Tuesday, January 27, 2009
lost in translation
In the last couple years, I have been ( or supposed to have been ) on Taiwanese television. All appearances related to the arts. Taiwan's fascination with foreigners, and having a foreigner speak on tv however, brings up another problem for tv stations.
They don't have anyone to translate and therefore subtitle what is being said by the foreigner.
As such, my spots in the limelight, are either shortened to just me smiling for the camera, and saying a few words, and/or just being cut out entirely.
Which is needless to say, a big waste of time for me as well as a big dissapointment.
Just this morning I was up early expecting to see myself discussing a painting at the Kaohsiung Fine Arts Museum. It was a 5 minute discussion about a piece, and was even filmed in two takes, to make it "just right". Only it was cut out entirely.
The weird thing is that the spot was on an obscure Buddhist channel. ( yeah, strange) I didn't know what show it would be on, and it turned out that it was on the "Buddhist World Daily News". And so, even they cut me out. What happened to some integrity man?
The reporter even phoned me to tell me when it would be broadcasted on the air.
Which is another point I could gripe about, becuase they aired the spot 2 weeks after the exhibit finished at the museum. nice. where is the organization here?
Being a Chinese speaker, I could have also easily gave my interview in Chinese, which would have made things alot easier.
They don't have anyone to translate and therefore subtitle what is being said by the foreigner.
As such, my spots in the limelight, are either shortened to just me smiling for the camera, and saying a few words, and/or just being cut out entirely.
Which is needless to say, a big waste of time for me as well as a big dissapointment.
Just this morning I was up early expecting to see myself discussing a painting at the Kaohsiung Fine Arts Museum. It was a 5 minute discussion about a piece, and was even filmed in two takes, to make it "just right". Only it was cut out entirely.
The weird thing is that the spot was on an obscure Buddhist channel. ( yeah, strange) I didn't know what show it would be on, and it turned out that it was on the "Buddhist World Daily News". And so, even they cut me out. What happened to some integrity man?
The reporter even phoned me to tell me when it would be broadcasted on the air.
Which is another point I could gripe about, becuase they aired the spot 2 weeks after the exhibit finished at the museum. nice. where is the organization here?
Being a Chinese speaker, I could have also easily gave my interview in Chinese, which would have made things alot easier.
# posted by jason @ 4:03 PM 
