"Understanding" and "Localization"

Yvette 2022-03-25 09:01:15

The film itself is mediocre, but it inspired me some ideas that have nothing to do with the content of the film itself.

Three and a half stars, and a half star to the translator.

"Understanding" has two layers, one is to understand the semantics, this is not difficult, just look up the dictionary. The deeper level is to understand the context. In terms of words and sentences, it is to understand the meaning of the context. From an independent text or an author, it means to understand the social context, that is, "knowing people and discussing the world".

A more intuitive way to detect whether you understand the context is to see if you can get a point of laughter/tear point (I have a deep experience in theaters and theaters). Before watching this film, I was worried that I didn't have the French context and couldn't understand the second layer. But fortunately, the translator is very cute, and the Farnan and Farbei accents (sometimes) correspond to Beijing films and Northeastern dialects... The role of context is reflected in this experiment of controlling variables.

Before I enter a new context, I will learn "local scolding" first. In the first half of the film, the protagonist suffers a lot of hatred in the first half of overcoming culture shock. The first time he was genuinely happy about his integration into the North was because he confounded the waiter from Paris with the North swear words he had just learned.

In addition to this immediate sense of achievement, his happiness also comes from the fun and meaning of "local scolding" itself. I think "local scolding" is the most "cheesy" thing in local culture. The more cheesy something is, the more natural and true it is, so it is vigorous and lively. Anything is more elegant and niche, and its vitality seems to be worrying (but a few artistic life is weak, not broken by bumps, and very tough). From birth, to vulgarity, to elegance, to death, it may be a law of artistic development, as is the case with Kunqu Opera and Peking Opera. I had a particularly profound experience when I studied the history of Chinese drama.

After talking about art, let's talk about business. (Otherwise, I'll digress again...) This film was the French box office champion that year, and I also got a little inspiration in the film industry.

I recently took a class at Global Cinema. The world’s films are divided into three parts. The first world is Hollywood blockbuster, the second world is European art film, and the third world is marginal film. Most of the Cuban films represented are related to local political ideology. film group.

The first world pursues globalization, seeks common ground while reserving differences in the different tastes of the global film market, and tries to find and satisfy the intersection of the pleasures of various ethnic groups. The success of this globalization is obvious, but it has not blocked other paths to commercial success.

If you can't get everyone to die, then "get some to die" is a more sensible business strategy than making everyone less loyal. Those who understand will understand naturally, let those who understand naturally pass word-of-mouth, and let those who don’t know much understand it.

In fact, localization strategies have been used in China to counter globalization blockbusters. Take Chongqing as an example. There is "Crazy Stone" far away, and "Hot Pot Hero" is near. The local box office in Chongqing has a large weight in the national box office.

But it is more interesting to understand localization in a broader, cultural perspective. The commercial success of "Wolf Warrior 2" is a very typical victory of localized ideology. But to send such a localized ideological product to the Oscars for best foreign language film is not only an idiot of artistic appreciation, but also a low-level mistake to confuse two very different cultural communication strategies.

View more about Welcome to the Sticks reviews