2019 July 24 update: Yeah! The Farewell is opening in Calgary, Canada this weekend finally! Have a watch of the Official HD Trailer before checking the 3 reasons why I LOVE The Farewell directed by Lulu Wang almost sight unseen. I’m also excited to schedule to review the film with Terry #陳家燕 on her FM947 radio show.
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Love is never rational so here are 3 reasons why I LOVE “The Farewell” by Lulu Wang almost sight unseen.
1) I listened to Lulu’s “What You Don’t Know” radio segment on This American Life (TAL) like three times back to back (while cooking) because I LOVE it so much. I bet once you listen to it, you may enjoy it as much as I did. From TAL: // Lulu Wang tells the story of an elaborate attempt to keep someone ignorant — her grandmother — and how her family pulled it off. (27 minutes)//
3) I watched this “Talk Story with Lulu Wang, Director of The Farewell” (at Hawaii International Film Festival) once and will likely watch it at least once more. You see, the more I learned about Lulu’s real life story, the more I’m amazed and curious of how she is going to turn everything into a film.
P.S. I really do know a lot by most regular moviegoers’ standard.
Note: “The Farewell” started screening in four theatres in US on July 12 according to Box Office Mojo. As of July 16, I can’t find a theatre to watch the film in Calgary yet. Hopefully soon. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.)
For the record, the following are some info I watched and collected for 拱心石下–吳靄儀從政十八年回望. I plan to add more to this post in the coming days as I have time to check out Margaret’s FB page more.
My 1986 copy of “Iacocca: An Autobiography” which I used for a high school English class assignment/book review. This is one of the autobiographies that got me onto the path of lifelong learning form insightful people’s biographies.
Thanks to my high school English teacher for letting me use Iacocca‘s best selling autobiography for one of the book review/class assignment which got me on a lifelong path of reading and enjoying autobiographies and biographies of many people which got me to learn valuable life lessons and teachable moments from them.
I’ve spent quite a few hours over the last few weeks to video capture the Headliner 頭條新聞 segment【聰吧！新中年！】抗爭者言, translate the spoken Cantonese into English and lined up the English subtitle/Closed Caption text to exactly match the timing of the Chinese subtitle text on the clip. Feel free to let me know if you spot any clear mistakes and have suggestions to better translate things.
Have a watch of this footage of a Commercial Radio reporter being unjustly rough handled and threatened by Hong Kong police rough handling reporters in doing their jobs: #記你老母 錄影片段 (timecode 32s).
FB user 劉仁顯 took time to create a FB profile frame tool for #記你老母 in which he translated “#記你老母” to “Port Your Mother”. While I thank the user for the effort, I think translating #記你老母 to “Port Your Mother” is a bit too polite and also incorrect.
X你老母 usually are curse words for “F*ck your mother!” (or simply “You Motherf*cker!”)
So #記你老母 really should include F-word or ”Motherf*cker” in it somehow. Anyway, the first work-in-progress translation I used was “Re… you Motherf*ckers!” Upon further considerations, I think the following are worth considering:
1) “You Jurnos Motherf*ckers”
2) “Jurnos Motherf*ckers”
3) Journof*cker (Note: “Jurnos” is of course short for journalists.)
4) JìNǐLǎoMǔ
(Note: JìNǐLǎoMǔ is probably the most Beijing & mainland Chinese friendly translation inspired by Hanami for 花見. The dictionary entry for JìNǐLǎoMǔ (記你老母) can give a detailed explanation plus a link to Commercial Radio 商台新聞’s Facebook video post for context and usage example by the brutal authority and inventor of the phrase 記你老母.)
*) Port Your Mother [HT 仁顯]
*) Journfucknalist [HT a friend]
*) “Report, your ass” [HT a friend]
*) “Remember Your Mother” [HT internet, this one is very HK 無厘頭 and cute in some sense]
While I respect 蕭叔叔’s insights, I feel it a bit “too polite” and failed to matched the tone of the unjustly violent policeman.
Imagine a “super big mean” English speaking Hollywood actor playing the role of the unjustly violent policeman saying the line “Reporter, my arse!” Sorry to be frank, I would laugh and NOT feel threaten at all as if Mr. Bean himself was threatening me!
Here lies a general translation challenge of how a culture say certain things. 蕭叔叔 wisely restricted his observation to the Brits. As a further aside, which I hope is illuminating, base on my limited understanding of Japanese people, they are exceedingly polite so their common curse words are like telling people they are “stupid” (in Cantonese, it sounds like 8+26)! And dare I say, “stupid” is NOT exactly a strong curse words in most cultures! In Canada and US, etc, people regularly use versions of the f-word, Motherf*cker, etc when cursing. So, to me, the Brits way of “Reporter, my arse!” is rather inadequate for HongKongers’ X你老母 or the unjustly violent policeman’s #記你老母!
Based on the above and other news video footages, unjustified violence have been deployed against many journalists trying to record and report on facts. So the words #記你老母 don’t feel like one off isolated incidents but feel like part of a “general declaration of war against journalists” reporting on the 2019 Hong Kong anti-extradition bill protests.
At this moment, I’m leaning to translate #記你老母 as “You Jurnos Motherf*ckers”. Feel free to share your ideas and suggestions in how to better translate #記你老母!
14 June 2019 Update #2: By the way and on the fun aside, my favourite open/unsolved grand translation challenge remains 「撒嬌」有沒有英譯 since I read a 2009 article. I haven’t yet given up.
The ultimate solution for 「撒嬌」 may end up being something I got inspired by Hanami (Japanese 花見), just coin a word for it. I know it is a “cheat” but a perfect cheat has some merits right?
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