It has been 20 years since faded movie star Bob Harris (played by Bill Murray) met disillusioned Yale graduate Charlotte (Scarlet Johansson) for a few days in Tokyo in Sofia Coppola’s enduring Lost in Translation. It’s also been two decades since Bob Harris whispered… something to Charlotte during their final encounter (take a listen in the clip below). No one, apart from Murray, Johansson and Coppola, know what was said, according to Translation lore. (The kiss, too, was unscripted.) But, like that word from GCSE French that is on the tip of your tongue, people have long been searching for an answer.
The instinct to know what Bob said is understandable: when you don’t know something, the natural desire is to… know something. In 2007, a YouTuber claimed to reveal what was really said in the video, which now has 1.6 million views. You can listen to the evidence in the following clip. Through some quite disconcerting reverberation, the apparent line is: “I have to be leaving, but I won’t let that come between us, okay?” That’s a pretty good fit, and one that suits Coppola’s script, which is mostly wry observation and aphorism. It certainly seems convincing when you are watching the slowed-down scene and the text runs underneath. But maybe YouTube creator Vid Vidor, who has 991 subscribers and an entire playlist of interviews for the cast of The Tudors, is having us on! Could this YouTube, and I’m absolutely going out on a limb about people on the internet, be wrong?
Certainly, many others have put forward alternative theories, and Coppola herself has said that the whisper was “never intended to be anything”, a line she was going to write later and instead became one of the film’s defining moments. In a film about not understanding one another, and the mercurial nature of connection, it is fitting that the line remains unknown. Let us shudder at the thought of what would happen if Translation were released in 2023: the muffled noise would likely become a TikTok sound, while accounts scrambled to discover what Bob was saying. At a time when no Easter Egg, planned by pop stars and Marvel franchises alike, goes unturned, it seems that mystery is well and truly dead. There is always a Reddit theory to fall into, a post-credits scene to endure. Curiosity has been monetised: no longer a joy, but a task.
Reverb be damned: let Translation’s whisper remain a mystery. It will be in good company. What is Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” about? Is Blade Runner’s Deckard a replicant or a human? What, exactly, happens at the end of The Sopranos? Was Kendall’s name underlined or crossed out on Logan’s will on Succession? You can probably find explanations to all of these, some credible and some nonsensical. But the fun is in the attempt: more often than not, the actual answer is so much more dull than what you imagined. (There is a valuable life lesson in that.) So play the game, if you must, but make up what Bob whispers for yourself. “‘You’re So Vain’ is about me, actually,” or “I worry they’re going to remake Ghostbusters one day,” or “I think I left the cooker on.”
Henry Wong is a senior culture writer at Esquire, working across digital and print. He covers film, television, books, and art for the magazine, and also writes profiles.
