Cinema Babel: Translating Global Cinema

The original foreign film—its sights and sounds—is available to all, but the viewer is utterly dependent on a translator and an untold number of technicians who produce the graphic text or disconnected speech through which we must approach the foreign film. A bad translation can ruin a film’s beauty, muddy its plot, and turn any joke sour.

In this wide—ranging work, Abé Mark Nornes examines the relationships between moving—image media and translation and contends that film was a globalized m...