Why Translating Star Wars into Navajo Was So Culturally Important

Transcript

AirSpace Season 4, Ep. 10 Nine Voices

Matt: A little bit of Shakespeare there.

Nick: Lucas steals from the best and I try to emulate that.

All laugh

Theme music up and under

Emily: Welcome to Airspace from the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. I'm Emily.

Matt: I'm Matt.

Nick: And I am Nick.

Matt: We've done movie episodes on AirSpace before, but today we're not just talking about a movie we all know, we're talking about a particular version of a movie, the Navajo translation of Star Wars: A New Hope.

Emily: It was the first major motion picture translated into an Indigenous language. The translation was done several years ago, but the translated version is having a resurgence since it was added to Disney+ earlier this year.

Nick: We talked to two of the people who helped make this project happen about what translating the Force was like and how it supports Indigenous language preservation. That's ahead on AirSpace.

Theme music up and out

Emily: Matt and Nick when we were brainstorming episodes for this season of AirSpace I don't remember which one of you brought this story up, but one of you pitched this story and we were all really excited about learning more about it.

Nick: That was Matt.

Matt: Yeah, that was me. I had just seen that it was coming up on Disney+ there was a news story, I can't remember where on the internet about it coming to Disney+ that linked back to earlier articles from NPR back when the translation was first completed of Star Wars. And I thought this sounds like a great story for us. It's really an interesting thing. It connects to one of the movies that I think almost everyone who works at the Air and Space Museum would list as one of their favorites, unless they're one of those Star Trek nerds, right? 

(Emily laughs) 

And connects to a very culturally important and relevant topic of language preservation.

Emily: Yeah. I think Matt you make a really good point. I think it was something that we all really latched on to because of how we all feel about Star Wars. And even if you didn't grow up with the original trilogy, you've certainly, at least we're just going to go ahead and broadly assume, that our audience got sucked in by the resurgence of interest in Star Wars since Disney got involved with the franchise. But this was something that I hadn't heard of and since I don’t have Disney+ I didn't hear about it either. And so I really liked the idea that while we're not going to review our perspective on Star Wars: A New Hope because somehow I don't feel like we're even qualified to talk about how awesome it is as a film. This is a whole different kind of movie episode.

Nick: So now let's all go back a long, long time ago, to the 1990s, and far, far away from Washington D.C. in Arizona, where we set our scene.

Matt: That's right. We talked to Manny Wheeler, who is today the director of the Navajo Nation Museum. And he had a conversation with his wife, Jennifer, who is a Navajo translator and a teacher back in the late 1990s that got this project going.

Manny Wheeler: I wonder how would it be to put in movie, a popular movie and have that dubbed in Navajo and so we talked about it, that's when the idea for me it came to me, it's like wow how would it be to put Star Wars in Navajo. And then we laughed about it. And, at that time, the Internet was relatively new and I searched for the script for Star Wars, and I found it, and I ordered it, and it came a couple of weeks later and I showed my wife. I'm like, "Hey, this Star Wars script came in." And I asked her, I said, you know, you think you could translate, let's try, let's just test it out, translate these first five pages. I wasn't expecting the translated version back till the next day or so. But she came back in less than half an hour and she's like, "Here, I'm done." And I'm like, "Wow." And that's when I knew it was like, "Man, this is possible."

Nick: So Manny is got this crackerjack idea to translate Star Wars. I think that one sentence idea has a whole lot going for it, but now... what? That's a fairly well-known and visible intellectual property. And you're going to do something worthwhile, but quite substantial to this film, where do you begin?

Matt: Right. So Manny told us that for nearly a decade, he tried to contact someone at Lucasfilm to find out exactly how you would start to go about making a translation of the film. How would you get permission and essentially get the right to release a new version of the movie.

Manny Wheeler: I was calling the main number, talking to people and so finally it made it to the right person. I remember, man, I got that email sitting in my inbox and it was from Lucasfilm. And he said, "Hi, I received your email. This is something we are interested in. We would like to set up a meeting to discuss this further."

Nick: And that meeting went well because they got the approval and Lucasfilm was on board.

Emily: But as all of us know, it doesn't just take permission, right? The next big hurdle is to get funding because you have to pay people to do the translations. Translations, I mean, translating stuff isn't just about putting stuff into Google translator. It's really a scholarly field. It's very academic.

There's a lot that goes into it. And when you're talking about translating this world that was built in this sort of Star Wars universe, this isn't just a simple one and done thing. And so that takes funding to hire not only the translators, but also the actors to do the voiceovers. So it took another two years before this project was officially up and running, but once it was up and running it happened really fast. So they put the call out for Navajo translators for a movie in early 2013.

Matt: That's right. When they first put the ad out for this translation effort, they actually didn't even tell the people who were applying, what film it was that they were applying to translate. Manny was a little bit worried that if he revealed that it was Star Wars too early, he might get too many Star Wars fans and too few serious translators.

Nick: And hearing Manny tell that part of the story that's when I get the kind of the vibe that he himself is a true fan. It’s not, it's not that he didn't want other fans working on it, but he needed to ensure that it was a serious minded effort.

Manny Wheeler:

So when we were advertising for translators, I didn't want to put like we're needing translators for Star Wars, because we would just get a zillion people wanting to figure out how they could do this. And so we just said it was a translation for a motion picture. So we've got, not a lot, not as many as I thought we would, but we got a good amount. And from that we chose five translators and I just totally remember, it was so cool. So they all come in, they're sitting in a big room. We put the tables in a circle and then I just welcomed them and thanked them for their participation. And I'm like, "Okay and we would like to tell you what movie we're doing." And we brought them all in. The papers were in a three ring binder and then when they opened the book, that's when it said Star Wars: Episode IV. So they did not know what movie they were translating, even though that we had chosen them until they opened it, opened up that book and saw Star Wars there. So it was just such a cool feeling.

Nick: That's something I think that not a lot of people get to do is spring Star Wars on a group unexpectedly and say you're going to get to be a part of this franchise now.

Manny Wheeler: And to also add the movie was translated by five translators in 36 hours.

Emily: It took a long weekend in April of 2013. And they started this whole process by watching the movie a few times before they got to the translation work. But this is an incredibly fast turnaround.

Matt: So we got the chance to talk to Joe Kee, who worked on the translation, but who also teaches Navajo at the University of New Mexico, Gallup. Joe told us about the process of translation and about the excitement of being associated with this project.

Joe Kee: Oh my goodness. Let's just say that I don't think I've ever been presented with a translation project like this at that moment.

Emily: The translators worked really hard to figure out how each character would speak in Navajo, their phrasing and word choices.

Joe Kee: We wanted to make sure that we gave each character an identity, which is very important in Navajo culture, to say that we have given Princess Leia an identity and that we recognize her as this person and Darth Vader has his own identity. So to be able to recognize that and that's how a lot of our translations came to be, to be able to voice what Darth Vader might sound or what he would say as opposed to what another character would say. So just taking an observation analyzing each character that was important.

Nick: And that seems like really straightforward, right? You just translate the dialogue from one character into this, what I understand is a very complex language. So that's no easy feat, but there are deeper cultural meanings and frameworks on the language side that have to be reconciled with the characters themselves. So there are some things if Darth Vader says one line of dialogue, that would be translated differently than if Princess Leia says it.

Matt: That's right. And there are also multiple dialects of Navajo that are spoken throughout the Navajo Nation. So coming to agreements about how the phraseology would work, what slang words they would use or what they wouldn't use, and what language to avoid was a big topic of discussion for them as the translators were working out this text.

Emily: Along with that, the translators had to consider the cultural context and the implications of the words that they were using as they were trying to go through the Star Wars script.

Joe Kee: As translators from the get go, we tackle issues such as culturally sensitive words that we have to be very careful about translating. And to also confer with one another about Navajo teachings regarding certain words and which words might be culturally relevant to use in a public setting and trying to stay away from very sensitive issues surrounding very sacred teachings or those of a ceremonial context that should only be delivered within a traditional home setting. So all sorts of dialogue took place during that weekend.

Nick: And in addition to considering the characterizations, obviously there's the challenge of creating words for things that didn't exist in our universe here on Earth where the Navajo language developed.

Joe Kee: For example, lightsaber, a lot of people wanted to know how did you come up with the Navajo translation of that word? And we just simply took a metal object and we gave it some light and we called it Bééshdíín. And another character from the movie that we see rolling around is a droid. And we translated a droid as Béésh, which means metal or a hard object and then Hxináanii meaning one that is alive. So the metal object that is alive.

Star Wars: A New Hope movie clip; C3PO chastises R2D2 in the desert, in Navajo

Emily: Once the script was finalized, they needed to cast Navajo voice actors to do the voiceovers for the movie. Hundreds of hopeful actors turned up including many women hoping for the only major female part in the entire movie, Princess Leia of course. So many women wanted to try out for this single part that the voice of C-3PO is also done by a woman.

Star Wars: A New Hope Movie Clip; C3PO tells R2D2 that Luke is his Master now, in Navajo

Matt: A few months later at a 4th of July celebration in 2013 and that's the same year that they translated and recorded the audio for the movie, they had a public premiere and Manny brought together the translators and the voice actors and all the people who worked on the project for introductions and autograph signing. It was a big, exciting party with the premiere of the film at its center.

Manny Wheeler: And then it came time for the show and so the lights in the rodeo arena go down and man it got really quiet. Prior to the Star Wars logo coming up. It's that “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,” but that comes on the screen first and it's translated in Navajo. And that's when the crowd just went berserk then the logo pops up and it was just like wow.

Joe Kee:

And to see the words “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” When we translate that into Navajo, we translated as Ałk’idą́ą́’ yádahodiiz’ą́ą́dą́ą́’, yá’áhoníkáándi That has a very different, a very special feeling that it brings to you a native speaker to the Navajo people.

Manny Wheeler: It was just like, the first half of the movie was just, people were trying to watch a movie, but the just kept cheering. They just kept cheering for all the different characters and every time they would say something, the crowd would just cheer and cheer and cheer. It was a really special moment and everybody was really into it. So in that sense, that's how the first initial, the reaction and the reception of it by Navajo people and you know what? Even the world, it really took off like wildfire on the Internet and it made every continent’s of the world, it made it into some news source of one form or another.

Nick: A lot of people have had a taste of the joy of a Star Wars premier. I've had probably three meaningful Star Wars premiere experiences in my life. So I know what it's like to hear the crowd erupt as soon as the opening crawl begins, but it's in some ways a universal fan experience, if not Star Wars, then there's usually something else that has that energy and buzz for you and you get to be there in the moment, but this was so much deeper.

Emily: So for as much as we are all fans of the Star Wars universe, Manny is too this big Star Wars fan and he says that working on the translation of this film was a really incredible experience for him. And really in a big way, it's kind of a fan's dream to create something that kind of becomes part of something that they already really love.

Matt: That's right. And there was a deeper motivation to this, which was Manny's desire to preserve the language and culture of the Navajo people.

Nick: And it's important to note also that having the Navajo language be a part of popular culture in this respect, wasn't just like, a ‘nice to have’. It's not just a cool thing to translate it into Navajo language because indigenous languages were themselves specifically under siege for more than a century by the government of the United States. For more than a hundred years, from 1860 through to the 1970s, native children were taken from their homes, their families, and their communities, and forced to attend boarding schools that were designed to Americanize them and remove all traces of their indigenous language and culture. It was specifically a protracted and planned act of cultural genocide against generations of native Americans from a multitude of different tribes and communities.

Manny Wheeler: You know, the boarding school era really broke the link in the chain for Navajo people. Children that went to boarding school were forbidden to speak their language and punished. That story is repeated throughout Indian Country, throughout Canada. And I think I'm a product of that because both of my parents are fluent speakers, and I grew up in a house where they spoke Navajo to each other, but then they spoke English to us as children. And I think that the prohibition of them speaking Navajo, that's where that started. And in their minds, they were thinking we want our children to speak English very well and that would ensure our success in American society.

And then even for me to dive in to speak Navajo, there's just this severe mental block that just comes down like a ton of bricks on me that, you know, it's hard for me to step beyond that. Even though I was raised in a house where Navajo was spoken frequently. So when people are talking Navajo, I have a comprehension, a very strong comprehension of what they're saying, but to speak it that's where the block comes.

Matt: So while this and translations of other popular movies does not erase the trauma of this earlier period at all, it's still a way for Indigenous people to hold onto a piece of their culture. And it helps to break down some of the barriers that exist that make that difficult.

Manny Wheeler: And that's the part where I say those inhibitions are taken away about language and about me feeling inadequate because I'm not fluent. All of those inhibitions are either taken away or lessened tremendously to where we can have that community experience and it's surrounds language.

Nick: And it can help spark interest in traditional languages in the next generation.

Manny Wheeler: You know, the other amazing part of that is that it is intergenerational. For a little kid all they're caring about is like, "Wow, that's Luke Skywalker." But in reality, what's really going on is, and they don't even know it, is there's Navajo being spoken. Even though you're not understanding the Navajo language, you're understanding that that's Luke Skywalker and understanding what he's doing. So there's something going on to connect that little Navajo kid, who's not fluent, to be a part of it. And so that, to me, it just opens the door to one day the vast majority of Navajo people will be fluent in Navajo again.

Matt: Joe says he also experienced barriers being broken by having such a popular film dubbed into the Navajo language.

Joe Kee: My daughter didn't quite understand what was being said in the Navajo language. My numerous nieces and nephews and friends that didn't quite understand what was just said in Navajo, but they could also see the English version up there. So that's where a lot of teachings started for us as translators.

Musical transition

Emily: So this version of Star Wars dubbed in Navajo had a resurgence because it came out on Disney+ earlier this year. So if you have Disney+, if you have that service, you can go actually watch it. And to find it it's listed under extras rather than being a language selection that you can make when you bring up the English version of Star Wars. So the film actually came out on DVD in 2013, which was the same year the project was translated and Manny says they sold out in his museum's gift shop almost immediately.

Nick: To talk a little bit of museum shop about what that means for a second, museum gift shops don't exactly evoke the same frenzied energy of like a Walmart on Black Friday in a lot of people's minds. But they sold 2,000 copies of the DVD at the museum gift shop. That's what sold out almost right away. We're talking about lines through the building to get in, to make your purchase. This is an element of this story, truly worthy of the Star Wars canon. You think of people standing in line to get their copy. And this was that.

Matt: So Star Wars is out there and you can watch it. And Manny has moved on to other projects that he's been working with Disney and other production companies to produce Navajo translations of other pieces of popular culture. They've already done for example, Finding Nemo and the song that everyone loves, "Baby Shark."

Emily: The most recent project that Manny and his team are working on is a Navajo language version of the Clint Eastwood western Fistful Of Dollars, which I've never heard of before and they're planning a release-

Matt: Is part of "The Man With No Name" trilogy.

Emily: Couldn't tell you anything about it [crosstalk] . It was supposed-

Matt: Is the first film.

Nick: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

Matt: You know, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly? Yeah.

Fistful of Dollars theme fades under

Nick: And if Fistful Of Dollars, the classic spaghetti western seems like the odd project out here. It was actually specifically requested by the older members of the Navajo community.

Emily: And that film was meant to be released in spring of 2020. They're working on a new pandemic friendly release for it sometime soon.

Fistful of Dollars theme fades into AirSpace theme music up and under

Airspace is the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. You can follow us on Twitter or Instagram @airspacepod. 

Airspace is produced by Katie Moyer and Jennifer Weingart, mixed by Tarek Fouda, distributed by PRX.

Theme music up and out

Nick: Sings Baby Shark  (incorrectly)

Emily: That is so not how that song goes, Nick.

Nick:

The Baby Shark song. Yeah, it is.

Matt: I would trust Nick on Baby Shark.

Nick: Right?

Emily: Sings Baby Shark  (mostly correctly)

Nick: Excuse me, what now?

Matt: Isn't that what he did?

Emily: No, it's not.

Nick: Yeah. That's what I did.

Emily: You know what?

Nick: I got to sing this five times a day. [crosstalk]

Emily: Somebody's got it on tape. She can put it in the post. It'll be great.

Baby Shark in Navajo up then out