New Subtitles

Linda Hoaglund describes her work as "serving as a cultural bridge between Japan and the English-speaking world."

"My real goal is to try to persuade Americans that Japanese are just as complex and intelligent and artistically creative as Westerners," she said. "Because you can only be as intelligent as your translator."

Ms. Hoaglund, the daughter of a Lutheran missionary, grew up in a small Japanese village. She comes by her Japanese as naturally as any outsider could and has spent much of her adult life deepening her knowledge of a language that is often described as the world's most difficult. Most recently she has applied her knowledge to the creation of new subtitles for the print of Akira Kurosawa's 1954 adventure film, "The Seven Samurai," which opens today at Film Forum in the South Village.

When the previous subtitles were written, Ms. Hoaglund explained over an iced coffee in a Manhattan cafe, "Japan and the U.S. were in a different relationship, Japan having just lost a war. In general, the Japanese gentlemen who translated them, under contract to the studios, had perhaps lived abroad for a year, probably spoke British English, and they wanted to present a proper Japan. You can immediately tell that they don't have a native grasp of the language. And I don't believe that you can subtitle unless you are a native speaker of the language you are subtitling into."

As an example of her work, Ms. Hoaglund cited her rendering of the expository title that opens "The Seven Samurai": "During the civil wars, an endless cycle of conflict left the country overrun with bandits. Peaceable folk lived in terror of the thunder of approaching hooves."

"The beauty of that moment is that at the second the text disappears, what do you hear but the thunder of approaching hooves," Ms. Hoaglund said. "Kurosawa left nothing to chance. But the original subtitle said something like `The farmers lived in fear.' My personal reaction was that the thunder is suddenly more thunderous because it's a more visceral evocation. The sound means something."