Japanese Subtitles in 'The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring'

Japanese translation of petition - (Scroll down for English)
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This petition relates to the Japanese version of "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring."

We the undersigned strongly believe that significant portions of the subtitles used for "The Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" in Japan are not true to the original script, nor to the ideas conveyed by the original English release of the movie.

As a result, we believe that the Japanese translator hired for "The Fellowship of the Ring" would be unsuitable for writing the subtitles for the forthcoming "The Two Towers" and "The Return of the King", and suggest that those who wrote the script for dubbing into Japanese are hired to write the subtitles instead. Those who watched the movie, both dubbed and with subtitles, found that the dubbed version was more accurate.

Peter Jackson, the director, has declared that he "tried to honour the themes that were important to Tolkien". It is therefore disappointing to find that a Japanese translator has been allowed to distort both characters and themes, for no apparent reason. Slight wording variations are obviously necessary, and are acceptable, but changes that lead to a different interpretation of events by the viewer are not. A list of some of the more serious errors is attached.

These errors in the Japanese subtitles, overall, serve to misrepresent and undermine the integrity of the film's plot and characters, and distort what JRR Tolkien and Peter Jackson have worked so hard to create.

We therefore request that in the DVD and video releases of "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring", the subtitles are revised and that greater effort and care are put into future film productions of Tolkien's work (i.e. "The Two Towers" and "The Return of the King").