Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Films/Persian cinema task force

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I think that this article should be extended to "Persian cinema", covering the cinema of Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and other Persian-speaking communities, too. What do you think? Tajik 23:30, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

This wikiproject you mean? or just cinema of Iran? --K a s h Talk | email 23:31, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
I suggested a name-change for both ... Tajik 23:31, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Support. sounds good to me --K a s h Talk | email 23:33, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Good idea, Support Sasanjan 23:00, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Persian language Or Farsi Language

deat sir Today Nobody Speak Persian in iran i think the last one who spoke Persian was near 2000 yrs ago the language Changes . we call the language of Iranain FARSI the Afghanestan and tajikestan and some other countries speak Farsi Deviration

Probably the dumbest comment ever ... Tājik 21:06, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, I agree with Tajik, this's dumbest possible comment Sasanjan 23:00, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Suggestion regarding restructuring - please discuss

I noticed on the Community Portal that a new wikiproject council had been developed to help provide guidance and suggestions for the running of wikiprojects. Particularly among the first fruits of this labor is a guide which suggests that for certain WikiProjects, it may be more effective and beneficial to restructure as a task force within the central project (in this case, WikiProject Films). I think this may be germane to both the Iranian and Indian cinema projects, because the general goals between the projects are no different - merely their geographic scopes are differently limited. I'd like to also note that this was written by Kirill Lokshin, who is the Lead Coordinator of WikiProject Military history (one of Wikipedia's most successful WikiProjects). WikiProject Military history also is one of the most notable projects which features task forces, many of which focus on a particular time period or country within the large topic of military history.

The benefits of being a task force would include higher exposure as an explicit subunit of the central WikiProject Films page, as well as a high degree of autonomy to continue to use specific talk page banner tags, stub templates, and open tasks, and for the members of the task force to define the task force's priorities and structure. Furthermore, a highly productive task force would also likely be well-noted among the WikiProject Films community and thus be able to command considerable respect and weight in the setting of overall film project discussions and guidelines.

I'd like to also note that I'm not a member of the Films project, although I do follow its discussions; my main interest is in filmmaking, which is where I generally work (WikiProject Filmmaking) on Wikipedia. However, I would like to see all the film-related projects succeed, and it seems (from the success of Military history's work) that combining the two projects' editorial teams while maintaining each project's identity would only benefit both parties, and thus make everyone look good.

There is nothing more I'd like to see than a good discussion. Thank you, Girolamo Savonarola 21:42, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

PS - I've also brought this up in Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Indian cinema and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Films, largely so that no one feels that the discussion is isolated to one project's "turf", given the issues.

[edit] Project Directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council is currently in the process of developing a master directory of the existing WikiProjects to replace and update the existing Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. These WikiProjects are of vital importance in helping wikipedia achieve its goal of becoming truly encyclopedic. Please review the following pages:

  • User:Badbilltucker/Culture Directory,
  • User:Badbilltucker/Culture Directory 2,
  • User:Badbilltucker/Philosophy and religion Directory,
  • User:Badbilltucker/Sports Directory,
  • User:Badbilltucker/Geographical Directory,
  • User:Badbilltucker/Geographical Directory/United States, (note: This page will be retitled to more accurately reflect its contents)
  • User:Badbilltucker/History and society directory, and
  • User:Badbilltucker/Science directory

and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope to have the existing directory replaced by the updated and corrected version of the directory above by November 1. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 21:06, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Sorry if you tried to update it before, and the corrections were gone. I have now put the new draft in the old directory pages, so the links should work better. My apologies for any confusion this may have caused you. B2T2 23:50, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 16:04, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Gaav under attack

The article for the Iranian film Gaav is often the target of vandals. It may need administrative protection. At the very least, I encourage people to keep it on watch so that vandalism can be quickly reverted. Siyavash 20:34, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Awarded films without article

Hi, I would like to point your attention to Charshanbe soori and Talaye sorkh, both mentioned as awarded in the Chicago International Film Festival. It would be very enlightening to have articles on such films. I am sure I have come across more awarded Iranian/Persian films and will bring them to your attention whenever I find them again. Hoverfish Talk 15:43, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WP:Films Infobox Backlog

If you're interested in helping add infoboxes to film articles, you can visit here or adopt a letter here. We currently have about 900 articles (with some of these of these being Persian films) that don't have infoboxes and we have so far completed about 200 in the last few weeks. We would appreciate any assistance in eradicating the requests. There are instructions and an example on the template's page and if you need any help or have any questions ask one of the members who are currently working on the infoboxes or at the project's talk page. Thanks, and keep up the good work! --Nehrams2020 04:52, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Thank you to all who has assisted in the current backlog. I have currently posted a proposal about splitting the infoboxes requests for WP:Films, WP:Persian cinema, and WP:Indian cinema so that each project would so that each project could focus on the film in its realm. Please comment at WP:Films talk page about the idea. Thanks. --Nehrams2020 04:55, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] For the attention of the Persian Cinema Task Force

Dear All, some days ago I sent a letter to Farabi Cinema Foundation the contents of which might interest you (I have sent a copy of it also to Entracte Film Club in Tehran, organised by Leila Hatami and Ali Mosaffa). I believe that the problem that I raise in my letter is endemic and is therefore in need of serious attention. Here is the text of my above-mentioned letter:

Mr Amir Esfandyari
Farabi Cinema Foundation
16 December 2007
Dear Mr Esfandyari,
In today’s BBC Persian
http://www.bbc.co.uk/persian/arts/story/2007/09/070916_an-aa-iran-oscars.shtml
Mr Ali Azmoudeh asks, and partially answers, the question:
Che-ra cinema-ye Iran dar Oscar Kam’yab nist? (Why is the Iranian Cinema not successful at the Oscars?)
To the causes mentioned by Mr Azmoudeh for this, I should like to add the following:
Inferior English translations used as subtitles of Iranian films.
Notable examples in support of this statement are Leila by Dariush Mehrjoui and Salade Fasl by Fereydoun Jayrani, both irreparably suffering from utterly inferior English subtitles. As I have given some considerable attention to Leila (I am of the opinion that Ms Leila Hatami ranks amongst the greatest film artists of the entire film history; she has just the touch of the genius in representing a host of often conflicting human emotions in her various roles), below I enumerate some major shortcomings of the English subtitles of this film:
1) The English text is very immature, and necessarily heterogeneous: in one sentence the text is colloquial, in the next formal, in the next poetical, to be followed by a sentence which one expects to hear only from very young children. This signifies that the translation at issue cannot be but the work of someone whose mastery of the English language has been, at the time of translating, very inadequate for the task. I am inclined to think that the heterogeneity of the translation points to the possibility that the translator must have crucially relied on standard examples provided by relatively extensive dictionaries (e.g. that by the brothers Arianpour-Kashani); as the styles of these sentences differ (they are taken from different contexts), so do the styles of the translated sentences that one encounters in the subtitles of Leila.
2) Although often technically correct, the translated sentences largely do not conform with the prevailing English idiom. Someone whose native tongue is English, will often have to pause for some moments before comprehending the meaning of the unidiomatic sentence just read, a task for which one has little or no time in the heat of viewing a film. The adverse effect of this aspect can be best appreciated by considering the fact that any time taken by thinking about the meaning of a sentence will necessarily distract the viewer from concentrating on the film itself. One should bear in mind that members of film juries are human beings and consequently are likely to suffer from the adverse effects of distraction.
3) Many of the translated sentences amount to mistranslations and thus convey incorrect meanings to the viewer, in some cases leading to entirely undermining the plot of the film and often ruining the painstaking work of the director.
4) Some crucial sentences are at all not translated. I am inclined to suspect that this must have been resulted from the inability of the translator in charge to translate. Evidently, lack of discipline or simply laziness on the part of the translator cannot be ruled out.
This list, which by no means is exhaustive, underlies my above statement that a main reason for Iranian films not receiving outside Iran the attention that they deserve is their substandard English subtitles. In the course of the past week I have very carefully viewed and analyzed the above–mentioned film Leila, trying alternately to listen to the Farsi dialogues and read the English subtitles. It is my considered opinion that the English subtitles amount to a violation of the film. If you would wish, and if indeed I had the necessary time, I could provide you with a long list of unforgivable mistranslations in the subtitles of this film. I note in passing that in various places one even finds spelling mistakes in the English subtitles! This is an inexcusable offence in an age when any reasonable text editor is equipped with a spell-checking facility.
The important question arises: Is, in the particular case of “Leila”, Mr Mehrjui aware of the very inappropriate way in which his film is being presented to the English-speaking world? I am certain that if I were Mr Mehrjui, I would have taken some serious (legal) action against what amounts to an irreparable damage to a Major work of art (as Leila undoubtedly is one) through an incompetent translation of the spoken part of the work. The next question is: who actually takes the responsibility and ensures that translations of major works of art satisfy the highest literary standards? (I am not proposing that multiple translations should be banned, but that there should be at least one authoritative and official translation which in time may be superseded by a superior authoritative translation, thus becoming the official translation.)
For illustration, in one emotionally very charged scene, after Leila and Reza just having been told that they should undergo a medical test concerning the problem of Leila not conceiving, Reza asks Leila to promise not to tell anyone about the issue before Sunday. Leila looks, like an angel, into Reza’s eyes, and says "promise" ("Ghol" she says). This is inappropriately translated as "I promise". The word "I" utterly destroys the effect that "promise" has, and would have had if the translator had known or realized the vital difference between "I promise" and "promise" ("I promise" is mechanical, signifying some formal obligation, while "promise", especially as uttered by the angelic Leila, is deeply emotional). This and similar subtleties of expression are what distinguish first-class directors from the rest; Mehrjui would not have been Mehrjui if he had instructed Ms Hatami to say "I promise" ("Man Ghol midam") instead of "promise" ("Ghol") — he would still be Mehrjui if "I promise" served some overruling purpose, which here it does not.
I have even noticed some sentences in the subtitles of "Leila" which have been made up by the translator himself/herself, probably through not being able to translate the actual Farsi sentences; to fill the gaps in the subtitles that not-translating would have caused, the translator has disingenuously invented sentences which have no parallels in the actual dialogues.
In conclusion, in the interest of the Art (not particularly the Iranian Art, but the Universal Art), may I hereby humbly suggest that at least Farabi Cinema Foundation pay a greater attention to what in some quarters may pass as “English translations” (which more appropriately should be called violation of the original Farsi texts) of the Farsi texts? Before releasing any film with an English subtitle, Farabi Cinema Foundation may at the very least seek expert advice on the quality of a translation. Professor Hamid Dabashi (Columbia University, New York), author of "Close UP: Iranian Cinema, Past, Present and Future", may be a good first person to seek advice from in this regard; he may in turn be able to suggest other capable scholars for this task.
Yours sincerely,

[My signature].
P.s.) I should be most grateful if you would kindly provide Mr Dariush Mehrjui and Ms Leila Hatami with a copy or a summary of this writing.
P.s.) Perhaps I should have forwarded my writing to a different organization; I sincerely apologize if this is the case. In such event, may I hereby request you kindly to bring the contents of this writing to the attention of the relevant organization?

Kind regards, --BF 09:23, 31 December 2007 (UTC)