Blogwatch: Fulco on the Passion again

I have blogged several times about William J. Fulco, S. J., who was "Theological Consultant and Translator of Latin / Aramaic" (if I remember the credit correctly) on The Passion of the Christ. On RogueClassicism, David Meadows points out this interesting little article about Fulco and his work on the Aramaic and the Latin in the film. This appears on Metromix.com but originates from the Chicago Tribune:

AT RANDOM ON LANGUAGE
The Jesuit scholar who translated `The Passion'
By Nathan Bierma

On the subtitles:

"He was real hard-set against them," said Alan Nierob, Gibson's publicist. "He initially thought they would be a distraction. . . . It's a very visual movie."

Gibson also wanted to avoid the phony air of British English that has plagued so many film renditions of the life of Jesus Christ, Nierob said.

Well it doesn't sound phony if you are British! And for those who can cope with "the phony air of British English", I would strongly commend Henry Ian Cusick's recent performance as Jesus in the Gospel of John. Having said that, I loved the use of Aramaic in The Passion of the Christ. The article goes on with some nonsense about Greek and Latin, but herewith Fulco's interesting comments:

"I tracked down some obscene graffiti from Roman army camps," Fulco said. "Somebody who knows Latin really well, their ears will fall off. We didn't subtitle those words."

Fulco even confessed to some linguistic mischief.

"Here and there I put in playful things which nobody will know. There's one scene where Caiaphas turns to his cohorts and says something in Aramaic. The subtitle says, `You take care of it.' He's actually saying, `Take care of my laundry.'"

Other linguistic tricks of Fulco's serve a function in the script.

For example, he incorporated deliberate dialogue errors in the scenes where the Roman soldiers, speaking Aramaic, are shouting to Jewish crowds, who respond in Latin. To illustrate the groups' inability to communicate with each other, each side speaks with incorrect pronunciations and word endings.

Later, "there's an exchange where Pilate addresses Jesus in Aramaic, and Jesus answers in Latin. It's kind of a nifty little symbolic thing: Jesus is going to beat him at his own game," Fulco said. "One line [in that exchange] I kind of enjoyed is when Jesus says, `My power is given from above, otherwise my followers would not have allowed this.' That's [spoken in] the pluperfect subjunctive."

It is the strangest experience reading these articles after having seen the film. I have read so many articles on this film, as anyone who reads this blog regularly will know, but until now I had no point of reference.