Cinematic Translation: the case of War Films

Ano: 2001 | Volume: 1 | Número: 7

Autores: Thomas LaBorie Burns

Palavras-chave: Cinematic, Translation, War Films

Resumo Inglês:

In the case of the fictional narratives of war, one may speak of transforming or translating (“carrying over”) historically recorded events into fictional ones. Yet, even the very creation of historical fact, or the formation of the “event,” has already constituted an initial transformation. One begins with a confused mass of data and ends up, in successful cases, with a coherent historical narrative, for a succession of events is historical only when it constitutes actions whose motives can at least in principle be re-enacted (COLLINGWOOD, 1956: 115). The historian transforms what evidently happened (which is itself mediated by eye-witness accounts, documents, records, documentary films, etc.) into a sequential structure with intelligible meaning; that is, he/she translates events into facts and, even though the referent is of a different order from the novelist’s or filmmaker’s, what they all have in common, according to Hayden White’s theories of historical narrative, is a structured narrative, in which some combination or transformation is involved in its construction—nor is the personal experience of the historian absent. Nevertheless, the rhetoric of the historical account tends to make it appear as factual, distanced, objective, and “real,” as opposed to historico-fictional narratives, which admit or are at least aware of their status as rhetorical constructions.