First things first: we want to thank you for all your feedback on the packaging for the Cagliostro DVD! We'll be announcing more about the final product soon. Also, the release date for Lupin the Third: The Castle of Cagliostro on DVD is now set for December 23rd of 2014, 8 days after the 35th anniversary of the movie's Japanese theatrical debut! It's up for preorder on DiscotekMedia.com and RightStuf.com.
Tonight, we're going to talk a little about subtitles! You'll notice the first image above looks pretty fuzzy. This is actually a screen capture from a VHS conversion of the very first officially English-translated version of The Castle of Cagliostro, or should I say Cagliostro Castle? This script was printed in either late 1979 or early 1980 and brought to the United States during 1980 for screening. According to anime historian Fred Patten (who was there for all this), TMS' idea was to authorize screenings for the film and gauge interest in a North American anime market. Reportedly, the turnout in 1980 was poor, but just like in Japan, the film grew more famous as the years went on.
This translation was a rather quirky one... dialogue was extremely simplified, even omitting translation for some lines, such as character names. On the big screen, it was almost as hard to read as the VHS still you see above. The subtitles flickered constantly and didn't seem to have a good border. They were often left-aligned, no longer a common subtitling practice. And the characters were renamed: Jigen to "Dan Dunn," Fujiko to "Rosarie", Goemon to simply "Samurai", and Chief Inspector Zenigata became "Detective Ed Cott." (Note: The name changes weren't totally new. Similar ones were used for the English dub of the previous Lupin movie, The Mystery of Mamo.)
As time wore on, people picked up newer releases (Streamline's dub in 1992, Manga Video's dub in 2000 and 2006) and disposed of the memory of this old version of the film. So, imagine our surprise when with the first wave of materials from TMS came the entire English script for this 1980 subtitle track!
We were absolutely tickled that we had access to something so rare and obscure! Of course, we combed over it. We had managed to secure a VHS reference copy of the old theatrical print thanks to the help of Mr. Carl Horn, and set about recreating the original subtitles for the DVD, as you can see at the top!
It's not 1:1, sadly. The left-alignment isn't present and the font was hard to simulate (not that we wanted it to be difficult to read). However, the script is a match with the original print, and both translation errors and transcription goofs have been left intact...
Wait, SHUN Miyazaki? I thought this was a Hayao— oh wait, that's right, nobody really knew him yet in 1980.
I'd be up for a rousing game of lart, how about you? This is a special example: the actual script spells it correctly as "last," but the theatrical print said "lart." We wanted to retain the viewing experience of watching the 1980 subs as much as possible (without making it difficult to read, of course), so we retained the error.
Just one more oddity with these subs before I sign out. The Streamline Pictures dub was based on Fred Patten's and Robin Leyden's fleshing-out of these subtitles written during Fred's time on Carl Macek's payroll. As such, there are more than a few lines that strongly resemble the Streamline dub's take on them. Here's one that comes readily to mind:
A line with pretty vague meaning, not unusual for this script, actually. It becomes this line in the Streamline Pictures dub:
Perhaps by no small coincidence a closer translation to the original line's meaning (basically, they really isolated her). This screencap actually comes from yet another subtitle track on the disc: a transcription of the Streamline dub's dialogue. And to prove it, here's one more sample:
That's it for this time, folks. We'll talk about the proper subtitles for the film and some of the other special features as we go along!
Okay, okay, one more thing: the 1980 script came with English subtitles for the original theatrical trailer. And now those are optional subtitles for the trailer on the DVD!
