AirSpace Season 4, Ep. 10: Nine Voices
Jun 24, 2021
We’re all movie buffs here at AirSpace *gestures to extensive movie episode back catalog.* And while we’re not exactly film critics, we know what we like—and we love when people see themselves represented in their favorite stories. And a long time ago (2013), and not so far away (New Mexico), a group embarked on a quest of their own: to translate Star Wars: A New Hope into Navajo. Their goal was to help preserve the language by introducing it to new generations and audiences beyond the reservation. In this episode, we’ll recount our decade+ hero’s journey from the call to action, to seeking a greenlight from Lucasfilm, to finding the translators and voice actors, creating whole new words for terms like “lightsaber” and “droid,” and finally the triumphant fanfare of a live audience seeing the famous opening crawl for the first time in their language. A herculean grassroots effort to create the first indigenous translation of a major motion picture has become a movement to interpret other indelible pieces of pop culture from Finding Nemo to Baby Shark. Hear how it all started today on AirSpace.
Related TopicsNative American or Indigenous peoplesSociety and CultureScience fiction
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