first meet the requirements of “genre” elements, such as the basic story structure, characterization, etc., must include the narrative elements of this type. An excellent remake of a movie needs to satisfy the audience’s double expectations for the genre itself and the innovation of the original. When we watch a romantic comedy remake, we don’t expect it to be a horror fantasy cop film, and we also look forward to seeing the original beloved After being re-interpreted, the story evokes the comfort of the soul. Although the fusion of different types of features makes the film more diverse and it is also one of the effective means for commercial films to attract different audiences in recent years, the integration still needs to focus on a certain type to be clear and targeted. For example, the remake of “Brewster’s 100” “The Richest Man in Xihong City” of “Wan Heng Cai”, although there is no shortage of love and suspense, after all, it is ranked the annual hit comedy list with a dense joke. On the other hand, the new film “Door Lock”, following the heroine’s “other” perspective and the usual psychological suggestion music of horror films, creates a terrifying situation that women living alone may encounter danger at all times. Is this a female conjecture, self-suggestion, or profound The reason for reality? The film did not delve into this, and instead looked for the murderer behind the scenes. The whole article is dissociated between different types of elements such as plot, horror, suspense, and crime. In the end, the film ends up with the “four differences” in which all problems are not fully explained.

The remake is not only a commercial operation in response to market hotspots, but also a vehicle for exchanges and dialogues between different civilizations

After satisfying the basic elements of the “genre” level, that is, pointing out the “motif” of the film, and responding to the common human issues contained in the genre, the remake needs to complete a cross-cultural story translation. In the cross-cultural dissemination of original films, audiences are prone to “misreading” or understanding barriers and subject deviations due to different cultural backgrounds, while remakes are more likely to encounter “cultural barriers” and “cultural discounts”. . Localized translation requires not only following the national cultural traditions, cultural habits, and value attribution, but also considering the political, economic, and social environment of today’s society, as well as the audience’s cultural psychology, cultural consumption habits, aesthetic expectations and other comprehensive factors. The remake provides a cultural soil suitable for its growth, rather than a simple and crude transplant regardless of the cultural context.

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One of the main reasons why domestically produced remakes are rare is that they emphasize “form” rather than “god”. At first glance, the story is imitated, but in the adaptation, the original theme has been lost, and the film has not been made more local. The essence of transformation does not seem to be good for the original work, nor does it respect the aesthetic taste of local audiences.

A remake that meets the above two standards will basically not “roll over”, and an excellent remake will add a little more “seasoning” to the film, that is, it is a novelty that is derived from the original and is higher than the original. The genre elements and the original frame itself have basically limited the general direction of the remake, and innovation can only be done in the “local transplantation” of the film. One approach is to stick to the original work, keep the most basic storyline, and replace the rest of the content with more “down-to-earth” local content. For example, the remake of the film “Twelve Citizens” from “Twelve Angry Men” changed the issues of American justice, racial discrimination, and class disparity in the original version to topics that are closer to the lives of Chinese audiences, such as empty nest elderly and generation gap conflicts; One approach is to keep the basic storyline, but deliberately blur the background of time and space. The focus is not to connect the audience with reality, but to immerse themselves in the reasoning of the plot. For example, the film “Manslaughter”, which is a remake of the Indian film “Manslaughter”, puts the story scene in Thailand, and adds parody of “Prisons” and “Shawshank’s Redemption” to guide the audience to follow the protagonist to develop and evil forces. The brainstorming of wits and bravery not only won the box office and word of mouth, but also formed a new IP. The second part will be launched in the Lunar New Year this year.

As scholar Le Daiyun said, cultural misunderstandings will inevitably occur when two different cultures come into contact. The original “view” determines “invisible” and “insight”. Faced with cultural differences, film remakes are not just a response. Commercial operations in market hotspots are even more a vehicle for exchanges and dialogues between different civilizations. In the context of the booming global multiculturalism, the “heart-to-heart” and “down-to-earth” remake film can be regarded as a cultural window that sees the world and the world sees it.

(The author of Liu Chun is an associate researcher at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences)

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