Question about title + translation
Anyone know the significance of the original title, "Yi Yi," which I know to literally mean "One One"?
And how did it get translated in English to "A One and a Two?"
... the significance of the original title, "Yi Yi," ...
When looking at the title screen, forget the words and look at the pictographs. At first you only see one thick squiggly horizontal line; that's "one". Then you see another "one" appear just below it. Now you have "one" and another "one". Or, if you consider the two lines together as a single symbol, you have "two".
So it seems to me (I could be wrong:-) the title is saying the film's focus may be either "relationships", or "individualism" vs. "communalism".
...how did it get translated in English to "A One and a Two?"
One story (which I can't vouch for being either true or not true), is the suggestion came from director Edward Yang himself. It retains (if somewhat obscurely) some of the flavor of the original. And it also points toward making music, as music is rather central to the story in several ways. (I doubt he had any idea the title had the wrong associations for those of us from the Lawrence Welk [who?] generation.)
If that's not true, another _guess_ is faced with what was already an unusual visual pun even in the original language, the translator did the best they could (and the result definitely wasn't great). As awkward (and possibly misleading: dancing?) as it is, I haven't run across any better suggestion.
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I read the title as meaning that two individuals together make a new entity, 1+1=2. The English title reinforces this fact, by referencing dancing. "It takes two to tango," as they say.
Tenser, said the Tensor.