Three Percent Podcast #208: Translating Godzilla & Mothra

Jeffrey Angles (translator of Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again and many non-Kaiju related titles) joins Chad and special guest Joanne Bernardi (Writing in Light: The Silent Scenario and the Japanese Pure Film Movement, Provenance and Early Cinema (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Japanese Cinema (ed.), and the multimedia resource, ReEnvisioning Japan) to talk about the recent release of The Luminous Fairies and Mothra by Shin’ichiro Nakamura, Takehiko Fukunaga, and Yoshie Hotta, recently released by University of Minnesota Press. They discuss how this project came about, the relationship between the books and the films, the political ideas evident in Mothra, the gender of Godzilla and Mothra in the original texts, and how Mothra is related to Doctor Doolittle. A very interesting, lively conversation about “monster studies,” translation, and cultural representation from two experts, who are also big Godzilla-verse fans!

This episode’s music is “Mothra’s Song.”

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