Found in translation

Date: 2009.12.18 | Category: General | Tags:

Last summer we saw a very good Japanese movie (“Departures“) about a young man who falls into a job where he prepares dead bodies for funerals. At one point his mentor cooks some food and says something like, “it tastes so good, I hate myself.” The line is later repeated in the movie, and people laugh when he says it.

A Chinese undergraduate working with me saw the movie and really liked it. We were discussing it and I asked about the line (there were Chinese subtitles in her version). She remembered the scene but said the line was, “This food is so good, I can’t resist it.”

I really wonder what the original line was. Did the Chinese translator fix it to make it more normal, or did the English translator have a mordant and morbid sense of humor?

Here are some links that cite what we saw (in the English version):

http://yasminthefilmmaker.blogspot.com/2009/03/achingly-beautiful-film.html

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/film/story/2009/06/11/f-departures-review.html

http://thecrookedmadestraight.typepad.com/the_crooked_shall_be_made/2009/06/its-so-good-i-hate-myself.html