I read this story when I was in the university. Actually, I have to read it, because it was in the lecture. The theatrical adaptation is also very interesting !

This story reminds me of a very painful aspect of life, but I won't try to explain it clearly so everyone can think for themselves. Around the early 1990s, when Vietnam's economy began to liberalize, an engineer from the Soviet Union hinted at telling his own problem, of course he also fictionalized it a bit. That short story was later made into a telefilm and was very popular, because it seemed to touch the black cat of the whole society.

The story is about an engineer with a very high degree returning from the Soviet Union. However, he has to be managed by several persons who are poorly educated and generally not aware of the times. He wants to apply what he has learned to the Vietnamese context, but he cannot understand that the facility is not capable of receiving that knowledge yet. What's more, his outspokenness could endanger himself. It's simple, because it affects the survival of a system that "steals labor hours, cuts off raw materials, and especially maintains positions to continue... stealing and cutting off". Therefore, those in power begin to use money to corrupt the main character. When they feel they are not successful, they secretly pressure him to go crazy and die.

The last scene of the film also tells one more detail : Two students happened to pass by the grave. They asked the deceased for blessings so they could pass an advanced degree. We can completely imagine the fate of these characters, of course they will follow the same vicious cycle as the man in the grave.

I translated the title "Превращение" from the perspective of both Catholics (biến hình) and Protestants (hóa hình) in Vietnam. This term is less common in Vietnamese society, but is very familiar in religious contexts. It is related to the event "Transfiguration of Yehoshua". In my opinion, Jenő Heltai's story is a bit like Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis, that is, they are all parables about the causes leading to the collapse of civilizations.

Modern Vietnamese youth often like to read stories about the collapse of civilizations. What's very strange is that, they don't know exactly what the languages, customs, and laws of ancient and medieval societies were like, and can't even remember the names of any kings, but books about the collapse of Greece, Rome, [monarchical] China, the Third Reich, the Soviet Union, the Republic of Vietnam... are always best-sellers in the Vietnamese market, even when they are poorly translated by amateur translators.

Previously, I surveyed the opinions of Vietnamese people born after the 1980s. In general, they did not know how their ancestors used to take exams, and how strict the exam rules were during the monarchy, but they immediately attacked the classical exam system by parodying the satire of a few failed candidates at that time. This is also the problem that is devastating our era, when [it seems] that social morality is being influenced by immoral media, which paradoxically is created by those who are completely senseless but passionate about virtual power.

If anyone knows what is the song at 3:11, please let me know!

Also, the translation of the title is rather more wordy than the original, but it was the only translation I could think of that was grammatical and kept all of the meaning intact (explicit and implicit).

This was one of just 10 animated films released in the USSR that year, 8 of which are currently on the site. The remaining ones are "The Priest and the Goat" made by Lev Atamanov at Armenfilm, and "Three Friends", a rather impressive colour cartoon made at Lenfilm which only partly survives (and isn't publicly available, with only a short minute-long segment being online here).

This film belongs to the group of myths about mentally retarded persons. Because of that stupidity, they easily break all social rules to achieve things that normal men cannot discover. In some ways, these characters are social reformers, but of course the societies are too conservative and backward like the countryside or theocracy. In other words, films and stories like this aim to criticize a society that is slow to develop compared to its time. It's a fact that the further East we go, the more stupid idols there are.

Let's talk about Arab, North and Southeast Asian societies, folklore mainly describes very cunning or very foolish men, but very few harmonious characters. This film is an example : The Adventures of the Idiot. It is based on a very famous folktale, about an idiot who keeps getting lucky because of his naivety. However, unlike the film, the idiot ended up being torn to pieces by the tiger couple because he once tried to stop them from competing for prey.

This happens to be the 100th film of this studio added to animatsiya.net! I think it's a pretty fun one. There were also two sequels.

This story skillfully explained a heroic period of Russian history, that is, the time before the Romanov dynasty began. Zmey Gorynych not only represents pre-Christian religions, but it also means the nations settled in the East of Moskva, whom were always a threat to the Rus' courts. The soldier returning to his home is a modification of the idols from epics. Of course, for the principle of socialist realism, he was also the voice of the common people, in opposition to the tsar - that is, the ruling class.

East Asian literature has very few characters like this, because Asians - especially those in the Sinosphere - have a very poor attitude towards cultural exchange. However, I can still tell a story that is quite famous in Vietnamese popular literature. It is said to have originated in my home province. It is the story of an ordinary farmer who dares to challenge both God and the spirit world. However, his victory was only due to his own cunning and the corruption from the ruling class. Even the name shows some personality : Cường Bạo ("healthy" + "recklessness").

>>2

Yep, I have watched this film since I was a child. A short paragraph describing the scene of the old man catching a goldfish and going home to meet his wife was included in the 6th grade textbook in Vietnam, from the time I was studying until now. Of course, although in class the teacher said it was a pig feeder (máng lợn), when I got home to watch a cartoon, I saw the old woman washing the shirts and splashing water on her husband's face. :D Therefore, I later translated it as wash-tub (máng giặt). It is true that bathing in a tub was a habit brought to Vietnam by the French. Even swimming pools, Vietnamese people have no concept of it.

The climate in Northern Vietnam only has two or three cold months a year, but in the past, because there were many rivers and lakes, the rainfall was extremely high. Thus, you could'nt feel the lack of water to drink or bathe or wash. Poor people have a habit of building houses near rivers to have water for daily use, but if they don't have it, they will dig ponds. This lifestyle easily reminds you of the movie "The 13th Warrior", when 10 Vikings shared a basin of water. But of course it's just a film, because in reality, pond water in the past was not as dirty as it is today, because industrial activities had not yet appeared 1 2. Rich people or intellectuals often bathe in very large wooden basins or wash their faces in the morning with a small copper basin. However, I still find that hygiene awareness at that time was still too simple compared to now, just because the climate and environment were cleaner. Back to our story :

The reason why the 1970-80s translators could not believe that the tub was simply a washing tool, because Vietnam is one of the oldest pig-raising areas in the world (I know that Vietnamese piglets are also raised by Americans as pets). It's me, when I was a kid, my dad still called me as "Cường the Piglet" (realname + nickname), which means I'm a blockhead (like Ivanushka). In the past, whether in cities or countrysides, with abundant water sources, every family dug a well for convenience 3 4. Legend has it that if the well runs out of water, the homeowner will be considered unlucky. So in my opinion, having a house near the river is better. :D It must be added that drawing water from wells and carrying water are both very difficult, so it used to be a lucrative job for impoverished people (orphans, persons with slow physiological development, women with many children). But in return, they are susceptible to shoulder and calf deformities (like Quasimodo). Bathing, washing and drinking water are like that, so how do Vietnamese people go to the toilet ?

Because Vietnam is a country that values agriculture, livestock and human feces are also things that need to be protected. For now I won't discuss collecting animal feces, because that's too simple and is often left to children. In the past, Vietnamese people still called toilet as "cầu tiêu" (bridge for waste). Actually, in the corner of the garden, we will dig a deep hole, then put a board on it, that place will be temporarily called as "nhà ủ phân" (house for compost). According to what I learned from a young age, raw manure cannot be used to fertilize fields, but must wait for it to ripen after about 10-15 days, meaning when microorganisms have destroyed its structure. The darker the color of the fertilizer, the better it is for the fields. So farmers still call it as "phân ngon" (delicious manure). This habit has taken root in the minds of Vietnamese people, so today the toilet is often politely called as "bồn cầu" (bridge's tub).

>>1
>However, there is a slight translation problem : In the habits of Vietnamese farmers, the tub is a tool to store food for pigs ("máng lợn" ; what the Britishs understand is hog trough or pig feeder). Therefore, Vietnamese translators in the 1970s instilled that awareness into the translation itself, and the result was that the crowd completely misunderstanded.

So they didn't use a tool such as this for washing clothes? Were clothes washed directly in a river/lake instead?
I wonder, how did you solve this in your translation?

...actually, if you look at the Russian Wikipedia article, a корыто could be used for either washing clothes or feeding livestock, or for gathering produce, or for salting food, for bathing young children, for cooling beer, or kneading bread... although it would sometimes be called different names depending on what it was used for (which would be useful if you owned more than one, to avoid mixing them up!).

I think this was a very strong beginning to Marchenkova's directing career. It's has lots of variety and changes in mood, not to mention animation techniques and visual styles, and it already seems to have most of the elements that she would draw from in one way or another in her subsequent films. It feels both pretty grounded (in how carefully the attic and the two character's interactions are shown) - a bit like Yuriy Norshteyn's films - as well as phantasmagorically inventive - a bit like Robert Saakyants' films.

The only real downside I see is that it rather relies for its humour on the viewer being familiar with the characters and stories being visually referenced, and that will only be true for those above a certain age within the (former) Soviet cultural sphere. Younger children will not have been exposed to the stories yet, while in other places even older viewers wouldn't know them. In North America, for example, some of the stories are also fairly well known, at least by reputation (the genie and flying carpet, Baba Yaga and her hut, Santa Claus, the Pied Piper, Zmey Gorynych) but others aren't well-known at all (Alyonushka and her brother, the frog traveler, Doctor Aybolit, Grandpa Mazay, the 3 wise men, Tsar Saltan) - I'm not quite sure about the wolf fishing with his tail or about Thumbelina.

This tale was quite famous in the minds of Vietnamese generations who have grown up since the 1970s, which is the time when Soviet culture flooded Vietnam through the book and newspaper aid policy. It has led directly to a familiar saying : "Return to the old tub" (trở về với cái máng cũ). This saying is satirical about someone who, after great success, begins to encounter bitter failures. An example : "When the Italian team returned to the old tub".

However, there is a slight translation problem : In the habits of Vietnamese farmers, the tub is a tool to store food for pigs ("máng lợn" ; what the Britishs understand is hog trough or pig feeder). Therefore, Vietnamese translators in the 1970s instilled that awareness into the translation itself, and the result was that the crowd completely misunderstanded.