it is quite annoying and irritating because anyone whoever is acquainted with the French dialect would simply translate the title of "La Nuit Americaine" as 'The American Night'. Why is it "Day For Night"?
share"La Nuit Americaine" is a description of the lighting effect "Day for Night" It is just a difference in reference. American directors know it as Day For Night, French directors know it as La Nuit Americaine. However, the film effect is the same.
shareThat sort of gives the title an interesting meaning if Truffaut used this term that refers to an effect that is American. Maybe not, but it's kind of fun to think about it.
shareHollywood came up with the process,so it has always been called "la nuit americaine" in French studios. What "interesting meaning" are you trying to deduce from that?
sharemaybe the translation actually works for this movie... but i know what you mean. they do that all the time when translating american movies into french as well. the movie "just married" was 'translated' to the french title - "no sex" (in english). i cant think of anymore, but theyre constantly changing easily translatable titles, and i could never understand why.
shareSometimes the titling of a movie has more to do with marketing than with trying to be accurate; and it doesn't happen only with translations. Many English and American films change names when they cross the Atlantic. An old English film, "Dangerous Moonlight," was retitled "Suicide Squadron" over here. There are many other examples.
"The value of an idea has nothing to do with the honesty of the man expressing it."--Oscar Wilde
SH IT! Can you stop saying that the title was mistranslated? TRUFFAUT TRANSLATED IT HIMSELF! WERE YOU TALKING ON THE TELEPHONE WHILE YOU WERE WATCHING THE MOVIE? WTFU!
shareThe title refers to the film-making practice of shooting night-time scenes during the daytime, which originated in America. The literal translation would lose the effect of the French idiom.
Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
It's not just a translation of a colloquial expression. This is how a character in the movie themselves translate the phrase!
The character of Julie is an American actress who speaks fluent French (note: Bisset -who plays Julie- actually grew up in England). She arrives on the French movie set later than the others, fresh off a plane from the USA.
As I remember it, it's at that point that Julie (conversing in French) asks about the next day's shoot, when she is told it is to be a night scene to be shot 'Nuit américaine'. Here Julie interjects (in English) "Oh. You mean 'Day for Night'!.
Some viewers may miss this because they are busy reading the subtitles, I don't know. But because of this line the English version of the title had to be 'Day for Night'.
The metaphorical meanings someone mentioned also add to the appropriateness of the translation.
[all from memory, so be warned]
The title "Day for Night" also eludes to both Truffaut and Godards love of American Cinema. The huge influence of American films on the New Wave is unmistakable. It's as if the title is a wink to America, the country from which the Bisset character has been working and the "traditional American" car off the cliff scene takes place.
shareAs I remember it, it's at that point that Julie (conversing in French) asks about the next day's shoot, when she is told it is to be a night scene to be shot 'Nuit américaine'. Here Julie interjects (in English) "Oh. You mean 'Day for Night'!.
Actually, she's translating between director Ferrand, who's asked her to explain things, and the "cascadeur Anglaise" (English stuntman) who's going to double her death scene.
And the reason that the English title is not a literal translation of the French is that "nuit Americaine" is the French technical term, and "day for night" is the English-speaking technical term, for the same thing.
The reason is that one is the French name, and the other the English name, of a particular film effect. Thus, it's actually a more literal translation (i.e., a fully idiomatic one) than the word-for-word transliteration would have been.
("Transliteration", merely substituting one word for its equivalent, is not "translation", which is transforming from one language to another on the basis of overall meaning and style/readibility/not-horrible-sounding dialog.)
An example of more or less literal translation of the above, courtesy of AltaVista's "BabelFish" (http://babelfish.altavista.com/):
La raison est qu'on est le nom français, et l'autre le nom anglais, d'un effet particulier de film. Ainsi, c'est réellement une traduction plus littérale (c.-à-d., entièrement idiomatique) que la transcription mot-à-mot aurait été.
(la "transcription", substituant simplement un mot à son équivalent, n'est pas l'"traduction", qui transforme d'une langue à l'autre sur la base de la signification globale et du dialogue de style/readibility/not-horrible-sounding.)
And that text run twice more through Babelfish {French-to-Dutch, and then Dutch-to-English), to exaggerate the effect:
The reason is that one the French name, and the other English name are, of a particular consequence of film. Thus it really littérale translation (this means, entirely idiomatic) that litteral transferring will have been be
("transferring", which replaces simply a word, by its equivalent, is "the translation", which changes of a language to the other on the basis of the overall meaning and the dialogue of style/readibility/not horrible sounding.)
Note that the last paragraph's meaning has been reversed by the omission of the "not" from the original phrase "is not translation".
As others have mentioned, the phrase IS TRANSLATED IN THE FILM SO NO ONE COULD MISTRANSLATE THE TITLE! Your post is what is "quite annoying and irritating". Do you think that maybe Truffaut knew how to translate the phrase, since he put the French original and the English translation in the script and final film? "The American Night" means nothing whatsoever. "La nuit americaine" refers to the process of shooting a scene that is supposed to be taking place at night in the day by using a dark filter on the lens. That is called "day for night" shooting in the U.S. Wake up!
shareThroughout the movie Truffaut focuses on ways in which filmmaking uses tricks to alter reality -- shooting day for night, hiding a pregnancy, putting a lightbulb in a candle, building a fake window, using body doubles, etc. -- it's a recurring intentional metaphor for how the characters also constantly try to manipulate others & fool themselves.
share