Pretty soon, we’ll be hearing Darth Vader say, “No, I am your azhé’é’.” That’s because Star Wars has been translated into the Navajo language. Manuelito Wheeler, director of the Navajo Nation Museum, worked with a team of five Navajo speakers to create a Navajo translation of Star Wars IV: A New Hope. When he reached out to Lucasfilm with it, they agreed to release a version of the movie dubbed into the Navajo language.
It’s not only a big event for scifi, but for movies in general. Most movies featuring Native American languages are shown at film festivals. Relatively few mainstream movies in Native languages are shown in theaters. It’s hoped that the Navajo translation will keep the language alive, and increase interest in Native languages.
Right now, Wheeler is looking for fluent Navajo speakers to record the dialogue. He’s holding auditions at the Navajo Nation Museum in Window Rock, Arizona. The audition involves prospective actors meeting with a prescreening group to hold a conversation in Navajo. If they pass the prescreening, they go to a recording studio. The actors hear a section of dialogue in English, and then have to translate what they hear into Navajo. If they succeed, they’ll join the cast of the finished movie, which will air on July 4.
Would you watch the Navajo version of Star Wars?
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<span class="dsq-postid" data-dsqidentifier="37752 ">3 Comments
I'd love to watch it. But of course with subtitles (although a movie like this I think I'd know pretty well even without them).
Yes, subtitles! I think it would be cool to hear.
It might be fascinating to hear Navajo, Its been done before. STMP used Klingon lingo created by Jimmy Doohan