Translating blind (London)

The rushes from the first shoot for The Heart of the Dragon were being edited.  They were for Episode 2, Caring, which was about caring on different levels.  

(The Heart of the Dragon : Channel 4's 12-part documentary series on China, aired in 1984) 

On the family level, the director wanted to show caring up and down the generations (between parents and children, and between grandparents and grandchildren), and along the same generation (between husband and wife).  (The grandmother in this episode is featured in blog entry The verb.)

On the state level, the director chose a mental hospital and a prison to find out what happens in the Chinese system when one “goes mad or bad”.

I was given the recordings on audio tapes to translate into English.  At one point, I got to an inspection tour of the prison dormitory.  One could hear the inspecting officer and the entourage going around — shuffle, shuffle, shuffle — with the inspector making comments here and there: “Very clean.”  Shuffle, shuffle: “Good ventilation.”  Shuffle, shuffle: “Well lit.”

Then, shuffle, shuffle: “No shit smell.”

Huh??  I played the tape again.  Yes, definitely those three sounds: “No shit smell.”  (没便味儿 méi biàn wèi’r)  

What was shit smell doing in the dormitory?  I played the tape again, and again, and again.  Each time it sounded the same.

Worried I might end up melting the audio tape playing it so many times, I went to the cutting rooms and asked for the rushes to be played.  Ah — they’d moved on to the lavatories.

(London, 1982)