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Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (Special Navajo Edition) Official DVD (Released)

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I was recently made aware of a partnership between Lucasfilm and the Navajo Nation in 2014 to collaborate on a dub of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope into the Navajo language. The dub was completed and released on DVD in limited quantities. I purchased a copy and am now in possession of it.

Videos for reference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzWp81b3ENA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmPCHRtbf9M&list=PLjlPnivr6wGhIimehcIbKm3dhIXTBPpsu&index=58

It seems like walmart.com is the only place the DVD is available online:
http://www.walmart.com/ip/Star-Wars-Episode-IV-A-New-Hope-Navajo-Limited-Edition-Widescreen/33963129

As far as I know, this is basically the 2011 Blu-ray Episode IV special edition put onto a DVD with a new Navajo language dub track. Should I rip this and upload it to myspleen? It isn’t really WIDELY available commercially. I figured at the very least I should upload the Navajo audio track so maybe it could be included (after cutting it to match) Despecialized 3.0. What should I do? Does anybody have an interest in this?

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I’ve been on-again, off-again interested in this. Because it’s not a trilogy-complete dub, and because my primary focus is on subtitles, I’ve always had some reason to put it off. If you uploaded a copy I could easily get ahold of (doesn’t have to be MySpleen, anything works), I’d have one less reason for delay, and I’ve certainly got enough experience syncing and despecializing dubs at this point.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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Awesome! I’ll let you know when/where I upload it. I haven’t physically got my hands on the disc yet (it’s sitting on my porch and I’m at work), and I’ve heard conflicting things about what kind of subtitles are on the disc. From what I’ve heard there’s not a full Navajo sub track, but there are Navajo subs for the alien dialogue with Greedo etc. I’ll keep you posted in this thread.

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No, I’ve heard elsewhere that there’s no Navajo subs–hadn’t heard anything about Navajo Greedo subs either, but that’d be kinda neat. Let me know what you find, but I suspect they just dub over Greedo like many other dubs. If the Greedo subs are for real, either rip them or send screencaps, either way.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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The dub is actually pretty good. The intro “Long ago, in a galaxy far far away” as well as the crawl are all Navajo text! There are Navajo subtitles for Greedo as well as the shitty Jabba scene. I’m ripping now to inspect further.

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Yeah, I hear they found a very good Leia. The subs are an excellent catch, send me a link when you can. Oh yeah, and screencaps for the long time ago/crawl/whatever else you see.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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![Alt Text](URL)

But man, I was so tempted to just post the markdown tutorial link, and score the first topical use of it in the forum.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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Very, very, very cool.

For screencaps, that crawl text is mostly great, but the top line isn’t very clear to me. I’m guessing capture three or four lines at a time tops, since I’m not familiar enough with the language to make judgment calls.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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This is really cool. I hope for the sake of those that speak the language, they finish the trilogy. That way it can be included in future DeD releases and what not.

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Unfortunately, I’ve heard it’s a one-off. Luckily, since this is so recent, there’s a good chance these same voice actors will be able to perform again should they change their minds. But I somehow think if there’s any new dubbing projects at all under Disney, it’ll be Mandarin.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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This is one of the coolest preservations/edits I’ve heard of. Good to know there’s at least one version of the film immune to spreading the vocal cord parasite.

(Sorry, couldn’t resist a MGSV dig.)

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Subtitles are being created as we speak for the crawl and Greedo dialogue. Audio is the next step, but I’ve got a few non-Navajo subtitle-related things I may want to get out of the way first.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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Okay, audio sync officially started, but it may still be a while, I’ve got a lot of other things going on.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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Awesome! I’m glad I could get this into the right hands. What’s your opinion on the dub overall?

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I’m not the best person to ask, because I don’t like dubs all that much in general (but I recognize their value, so here I am). However, as for the performances, I feel like they really got Leia, which is actually pretty unusual, so that kinda stands out as good. I’m having a hard time adjusting to C-3PO, maybe he’ll grow on me. The lip sync is much better than I thought it would be, given how dissimilar the languages are – I expected something more like the Thai dub, which is very loosey-goosey on the whole lip sync thing.

And actually I’ve only listened to it up to the cantina, because that’s where I am on the sync. And I’m mostly trying to ignore the voices and focus on the SE changes that can be undone.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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I’d be tempted to watch it with English subtitles just for fun.

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It’s actually kind of fun to watch it with Navajo audio and no subtitles. Since to my knowledge, the Navajo language has pretty much no linguistic relation to European languages which I am assuming (perhaps incorrectly!) most of the forum-goers here speak. Most Europeans probably know at least a bit of another language, and many North Americans may be somewhat familiar with Spanish or French. Many also may be somewhat familiar with Japanese due to Japan’s enormous film/cultural output. But with the Navajo track, I literally recognized no words other than the proper nouns like “Imperial Senate” etc. Watching like this almost makes it feel like this could be the real alien “Basic” language spoken in the star wars universe. Also, if you’ve seen A New Hope enough times you probably already know the whole script, so watching without subtitles is pretty cool.

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But yeah, it sounds like they had a woman actor voice C-3P0, which isn’t all that jarring considering Anthony Daniels somewhat feminine delivery in the English, and considering that the actual gender of droids may not really matter. What I was also impressed (and relieved) by was that they actually put in the effort to mix the voices correctly and add sound effects where necessary. Vader’s voice sounds properly filtered, stormtrooper voices sound like they’re coming from inside helmets, C-3P0’s voice is properly modulated and distorted to sound like a droid. I’ve heard bad dubs where it just sounds like everybody’s just sitting in a room with a mic talking over the movie. I’m happy to say that this is NOT one of those dubs! (Fun fact: They kept Harrison Ford’s original Yahoooo! line from the English track)

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If you like that totally unfamiliar language angle, try the Thai dub. It’s also about as far from English as you can go, and it uses even fewer recognizable words. And it’s a complete trilogy dub, and they dub Jabba in Thai, which is as awesomely wrong as it sounds. The downside is the sync varies between excellent and poor, sometimes in the same shot. Not 80’s Hong Kong bad, but not good. Actually the real downside is they get Leia very, very wrong IMO.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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Okay, first pass of the entire film is done. Still need to do some QA passes. For those unfamiliar with despecialized audio, not everything can be fully despecialized, particularly any SE audio changes that overlap dialogue (unlike Harmy, I can’t always drop down to a lower-quality source for the pre-SE version). Star Wars has a few rough patches – stormtroopers in the desert, hoverdroid sounds in Mos Eisley – but it isn’t too bad. The most egregious SE changes can be removed pretty seamlessly, although of course you do still have to deal with the 04 audio mastering. Also, I always downmix dubs to stereo for despecialization, and use the 93 mix to patch over, since it’s the best match EQ-wise. I’m thinking sometime next week we’ll have something.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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Haven’t lost track of this. I just got sidelined by some new subtitle stuff, which always takes priority for me. My initial QA pass found half a dozen things I thought I could try to do better, just in the first hour, so it’s still needing some love, and may be slower going than I thought at first.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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Okay, it’s as good as I’m going to be able to make it. Ladies and gentlemen, I present two efforts of cultural preservation simultaneously: The original, unaltered Star Wars, in Navajo! PM me for a link (audio only, subtitles will be available in the next Project Threepio).

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)