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We in America love to “Netflix and Chill.” The polished streaming service has become a household name in the last several years and easily trumps every other potential source of entertainment. In recent years, Netflix has been making a huge push to enter Asian markets, particularly that of Korea. It has been quite nice for my wife to watch the latest of “Hyori’s Bed and Breakfast” from the same app that I enjoy “Black Mirror,” just a click away.
One unique little phenomenon that is easy to investigate on Netflix is how any given show or movie is translated to another language. Sometimes titles are transliterated directly to sound the same (“Hush” into “허시”) or directly translated to mean the same thing (“300” into “삼백”), but the most amusing are the attempts to convey the same/a similar meaning with the native language. You quickly realize that not all languages can be simply ported to each other and many words just don’t exist in some tongues, or at least don’t carry the same meaning. For example, words like ‘specter’ and ‘phantom’ don’t really exist in Korean where the broader word for ‘ghost’’ (귀신) is used.
So when movies or shows with more complicated reasons for using certain terms in their titles are translated on Netflix, they create a unique opportunity to speculate why - why were these terms chosen? For today’s post, I’ll look at one that caught my eye and propose why the radically different titles are interesting.
13 Reasons Why
The series about a teenage girl committing suicide and leaving 13 prerecorded tapes behind, each corresponding to a classmate that arguably led to her choice to die, create quite a splash when it first appeared. Many criticized it as glorifying death for youth and led to a marked increase in high school suicide attempts.
Suicide is a difficult topic of Koreans since it is the leading cause of death for ages 16-28?. Korea has the highest rate of suicide amongst OECD nations and much of it is due to the exact premise of the show - peer pressure and bullying.
13 Reasons Why would usually be direction translated into “13 이후,” but for some reason was transformed into “루머의 루머의 루머” // Rumors of Rumors of Rumors. The title takes the emphasis away from the elaborate reasons and complicated relationships that led to the girl’s death and instead focuses on the specific phenomenon of generating and spreading rumors.
Rumors do indeed play a large part of the teenagers’ relationships but are only one factor. But in the context of Korean high schools, especially that of the experience of young girls, rumors are an overwhelming component of stress and violence. In fact, I would reckon that in order to communicate the premise and appeal of the show to a Korean audience, marketers clung onto that specific term to in order to relate to any potential viewer. Anyone who has spent a few years as part of a Korean society knows what kind of influence rumors play in daily conversation and interaction.
Translations are an interesting thing and their is a fine balance between what titles are more literal, more iconic and deserve transliterations (like “Scarface” or “Queer Eye” that are fairly nonsensical when ), or are more explanatory and need contextualization. Analyzing in which of these strands any narrative is translated gives us insight or at least a few clues as to how a context or community will absorb the narrative.
So I’m curious, especially if you speak a second language, to your experiences. Have you seen curious transformations of foreign content into your own context? Let me know in the comments below!
