Day 610:50The Ojibwe voice of Darth Vader reflects on the death of James Earl Jones and the power of seeing his language portrayed in a Star Wars film
The original Star Wars film, Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, has been translated into over 50 languages.
Norwegian, French, Icelandic, Navajo — and now Ojibway.
Dennis Daminos Chartrand, a member of Pine Creek First Nation who voices Darth Vader in the film and helped translate the original text, says he hopes having his language incorporated into the “iconic” film will promote it — not just within his community, but beyond.
Chartrand spoke with Day 6 host Brent Bambury ahead of the film’s release on the national Indigenous broadcast channel APTN next month, and just days after the death of original Darth Vader actor James Earl Jones. He spoke about his hopes for the film, challenges translating the story into Ojibway and why Star Wars resonates so much with him as an Indigenous person. Here is part of their conversation.
[Star Wars: A New Hope] came out 47 years ago. Now, for the second time, it’s being dubbed into an Indigenous language. What is it about this movie that continues to resonate with you as an Ojibway person?
For me, having watched right from the beginning, there seems to be a similarity to … how our life as Indigenous people is in Canada or in North America.
You know, having a colonial people kind of leading, I’d associate [that] as the Empire. And so we become like the rebel cause and there’s always hope, you know, that something great can happen or that we can continue to live, like our language has.
At one time, we were told not to speak our language. So our hope was to keep preserving and maintaining not only our language, but just our culture, our way of life.
WATCH | Unreserved host Rosanna Deerchild talks with the Ojibway cast of Star Wars
This summer, Star Wars: A New Hope premiered in Ojibway for the first time — giving language learners a chance to practice outside the classroom. Hear how the translation process went from those who helped make the movie, and from people excited to watch it — in their language this time.
And how does translating this film into Ojibway further that struggle for survival of the Ojibway language?
Having our language being heard on such an iconic movie at this level is kind of, you know, gives us a boost in our desire to maintain, revitalize our language.
And that it can reach out to more people, and not just Ojibway speaking people, but all people…. We have a chance to share through our language a little bit of our culture, a little bit of how we say things through this movie.
For me, I experienced working together with non-Indigenous [people], working together with industry, which is kind of beyond any dream I’ve ever had of sharing my language. And so it was quite an awesome feeling to see the end result of the movie and the voice work that was done and knowing that this is going to be preserved for forever … it’s an amazing feeling.
What are the characteristics of the Ojibway language that you needed to consider as you tried to fit it into this existing story, this existing text?
We don’t have certain sounds that … you speak in English, like we don’t have the letter V, L, F, R sounds. And we have seven vowel sounds. Some of them don’t look like any English [words].
And so not having those, we had to try and find words that would fit the on-camera shots where people’s [facial movements] are seen on the movie screen. The most challenging one, I have to say, was Harrison Ford’s lip movements. He really has … great lip-movement expression.
When you watch the Ojibway version, does it look to you like Han Solo is actually speaking Ojibway now?
It doesn’t look like how older movies were dubbed, you know, where the lip movements weren’t falling. Because then you kind of lose the interest … of the actual language that you’re listening to and, you know, the visual value … of the movie.
But it was incredible to see some of these actors actually looking like they were speaking Ojibway. So I was really moved by the whole experience.
WATCH | Translators and voice actors on making the sci-fi classic more accessible to Indigenous audiences
The translators and voice actors behind the first-ever Ojibwe-language version of Star Wars: A New Hope share their joy and pride in helping make the sci fi classic more accessible to Indigenous audiences.
Because you’re translating a work of science fiction, it sounds like you’re actually adding to the vocabulary of your language, that you’re creating new words. Did you feel like you were adding to the language?
Yeah, like even the use of … technology, we didn’t have that in our language. So we’re always continuously looking at finding new words to use that would make sense.
We didn’t have words for the lightsaber … so we had to come up with that.
What is the Ojibway word for lightsaber?
The word is Waasakone-mookomaan. Basically “the knife that lights up.”