「東京大飯店」‧翻譯德國流行文化

Abstract

德國流行搖滾音樂通常傾向在地化，通常與亞洲議題毫無關係。然而，深入探討德國青少男樂團「東京大飯店」的現象，即使是亞洲國家也會深感興趣。這個德國樂團的成員，雖然主要是用德語演唱，但也許正因為唱的是德語，逐漸打響國際知名度，受到矚目。在音樂的領域，德國和德語常常與古典音樂連結，比較不會令人聯想到當代流行音樂。如今許多國家如荷蘭，法國，瑞典，西班牙，以色列，阿根廷，巴西和美國的青少年喜歡聽該樂團的音樂，購買他們的CD。甚至在2008年，該樂團還獲得了美國MTV音樂獎（「最佳新人」），這似乎是一個全球性現象了。這怎麼可能？ 我的論點是，東京大飯店樂團的主唱外型，深具挑釁意象，呈現出「日本連環漫畫」和/或「動畫」的意念，經翻譯轉化後，引入了西方流行搖滾音樂界。這種日本漫畫人物意念和西方流行音樂的混合體，證明產生一種新的跨國（後）現代社會變型體，且其超越的力量克服了語言的界限。它限定在特定的年齡層，重新闡釋了在不同國家的音樂論述界限。本文將從文化翻譯的概念來探討這個現象，並參考重要理論家Homi K. Bhabha闡述的翻譯概念。 本論文屬於跨文化研究領域的範圍，說明單一純粹的文化並不存在，質疑單向文化翻譯的概念以及反對東西方文化為對立文化。

The German popular rock music scene usually seems localized, and far away from Asian related topics. Still, the German boy group “Tokio Hotel” can be considered an interesting topic even for Asian countries. This group is pursuing an international career in spite of being teenagers who sing mostly in German, or because of that. In the discourse of music, Germany and the German language are often connected with classical music, not with the popular music of today. However, teenage youth in many countries like Holland, France, Sweden, Spain, Israel, Argentina, Brazil, and the US are listening to the music of this quartet and buying their CDs. In 2008, the group even won an MTV music award (“Best New Artist”) in the US. It almost seems to be a global phenomenon. How is this possible? My thesis is, that the provocative imagery of the band’s lead singer represents a translation of the imagery of “manga” and/or “anime” into Western pop rock music style. This hybridity of popularized manga imagery and Western popular music is evidence of a new kind of transnational (post)modern social transformation, which in its transgressive force overcomes the boundaries of language. Restricted to a certain age group, it restates the boundaries of music discourse in various countries. This issue is discussed in context with the ideas of cultural translation, referring to the critical theorist Homi K. Bhabha’s approach to translation. The topic of this paper belongs to the area of intercultural studies discourse, and demonstrates that the purity of culture is an untenable thought, and questions the concept of one-way cultural translation, destabilizing the East/West binary opposition.