Oideyasu! Please take off your shoes.
We went to a lecture yesterday by SuperTranslator/Interpreter to the stars Natsuko Toda at the Kyoto Kokusai Hotel. She translates and makes the subtitles for most major Hollywood movies coming to Japan.
Yesterday, she said she was working on a movie called "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" with the deadline fast approaching, and she admitted that she was stuck on one line, so she put it up on the whiteboard:
"It's all Greek to me."
Two characters enter a Greek (Greek-American) wedding and one asks the other what's going on, and the reply is, "It's all Greek to me."
Of course, everyone thinks they know, and 400 voices mutter "chinpun-kanpun," but we also know that Toda Natsuko is not an idiot. The problem, she says, is that it has to refer to Greece and it has to be funny. Oh, and also it has to be read within 1.5 seconds, which means 4 or 5 characters.
One guy suggested "Saatene," (atene = athens) but that didn't seem to do it for her.
Ready, Go!
Posted by nils at March 31, 2003 01:42 AMOh I am jealous! How did you find out about the lecture? (Is this my punishment for setting my Honyaku mailing list settings to no mail?)
I thought the "saatene" suggestion was pretty clever.
A friend of my wife's invited us. I believe the reason she wanted to go was the Natsuko Toda-Tom Cruise connection, and the stalking of Tom by the two of them last November when he was in Kyoto filming his next feature.
Posted by: nils on April 1, 2003 09:45 AM
