Our heroes
You’re a hooker? Jesus, I forgot! I just thought I was doing GREAT with you.
– Arthur, 1981
Fearing the worst – knowing full well that it’s hardly an action-packed business – I began to wonder how popular translators are as film characters, realizing that I could think of, oh, maybe four in all, including three cases where the fact that s/he is a translator is entirely superfluous to the plot (as professions in the movies often are, relying entirely on the audience’s preconceptions to set the mood).
Doctor: If the freighter crashes into Earth with you onboard, won’t that make it rather difficult for you to carry out your task? I mean, you would be very crumpled.
– Doctor Who, 1963
So I decided to see how we measure up, based on a wholly unscientific approach – with data culled from the imdb.
Policemen: 12,238 (policewomen: 311)
Doctors: 7,241
Dentists: 106
Witch doctors: 63
Gynaecologists: 36
Dermatologists: 5
Proctologists: 2
Waitresses: 2,739 (bored: 1; squeaky: 1; disgruntled: 1)
Hookers: 2,115 (And did you know that the word “hooker” is from old slang for pickpocket/thief? Well, now you do.)
Hooker-cops: 2
Lawyers: 1,958
Gangsters, thieves, mobsters, Mafiosi, crooks: 1,912
Actors: 1,453
Mechanics: 816
Nuns: 699 (male: 21; singing: 21; in latex: 1)
Virgins: Male: 15 (pragmatic: 2) Female: 107 (named Mary: 30; pragmatic: 0)
Vampires: 479
Strippers: male: 62; female: 448 (stripper hit women: 1)
Terrorists: 331 (Arab: 3; surfers: 1; maids: 1)
Arab Beauties: 4 (number played by Arab women: 0)
Studs: 125 (female: 1)
Sluts: 27 (male: 1)
Poets: Male: 252 (drunken: 7; grumpy: 1; disgruntled: 1) Female: 28 (poet-hookers: 1)
Politicians: Male: 168 Female: 8
Soda jerks: 60 (homeless jerks: 1; blow-dried jerks: 1)
Adolf Hitler: 147
Abraham Lincoln: 110
Billy the Kid: 59
Shoe salesmen: 21
Leonardo da Vinci: 16
Interpreters: 215
Translators: 136
Serial killers named Bob: 1
· · • · ·
Comment
- 136 translators? Wow!
Yet, somehow, I can only think of one…Gwynteh Paltrow’s character was a translator in A Perfect Murder with Michael Douglas.
— Sharif Jul 29, 3:05pm # - You have a relatively sexy job. (Foreigners, understandings and misunderstandings, borders crossed, countries discovered.) I’m not listed, unless you count the serial killer name Bob, and I prefer to be called Robert. Who would pay to see a movie about a… no, I can’t write it, not even in blog comments. I’d rather drive the truck that sucks shit from septic tanks. I’d almost do it without the truck.
— eeksypeeksy Jul 29, 4:29pm # - Tut tut! There’s more controversy to the etymology of “hooker” than just that. (Personal fave, though it whiffs apocryphal: that the name comes from Hooker’s division, the astounding large camp following that trailed after General Joseph Hooker’s forces in the American Civil War. (The red light district in DC was also known as Hooker’s Division for a while.—I think Gore Vidal is fond of espousing this theory.)
And only one poet hooker? I’m disappointed. The side’s being let down.
— --k. Jul 29, 5:18pm # - -Sluts: 27 (male: 1)
uh, i was in college. I needed the money.
— lincoln Jul 29, 6:19pm # - and Librarians? usually female and censorious…
— Brodnax Jul 30, 6:02am # - Librarians:
Male: 98 (dwarves: 1; pop singing: 1)
Female: 214 (named Miss Gottschalk: 1)
— Jul 30, 7:10am # - OK, I realize she’s an interpreter rather than a translator, but Francesca Vanini (Giorgia Moll) in Godard’s Le Mépris (Contempt) is onscreen a great deal and is constantly shown interpreting (at least once before the “original” sentence is said, a neat trick); I can’t think of a movie in which the process of translation is so central a feature.
— language hat Jul 30, 12:59pm # - No Tech Writers? (sob)
— Beerzie Boy Jul 30, 1:19pm # - Tech writers: 7 (sobbing:1; sobbing while sucking shit from septic tanks: 2; waitress-hooker-dwarf-serial killers:3)
— Jul 30, 2:16pm # - The lead character, Nina, in Anthony Minghella’s first film, “Truly Madly Deeply” [http://us.imdb.com/Title0103129], was a translator (albeit one very disenchanted with the pay & conditions). There’s a role model for you.
— ink polaroid Aug 1, 4:01pm # - And since we’re talking about that not-great movie, let me put in a plug for the best thing in it, the amazing Juliet Stevenson, who plays Nina and deserves to be a star at least on the level of, say, Kathy Bates. But I guess she prefers the stage.
— language hat Aug 2, 9:44pm # - Ewan MacGregor’s character in Peter Greenaway’s The Pillow Book was a translator named Jerome (Greenaway isn’t known for the subtlety of his references).
— John Hudson Aug 3, 6:55pm # - What about Shiftless Dilettantes?
— Amber Aug 11, 12:27am # - A likely scenario:
US President: Buck, I’m going to talk to the Soviet Premier. You will translate what he says to me. He’ll have his own translator telling him what I say, but I want something more from you.
Interpreter: Whatever I can do.
President: I think the Premier will be saying what he means. He usually does, but sometimes there’s more in a man’s voice than in his words. There are words in one language that don’t carry the same weight in another, do you follow me?
Interpreter: I think so, sir.
– From Fail-Safe, directed by Sidney Lumet (1964)
— gail Aug 11, 6:41am # - Fail-Safe! Brilliant film and a rather important role for the translator don’t you think?...did that film come before or after Dr. Strangelove? I’m too lazy to check at the moment…but I always pondered on the similarities, (of course Dr. Strangelove had more laughs and more Peter Sellers)
Apart from all that…nurses ~ where are nurses in this list?
:-)>
— punkclown Aug 19, 10:58pm # - How about the unwilling interpreter/cartographer in Close Encounters of the Third Kind?
“Before I got paid to speak French, I used to read maps.”
— srah Aug 20, 6:51pm #
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