Walter Meyer <[log in to unmask]> replied to my comments about surtitles.
One small point here concerns the considerable difference between the
original French and the Italian, if I may be allowed to correct Mr. Meyer?
Elle ne m'aime pas (She doesn't love me)
becomes, in Italian,
Ella giammai m'amo (She never loved me)
But my point was that the translation conveys a sense, but it is served
cold. No other emotion or nuance is available which is comparable with
what one hears from the voice.
Walter Meyer also wrote:
>Interestingly, I often have less trouble following a text in
>Italian, a language I never studied!
But are you not, like me, of the generation that had to do Latin at school?
(and how I hated it - but there's no doubt that it helped me become fluent
in French!).
In Mikael's note < [log in to unmask] > in reply to my
comment about those opera houses that have a:
>>... serious claim to being really *international* (La Scala, Munich,
>>Berlin, Bayreuth & Vienna) do not (yet, I believe) have surtitles.
To which he replied that:
>"They are just conservative, of course....."
Yes, maybe they are. Rather I'd suggest they are being cautious but that
wasn't the reason I pointed it out. The rhetorical question there was "if
they were to adopt surtitles what language would they put above the curtain
? Just their national tongue?" ..... and then they'd cease, would they
not, to be a really international house?!
That was why I suggested that Rheingold at La Scala with Italian surtitles
would be rather absurd (other combinations not necessary, we can all
imagine them I'm sure). It's quite in order for the ROH/Welsh National
etc. to do it in English as the British expect *everyone* to understand
(irony intended).
I fear there is a view around that because this technology exists it must
be good! In a similar vein I hear adults, at our computer club, arguing
that because MP3 exists stealing music on the net can't be wrong!! A
funny world ...
John G. Deacon http://www.ctv.es/USERS/j.deacon
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