Enter the three words "Story" on the movie platform and search casually, there will be more than a dozen pages of content, hundreds of movie catalogs. One wonders why so many movies are called "Story".
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Among these "Finding Stories" films with different styles, themes and plots, the audience was particularly impressed by a series of "Story" animations launched by the famous Pixar Animation Studios, such as the Toy Story series, Finding Nemo, Ratatouille, and WALL. E) and other animated films have become popular classics.
A careful comparison of the foreign language names and Chinese translated names of these "Finding Nemo" films will show that the original title of the film does not correspond exactly to the translated name. Taking Pixar's films as an example, if the literal translation strategy is adopted, the Chinese translation of Toy Story should be "Toy Story", Finding Nemo should be translated as "Looking for Nemo", and the Chinese corresponding to Ratatouille is "Provencal Stew" (referring to a delicacy made of canned tomato puree, carrots, celery, and onions).
So, when translating and producing these films, what kind of considerations did the producers and translators have to integrate these films, which are unrelated from the original names of foreign languages, into the "General Mobilization" family?
First, we need to figure out what the word "Total Mobilization" means.
"General mobilization" is a word with political connotations, which originally meant "the state to transfer all its armed forces from a state of peace to a state of war, and to mobilize all manpower and material resources for urgent measures needed for war" or "to mobilize all its forces for the completion of an important task". At the end of the 18th century, France carried out a thorough national mobilization in the war against the European intervention army, creating a precedent for the national general mobilization system.
In the Second World War, the major participating countries successively carried out a national general mobilization after the outbreak of the war, and launched an all-round confrontation in the political, military, economic, cultural, and scientific and technological fields, and the timing, extent, and effect of the general mobilization became an important factor affecting the course and outcome of the war. After World War II, the general mobilization system was established and developed in many countries, and was applied in some wars, and was also used to deal with some huge natural disasters and emergencies.
The practice of letting "General Mobilization" dilute political meaning and use it as a movie name first appeared in Taiwan. The term "general mobilization" also had a strong political connotation in Taiwan at first. In April 1948, in order to save the Kuomintang rule in a serious crisis, the Chiang Kai-shek government issued the "National General Mobilization Order", declaring that the whole country had entered a "period of mobilization and counter-insurgency", and on May 10, 1948, it promulgated and implemented the "Provisional Provisions for the Period of Mobilization and Suppression of Chaos". However, chiang kai-shek's regime lost the hearts and minds of the people in the war of liberation and eventually had to retreat to Taiwan. The political state of "mobilization to suppress insurgency" continued in Taiwan until the Interim Provisions for the Period of Mobilization and Suppression of Insurgency were abolished in 1991. It can be said that the word "mobilization" and the meaning behind it have left a deep mark on the hearts of that generation of Taiwanese. Therefore, it is reasonable to translate those movies with intense plots that involve multiple parties working together to achieve a certain goal as "so-and-so's general mobilization".
In fact, there are also films named "The Story" in the domestic films produced in Taiwan, such as "The Gambler Story" directed by Yang Jingchen and starring Noon Ma, Zheng Haonan, Oshima yugali and others released in Taiwan in 1991; in the films translated and produced in Taiwan, such examples abound, for example, "Christmas Story" released in 1985, "The Devil's Story" released in 1990, "Me flying story" released in 1991 and "Rock and Roll Story" released in 1994.
The real spark of the "Finding Nemo" series of films, making the word the "boutique film" endorsement, is Pixar's first computer-only three-dimensional animated feature film "Toy Story", which was released in 1995 and grossed $360 million worldwide, winning the Oscar Special Achievement Award, best original screenplay nomination, best original music nomination and Golden Globe Award nomination for best picture in the musical comedy category, and best original song nomination. The animation also laid the foundation for Pixar to become the overlord of animation, and The Story seems to have become a symbol of Pixar animation.
The explosion of "Toy Story" and a series of "Story" animation products produced by Pixar later, the film introducer in order to attract more audiences and increase box office revenue, in the translation of the film deliberately processed it as "so-and-so Story", hoping to use the influence of previous films to form a chain and driving effect.
On the other hand, domestic film producers also see the recognition accumulated by "The Story" and the huge market benefits brought by it, and will also consider naming it "So-and-so" when making movies, such as "Otaku Story" released in the mainland in 2011, unfortunately, the Douban score of this movie is only 3.6 points. It can be seen that although the name of the movie can achieve the effect of attracting the audience to a certain extent, in order to truly win the audience's love and reputation, it is necessary to use quality to speak.
Original title: What does "General Mobilization" mean?
Text/a spoonful of wind
Source/Beijing Evening News
Editor/He Mengyu