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Reported Problem for Drive My Car
posted by NotSafeforFunSTAFFMOD on February 9, 2022 at 9:36 PM
Item: Drive My Car
Language: en-US
Type of Problem: Incorrect_content
Extra Details: The play's title is much more conventionally written in English as "Uncle Vanya"; including in the movie's English press notes at https://s3.amazonaws.com/criterion-production/janus_promo_packages/590-/DRIVE%20MY%20CAR%20__%20Press%20Notes%20Final%20(2)_original.pdf
The modified Hepburn romanization of 家福悠介 (the name of the main male character mentioned in the synopsis) is "Yūsuke Kafuku". Those press notes use "Yusuke Kafuku", and I'm not sure which TMDb prefers, as I don't think this is mentioned in the bible. However, I'm personally inclined against using the non-standard romanisations in press notes and subtitles for character names, on the reasoning that movies can have different English-language releases and subtitles in their history that use different translations and romanizations. (But I'm in favour of using the spelling their currently use officially for real people's names.)
Reply by Banana
on April 5, 2022 at 9:42 PM
Do you know which spellings are used in the film?
Reply by NotSafeforFun
on April 14, 2022 at 12:48 AM
I saw it subtitled at a cinema recently and from what I can remember of that and from checking it on MUBI now to confirm (though it's difficult to take stills), the subtitles use "Yusuke" and "Vanya".
Recent movies tend to have only one English subtitle translation, and following those saves having to specify which romanization system to use for each language. But older ones can have had several different translations, and even with a recent film they can occasionally differ between formats.
I remember, though I only have memories to go on for this, that when I saw Ponyo in a cinema the subtitles on the UK DCP used Sōsuke with a macron (which I remember because of how unusual it is to see official subtitles use fully correct Hepburn romanization like this) but the UK BD and now also Netflix use Sosuke without the macron, though the translation is otherwise the same.