Sofia Coppola on Tokyo, Suntory Whisky, and 20 Years of “Lost in Translation” - Harper's BAZAAR - Translation

Sofia Coppola brings her essence of effortless cool to everything she touches.

The esteemed director is particular about the projects she signs onto, often spending years between films so she can give her all to the production process. When it came time to celebrate Suntory whisky’s 100th anniversary, however, Coppola knew she had to be a part of it.

In honor of the brand’s centennial, Coppola directed a special campaign (starring Keanu Reeves!) looking back at its century of history with a high-speed short film chock-full of nostalgic clips, including vintage Suntory commercials spanning the decades and even self-referential moments from the director’s own archive. 2023 isn’t just the 100th anniversary for Suntory, after all—it also marks 20 years since the release of Lost in Translation, one of Coppola’s career-defining films. She even threw a few Easter eggs into this new project for longtime fans, paying homage to the romantic dramedy, which stars Bill Murray as a movie star in Tokyo to promote Suntory.

Below, Bazaar spoke to Coppola about the conception of the short film for Suntory, reflecting on 20 years of Lost in Translation, and what’s ahead for the director, including her highly anticipated return to the screen with the upcoming Priscilla.

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Tokyo has always been a special place for you, and especially in terms of your filmmaking career. What was it like to be back to celebrate 100 years of Suntory whisky? And how does Tokyo as a city continue to inspire you?

It was so great. It was really great to be back—I hadn’t been since the pandemic. And to see my friends that I’ve known since my 20s, spending time in Japan and remembering that it was our 20 years of —I can’t believe it—20 years of Lost in Translation. We used to always say we were gonna have a 16th birthday party for the anniversary, but we haven’t gotten around to it. But it’s always exciting to go back, and I never get jaded to go to Tokyo and Japan in general. I’ve always loved the culture and the country.

This special short for the anniversary has a very big star—Keanu Reeves—who needs no introduction. Why was he perfect for this project?

Suntory has held a pretty long relationship with Keanu over the years. When they said it was their 100th anniversary, I said, “Oh, can we look through all your archives?” My starting point knowing Suntory is from when when I was a little kid, when my dad did a commercial with Akira Kurosawa for Suntory, and that’s where I got the [original] idea when I was writing the script for Lost in Translation—with that memory of them. I asked to look through all the archives, and they had an old commercial with Keanu and different people, and they said that they wanted to do something with Keanu again, because he’s really a sincere fan of the whisky. So, I thought, Perfect! We tried to incorporate something new with all the archive footage.

Like you said, the clip is chock-full of vintage archive footage from past campaigns, commercials, and pop culture moments—even referencing some of your own work. How did you decide which clips you wanted to include in it?

I wanted to show the history of 100 years and all of [Suntory’s] cultural contributions. But I also really just wanted to highlight Japanese culture, not just Suntory, because it is so much about celebrating the culture of Japan. What I love about the clip is that it’s a mix of really modern and classical moments. We tried to show that Suntory has a lot of respect for the nature and origins of where it comes from. I also just wanted to showcase the beauty of Tokyo itself—I’ve always loved like ikebana, and then all the neon signs and [Akihabara], with all the gadgets. Tokyo especially has that real mix of contrasting elements that I love.

Sofia Coppola on set for the making of the Suntory Anniversary Tribute

Sofia Coppola

Whether it’s a special project like this or one of your full-length films, you’ve always been known for your selections when it comes to soundtracking your work. I love the Joan Jett cover you chose for this one. Tell me why that was the right song. And what does your usual process look like for picking the right song, for the right moment, for any film project?

I mean, I always love that part. It’s always fun to put the music on, and it helps it kind of all come together. We tried some different songs on that one—I love that song, but that cover especially just had a great feeling that kind of pulled it all together and had the energy that we needed it to bring. There’s that energy and the excitement and coolness and fun that encompasses just the energy of being [in Tokyo].

Unbelievably, it’s been 20 years since the release of Lost in Translation. Looking back at the making of the film and first conceptualizing it, how do you think you’ve evolved as a director and as a creative since then?

On that movie, I think I learned really to just go with my instincts and do what I love, because you’re never gonna know what other people are gonna like. You just hope they do! At the time I thought, Is anyone gonna relate to or care about this? And then I was surprised that people did. You just have to hope other people will connect with it too, you know? There’s something about the more specific something is, the more universally people connect to it—I don’t know why that is, but I’ve learned that, I think.

Why do you think it still resonates so much 20 years on?

I don’t know—it was a total surprise to me! But, um, I think the cast was lovable and it feels like you visit Tokyo when you watch the movie. That’s what I always hoped, that it would give you the impression of what it’s like to be there. Everyone has moments of feeling, you know, those kind of surprise connections you have with people. But otherwise, I have no idea except for: It’s nice, there’s Tokyo, and you get to hang out with Bill Murray.

Sofia Coppola

It’s crazy looking back and seeing how young Scarlett Johansson was and now seeing the absolute powerhouse she is today.

I know! She was such a kid.

We’ve spent so much time reflecting on the past and nostalgia, but let’s look forward for a second. You just announced that your first book is coming out later this year, and of course you also have Priscilla coming out. How would you describe and define what’s up next, and what can longtime fans really expect from you creatively in the next few years?

We’re finishing up Priscilla, so I’m just imposed for that. I’m really excited to put that out and I’m excited for my book to come together. We just sent it to the printer! But after that, I’m not sure—I always like to do projects that I connect with personally. [With Priscilla], the cast is really great and we’re in the midst of editing now. I’m excited to see it come together. We had a great shoot, and I’m enjoying working on the music and all those elements, and I hope that people that like my work will enjoy it. I feel like it’s very me.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Culture Editor

Bianca Betancourt is the culture editor at HarpersBAZAAR.com, where she covers all things film, TV, music, and more. When she's not writing, she loves impulsively baking a batch of cookies, re-listening to the same early-2000s pop playlist, and stalking Mariah Carey's Twitter feed. 

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Latvian New World Translation Showcased at Book Fair in Riga - JW News - Translation

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Latvian New World Translation Showcased at Book Fair in Riga  JW News

Burnsville native who dreams in Bulgarian wins share of International Booker Prize - Star Tribune - Translation

When Angela Rodel studied linguistics at Yale University, she didn't know translating was a legitimate career. On Tuesday, she shared the prestigious International Booker Prize for translating "Time Shelter," by Georgi Gospodinov, from Bulgarian into English.

"We've had eight hours of interviews today. It's insane! But I'm not complaining," Rodel said by phone from London, where the Booker ceremony took place. She and Gospodinov share the roughly $62,000 prize for the best work in translation published in the United Kingdom.

The 1992 graduate of Burnsville High School studied Russian and German at Yale, partly because, "I was a dark, angsty teenager." But she had sparked to Russian in high school: "This was totally strange but I guess the winds of perestroika made it there because one of the French teachers started teaching Russian, too."

At Yale, Rodel joined a Slavic chorus after hearing the music and thinking, "I want my voice to sound like that."

She went to Bulgaria as a Fulbright scholar after Yale, then earned a master's degree in linguistics from UCLA. On a return visit to Bulgaria in 2004, "I decided to stay. My husband at the time was a musician and poet and Sofia is a really small town. We all knew each other, so I met all these writers. Someone would give me a poem or story and I would translate it, just for fun."

Almost by accident, she became a full-time translator, which she now balances with being executive director of the Bulgarian Fulbright Commission.

Rodel hopes the Booker recognition helps change the notion that translated works are "second-hand goods."

"There's a perception that it's somehow 'less than' because it wasn't originally in English. But there are brilliant, talented writers all over the world," said Rodel, who speaks Bulgarian at home with husband Viktor and daughter Kerana and often dreams in the language.

Her job is not line-by-line transcription but something more artful.

"You want the reader to have a similar emotional experience in the translation as they would in the original. You try to capture the atmosphere, the style of the work. So, if there's something experimental, there should be something experimental in the translation," Rodel said. "If there's a humorous novel, with plays on words, maybe you can't do the exact same pun in a given sentence but there may be an opportunity to do one a few sentences later that works in English."

The Bulgarian language presents challenges for an English translator, including different verb tenses and gendered nouns.

The Burnsville native has worked often with Gospodinov, who also lives in Sofia. When the two learned in March that "Time Shelter" made the 13-book longlist, she said, "We thought, 'This is amazing. A Bulgarian book has never even made the longlist, so this will be the end of that.'"

They won the whole thing at a ceremony that included actor Toby Stephens reading from "Time Shelter."

"The invitation said to 'dress smart,'" said Rodel, who nodded to the art of translation by pairing a cocktail dress with a Bulgarian folk-art necklace. "It all started at 6 but they didn't announce the award until 10, so we were all just dying."

Rodel is working on several projects, including a translation of a Bulgarian novel to be published in January. Meanwhile, she and daughter Kerana will visit Eagan in July for a family reunion and lots of time in Minnesota parks.

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The First 10 Words of the African American English Dictionary Are In - Yahoo! Voices - Dictionary

In a recent online presentation, editors and researchers working on a first-of-its-kind dictionary of African American English gave a status update on the project. As academics explained their various methodologies, slides displayed behind them showed words that are more often associated with Twitter than Oxford: “Bussin,” virtual attendees were told, means impressive or tasty, while a “boo” is a lover.

Those were two of the first 100 words that the Oxford University Press said it had prepared to include in the Oxford Dictionary of African American English, the hopeful result of the three-year research project announced last spring.

The researchers say they aim to publish a first batch of 1,000 definitions — some words and phrases will have more than one — by March 2025. But the more important goal of the project, which will be edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr., a scholar of African American history at Harvard University, is to underscore the significance of African American English and to create a resource for future research into Black speech, history and culture. Among his other bona fides, Gates is something of a dictionary nerd.

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“When I was in the third grade, we studied the dictionary,” he said in a recent interview. “We had a unit on how to use the Webster’s dictionary, and even then — third grade, that means I was 8 years old — I thought the dictionary was magical.”

Gates now collects and cherishes rare and historical dictionaries, including one he bought in the early days of the pandemic, when the future did not seem as sturdy as it once was.

“I was sitting here in this kitchen, sheltering in, doing a Zoom,” he recalled. “I said: ‘You know what? We could die at any time. I’m going to buy a first edition of the Samuel Johnson dictionary.’”

To support their etymological claims, researchers and editors from Oxford Languages and the Harvard University Hutchins Center for African & African American Research have drawn on lyrics from jazz, hip-hop, blues and R&B as well as letters, diaries, newspaper and magazine articles, Black Twitter, slave narratives and abolitionist writings. Individual entries will be explained using quotations pulled from Black literature, including examples from Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison and Martin Luther King Jr.

One of the main challenges for the researchers is finding Black sources to confirm the use of the words.

“The further back in history, the less we can find Black people having agency over how we’re written about,” said Bianca Jenkins, a lexicographer working on the project. “Due to enslavement, Black people were prevented by law from being educated, from being taught to read. Black people had to really take it upon ourselves and educate ourselves.”

But it is not simply about the words that appear in letters, books, poems and lyrics. It is also about the words that morphed into other pronunciations and evolved to have a veiled meaning, for the safety of Black people.

Black people take language and “wrap it around themselves,” Gates said. “They turn words inside out.”

“We are endlessly inventive with language, and we had to be,” he continued. “We had to develop what literary scholars call double-voiced discourse. We had to learn to speak the master’s language, then you had to learn to speak under the masters so that you could have a coded way of speaking English that would allow you to voice your feelings without being killed, whipped or — worst-case scenario — without being lynched.”

The dictionary will exist as a living record well after March 2025 has come and gone: According to Gates, the public will continue to be able to suggest entries for consideration even after the first edition is published. Gates recalled asking his cousin, who fought in the Vietnam War, to add a few words. He submitted 200, Gates said, his wide smile revealing the apples of his cheeks.

In April, Oxford Languages and the Hutchins Center shared 10 entries with The New York Times. Below are selected definitions, variant forms and etymologies.

bussin (adjective and participle): 1. Especially describing food: tasty, delicious. Also more generally: impressive, excellent. 2. Describing a party, event, etc.: busy, crowded, lively. (Variant forms: bussing, bussin’.)

grill (noun): A removable or permanent dental overlay, typically made of silver, gold or another metal and often inset with gemstones, which is worn as jewelry.

Promised Land (n.): A place perceived to be where enslaved people and, later, African Americans more generally, can find refuge and live in freedom. (Etymology: A reference to the biblical story of Jewish people seeking freedom from Egyptian bondage.)

chitterlings (n. plural): A dish made from pig intestines that are typically boiled, fried or stuffed with other ingredients. Occasionally also pig intestines as an ingredient. (Variant forms: chitlins, chittlins, chitlings, chitterlins.)

kitchen (n.): The hair at the nape of the neck, which is typically shorter, kinkier and considered more difficult to style.

cakewalk (n.): 1. A contest in which Black people would perform a stylized walk in pairs, typically judged by a plantation owner. The winner would receive some type of cake. 2. Something that is considered easily done, as in This job is a cakewalk.

old school (adj.): Characteristic of early hip-hop or rap music that emerged in New York City between the late 1970s to the mid 1980s, which often includes the use of couplets, funk and disco samples, and playful lyrics. Also used to describe the music and artists of that style and time period. (Variant form: old skool.)

pat (verb): 1. transitive. To tap (the foot) in rhythm with music, sometimes as an indication of participation in religious worship. 2. intransitive. Usually of a person’s foot: to tap in rhythm with music, sometimes to demonstrate participation in religious worship.

Aunt Hagar’s children (n.): A reference to Black people collectively. (Etymology: Probably a reference to Hagar in the Bible, who, with her son, Ishmael, was cast out by Sarah and Abraham [Ishmael’s father], and became, among some Black communities, the symbolic mother of all Africans and African Americans and of Black womanhood.)

ring shout (n.): A spiritual ritual involving a dance where participants follow one another in a ring shape, shuffling their feet and clapping their hands to accompany chanting and singing. The dancing and chanting gradually intensify and often conclude with participants exhibiting a state of spiritual ecstasy.

In addition to appearing in the Oxford Dictionary of African American English, the entries will also be added to the wider word bank of the Oxford English Dictionary, Gates said.

“That is the best of both worlds, because we want to show how Black English is part of the larger of Englishes, as they say, spoken around the world,” he said.

More than just a collection of words, Gates said, the new dictionary will serve as a record of the ways Black people have molded the English language to protect themselves and also keep a morsel of autonomy in a world that would have them have none.

“Everybody has an urgent need for self-expression,” he said, adding, “You need to be able to communicate what you feel and what you think to other people in your speech community.

“That is why we refashioned the English language.”

c.2023 The New York Times Company

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Google is killing Chrome Translate in old versions of the browser - Android Police - Translation

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Google is killing Chrome Translate in old versions of the browser  Android Police

NYC school uses crossing guard, food workers, 5-year-olds to translate for migrant kids - New York Post - Translation

A Queens school became so overwhelmed with migrant kids last week that it grabbed a Spanish-speaking crossing guard off the street, cafeteria workers from the food line — and even 5-year-old students — to help translate in classrooms, staffers and parents told The Post on Tuesday.

Administrators at PS 31 in Bayside were given mere hours to prepare for the nearly four dozen, newly arrived migrant children who came to the school over two days to be enrolled, the sources said.

The city reportedly notified the principal about the new students’ arrival that Wednesday afternoon. The next morning, migrant families staying at the nearby Anchor Inn were lined up outside the school to begin registering their children.

Four tables had to be set up in the school lobby for the parents and kids — most of whom speak next to no English — to be processed.

The influx was too much for the school, which has only two “English as a New Language’’ teachers on staff.

Anybody who could speak Spanish within the school community was called in to translate for the new students in classrooms, with lessons having to be stopped short for the task.

PS 31 in Bayside, Queens. The school received up to 45 migrant children as students between Thursday and Friday.

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Translators have included a bilingual school crossing guard, school food workers — and even kindergartners, teachers and parents said.

“These kids would be eating their lunches, and they’d be called away to do translation and they also have to do their work in the classroom while helping with translation,’’ a mom said.

Parents told The Post they are worried about how the stop-and-go in the classroom might affect their children’s learning experience, while adding they are angry over the alleged lack of warning that city officials gave the school to prepare.

Children with school bags on a sidewalk in Queens. Parents at PS 31 have expressed concern that their students won’t receive the education they need with teachers being forced to stop and start their lessons to translate for migrant kids.

James Messerschmidt for NY Post

The Anchor Inn began housing migrant families earlier this month, according to city Councilwoman Vickie Paladino. School employees said most of the new students have been living at the inn and were commuting by foot to and from the school each day.

Paladino, who represents Bayside, said the migrant families had nothing when they arrived at the hotel and that PS 31 organized a drive to gather clothing, food and toiletries for them.

“It’s depressing. Things need to change,” she told The Post.

Staff said the school administration is doing its best, with everybody trying to meet the challenge that was dropped on them.

PS 31 was forced to use a crossing guard, and cafeteria staff who were bilingual to translate for migrant students.

Shutterstock

State Sen. John Liu, whose district includes PS 31, insisted that “the situation is not desperate,” adding the school is “adequately dealing with the situation.”

But Queens Borough President Donovan Richards said the situation reveals shortcomings in the school system that the city Department of Education needs to address.

The migrant crisis is doing to the education system what the COVID-19 pandemic did to the healthcare system, he said.

Parents told The Post they are worried about how the stop-and-go in the classroom might affect their children’s learning experience.

REUTERS

“There’s clearly a shortage of bilingual teachers citywide. I’ve heard directly from principals,” he told The Post. “There’s a lack of infrastructure. The migrant crisis has exposed the lack of infrastructure. This issue is not going away. We have to be creative.

“The schools are doing everything in their power to help these kids. But there are not enough resources. This is something the DOE should have been looking at proactively.”

A DOE rep said in a statement, “As we have been doing since Day One, our staff will continue to be on the ground, helping families enroll their children in schools that are in close proximity to where they are staying, and that offer the language resources they need. Programming for English Language Learners will be expanded as needed, and schools will continue to be supported by social workers who are trained in trauma-informed practices.

“We will also continue to provide transportation for K-6 students in temporary housing and will work closely with district and school leaders to add routes as needed.”

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The First 10 Words of the African American English Dictionary Are In - The New York Times - Dictionary

An exclusive look at a dictionary consisting entirely of words created or reinvented by Black people. (Don’t worry: All three variants of “bussin” are included.)

In a recent online presentation, editors and researchers working on a first-of-its-kind dictionary of African American English gave a status update on the project. As academics explained their various methodologies, slides displayed behind them showed words that are more often associated with Twitter than Oxford: “Bussin,” virtual attendees were told, means impressive or tasty, while a “boo” is a lover.

Those were two of the first 100 words that the Oxford University Press said it had prepared to include in the Oxford Dictionary of African American English, the hopeful result of the three-year research project announced last spring.

The researchers say they aim to publish a first batch of 1,000 definitions — some words and phrases will have more than one — by March 2025. But the more important goal of the project, which will be edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr., a scholar of African American history at Harvard University, is to underscore the significance of African American English and to create a resource for future research into Black speech, history and culture. Among his other bona fides, Professor Gates is something of a dictionary nerd.

“When I was in the third grade, we studied the dictionary,” he said in a recent interview. “We had a unit on how to use the Webster’s dictionary, and even then — third grade, that means I was 8 years old — I thought the dictionary was magical.”

Professor Gates now collects and cherishes rare and historical dictionaries, including one he bought in the early days of the pandemic, when the future did not seem as sturdy as it once was.

“I was sitting here in this kitchen, sheltering in, doing a Zoom,” he recalled. “I said: ‘You know what? We could die at any time. I’m going to buy a first edition of the Samuel Johnson dictionary.’”

To support their etymological claims, researchers and editors from Oxford Languages and the Harvard University Hutchins Center for African & African American Research have drawn on lyrics from jazz, hip-hop, blues and R&B as well as letters, diaries, newspaper and magazine articles, Black Twitter, slave narratives and abolitionist writings. Individual entries will be explained using quotations pulled from Black literature, including examples from Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison and Martin Luther King Jr.

One of the main challenges for the researchers is finding Black sources to confirm the use of the words.

“The further back in history, the less we can find Black people having agency over how we’re written about,” said Bianca Jenkins, a lexicographer working on the project. “Due to enslavement, Black people were prevented by law from being educated, from being taught to read. Black people had to really take it upon ourselves and educate ourselves.”

But it is not simply about the words that appear in letters, books, poems and lyrics. It is also about the words that morphed into other pronunciations and evolved to have a veiled meaning, for the safety of Black people.

Black people take language and “wrap it around themselves,” Professor Gates said in an interview. “They turn words inside out.”

“We are endlessly inventive with language, and we had to be,” he continued. “We had to develop what literary scholars call double-voiced discourse. We had to learn to speak the master’s language, then you had to learn to speak under the masters so that you could have a coded way of speaking English that would allow you to voice your feelings without being killed, whipped or — worst-case scenario — without being lynched.”

The dictionary will exist as a living record well after March 2025 has come and gone: According to Professor Gates, the public will continue to be able to suggest entries for consideration even after the first edition is published. Professor Gates recalled asking his cousin, who fought in the Vietnam War, to add a few words. He submitted 200, Professor Gates said, his wide smile revealing the apples of his cheeks.

In April, Oxford Languages and the Hutchins Center shared 10 entries with The New York Times. Below are selected definitions, variant forms and etymologies.

• bussin (adjective and participle): 1. Especially describing food: tasty, delicious. Also more generally: impressive, excellent. 2. Describing a party, event, etc.: busy, crowded, lively. (Variant forms: bussing, bussin’.)

• grill (noun): A removable or permanent dental overlay, typically made of silver, gold or another metal and often inset with gemstones, which is worn as jewelry.

• Promised Land (n.): A place perceived to be where enslaved people and, later, African Americans more generally, can find refuge and live in freedom. (Etymology: A reference to the biblical story of Jewish people seeking freedom from Egyptian bondage.)

• chitterlings (n. plural): A dish made from pig intestines that are typically boiled, fried or stuffed with other ingredients. Occasionally also pig intestines as an ingredient. (Variant forms: chitlins, chittlins, chitlings, chitterlins.)

• kitchen (n.): The hair at the nape of the neck, which is typically shorter, kinkier and considered more difficult to style.

• cakewalk (n.): 1. A contest in which Black people would perform a stylized walk in pairs, typically judged by a plantation owner. The winner would receive some type of cake. 2. Something that is considered easily done, as in This job is a cakewalk.

• old school (adj.): Characteristic of early hip-hop or rap music that emerged in New York City between the late 1970s to the mid 1980s, which often includes the use of couplets, funk and disco samples, and playful lyrics. Also used to describe the music and artists of that style and time period. (Variant form: old skool.)

• pat (verb): 1. transitive. To tap (the foot) in rhythm with music, sometimes as an indication of participation in religious worship. 2. intransitive. Usually of a person’s foot: to tap in rhythm with music, sometimes to demonstrate participation in religious worship.

• Aunt Hagar’s children (n.): A reference to Black people collectively. (Etymology: Probably a reference to Hagar in the Bible, who, with her son, Ishmael, was cast out by Sarah and Abraham [Ishmael’s father], and became, among some Black communities, the symbolic mother of all Africans and African Americans and of Black womanhood.)

• ring shout (n.): A spiritual ritual involving a dance where participants follow one another in a ring shape, shuffling their feet and clapping their hands to accompany chanting and singing. The dancing and chanting gradually intensify and often conclude with participants exhibiting a state of spiritual ecstasy.

In addition to appearing in a physical edition of the Oxford Dictionary of African American English, the entries will also be added to the wider word bank of the Oxford English Dictionary, Professor Gates said.

“That is the best of both worlds, because we want to show how Black English is part of the larger of Englishes, as they say, spoken around the world,” he said.

More than just a collection of words, Professor Gates said, the new dictionary will serve as a record of the ways Black people have molded the English language to protect themselves and also keep a morsel of autonomy in a world that would have them have none.

“Everybody has an urgent need for self-expression,” he said, adding, “You need to be able to communicate what you feel and what you think to other people in your speech community.

“That is why we refashioned the English language.”

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