Lost in translation

Shu Qi stars as Aryoung, the daughter of a Hong Kong triad boss, who is forced into hiding in Korea, in My Wife is a Gangster 3.

Jung Woo Sung and Jeon Ji Hyun, his “real life” girl friend of 8 years in a Giordano advertisement

Shu Qi is Hongkong and Taiwan´s answer to Korea´s Shin Min Ah. But what is an interesting thought deriving from this article isn’t about Shu Qi or My Wife is a Gangster 3, it is the fondness by the Asian film industry to make joint venture movies or dramas that they hope would appeal to more than one market if they have actors from different countries in it, sometimes, the more the merrier. They hope that the market for the film would be expanded by the number of foreign actors they include in the movie, but the result is not always so, unfortunately due to lost in translation!

In the 2006 Korean movie Daisy, a thriller about a cop pursuing an assassin in The Netherlands that was directed by famed Hong Kong director, Andrew Lau, one of the lead Korean actor, Jeong Woo Seong aka Jung Woo Sung who fortunately speaks Mandarin, translated the director´s requirement for Jeon Ji-Hyun and Lee Sung Jae because the translator could not convey to the other two Korean actors the nuances of the director´s instructions succinctly.

Jung Woo Sung has a long credential of well know films to his credit, among them Musa, the warrior (2001), A Moment to Remember (2004), Sad Movie (2005) and The Restless (2006). Musa and The Restless are Jung Woo Sung´s Chinese connection in his films. Musa was filmed with Ju Ji Mo (while still a narrow face horsy looking actor, now the handsome Sang Jun of the hit 200 Pounds Beauty fame) and Zhang Zi Yi in China (before Zhang became internationally famous through Crouching Tiger & Hidden Dragon). The Restless with Kim Tae Hee was also filmed in China. Kim Tae Hee won the popular overseas actress award for her role in this movie at the recent 44th Daejong Film Awards. Jung Woo Sung is thus far the most humble and polite Korean actor that I have observed, while watching the film clips for the making of The Restless and the 51st Asia Pacific Film Fest held in Taiwan. The MC of this event tried to flip Jung Woo Sung by asking him a totally unrehearsed question in Mandarin, to which he thought for a moment and gave an appropriate reply in Mandarin.

However, in the upcoming Kim Jeong Hoon´s Love Strategies being filmed in Shanghai, it will be to Kim Jeong Hoon´s favour because the production team will be Koreans, to the disadvantage of Vivian Hsu, unless she also speaks Korean or perhaps as was reported earlier, she spoke Japanese with Kim Jeong Hoon, could we expect that he might be gallant enough to help her out! This would depend upon whether their level of Japanese would be better than that of the translators´ Korean to Mandarin interpretation!

Written by Kwfong exclusively for Shenyuepop
No reproduction of this article is allowed without the written consent of Kwfong at Shenyuepop.

Source: The Star, By MICHAEL CHEANG, 27 June 2007

Shu Qi plays a gangster with language problems in the Korean flick, My Wife is a Gangster 3.

One of the supporting characters in Shu Qi’s new film My Wife is a Gangster 3 is a bumbling Korean translator who gets her translations wrong all the time, resulting in all sorts of hilarious situations for Shu’s character.

Such incidences may be funny in a movie, but the Taiwan-born actress was not amused when she faced the same sort of situation while filming the movie in Korea.

“There really isn’t anything funny about it – in fact, whenever I felt that the translator was not translating correctly, I would get annoyed,” said the actress during an interview in Singapore recently.

“I always seem to meet this kind of problem wherever I go. When I went to the United States to film The Transporter, I also had the same problem, so this time I was going, ‘Oh no, not again!’”

My Wife is a Gangster 3 (MWIG3) is directed by Jo Jin-gyu, the director of the original film, which became the fourth highest grossing movie in Korean history when it was released in 2001.

However, where the previous two movies featured the hilarious escapades of a female gangster getting married, MWIG3 departs from that formula, focusing instead on a more international premise featuring the romance between a woman gangster from Hong Kong and a hapless gangster from Korea.

In the movie, Shu plays Aryoung – the daughter and successor of a Hong Kong triad boss who has to go into hiding in Korea to escape a war between her gang and a rival gang. There, she is assigned to be protected by Ki-chul (Lee Beum-su) the bumbling third boss of the Far East Gang, who gets no respect from his gang and has no fighting skills whatsoever.

The movie also stars Korean supermodel Hyeon Young, rising star Oh Ji-ho, as well as veteran Hong Kong actor Ti Lung (A Better Tomorrow).

MWIG3 marks the first time that Shu is appearing in a Korean movie, but being the seasoned actress that she is, she had no qualms about appearing in such a massive hit and working in a foreign country for three months.

“My fellow cast members took care of me very well – they were very caring and treated me like a sister,” she said. “The hardest part of the whole shoot was still the translations, because it was difficult to have any chemistry with the actors when the translation was poor.

“Sometimes, the translator might be translating what the director is saying directly, but some words that might be important are omitted. She is just a translator, so she might not understand the director’s vision or what he wants.

“So when I try acting according to the translation, it would turn out to be not what he wanted in the first place, and that annoys me a lot. Professionally, I feel very uncomfortable when I am not able to deliver what the director expects of me.”

As for the pressure of appearing in the sequel of such a popular franchise, she claims that she doesn’t feel any.

“I watched the first film and liked it – I thought the script and story were very good,” she said. “It’s because the first two films were pretty good that I agreed to do it when they asked me to make the third movie.”

MWIG3 is also very different from the first two in terms of its action scenes, which featured Shu performing some of the stunts herself.

“We really had to rehearse the stunts a lot, because I not only had to remember my own moves, but also everyone else’s moves as well,” she recalled. “There was one scene where the director asked me to do almost 50 moves, but it was too much for me. I could only manage about 30-plus moves!”

According to her, the Korean and Hong Kong movie industries are very different. While she reckons that Korean films have bigger budget and strong investors, she also thinks that Hong Kong moviemakers are more experienced and have better technical skills.

“I envy the Korean market, because it is so successful and they invest a lot in it. I also think that the Koreans are very proud of their own nation, and protect their own artistes very well, which is a very good thing,” she said.

Although Shu was tight-lipped on what project she is embarking on next, one thing is for sure – whatever it is, she will always be game for it. Even if it’s another Korean film.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s in Hong Kong, Korea, Japan or Hollywood, it’s all about the movie-making experience. I just hope that every movie I make will be better than the last one,” she said.

“However, the next time I make a movie in Korea, I think I will bring my own translator!”

Movie Trailer of My Wife is Gangstar 3

Movie Trailer of Daisy