Story, interrupted
Subtitles, especially the translated ones, seldom manage to convey everything the dialogues mean to in their original tongue. Production-wise, mostly, the idea is to stick to the gist of the dialogue instead of digging below the surface. Besides, the lingual and the cultural nuances are lost on someone who doesn’t speak the language anyway. Why make that extra effort? Fair enough.
Things get trickier with dubbing. An English film dubbed in Hindi or Tamil can be more out of place than printed subtitles; Hollywood films in regional languages are pretty much a sham. The reason for this fatuousness is obvious: Two languages don’t have to meet each other but an effort should be made. An idiom in Malayalam can be translated into Punjabi but it’s always going to be a Malayali idiom. That’s how it is and that’s how it should be. However, that doesn’t mean a half-hearted attempt is made in communicating the message. Something that usually happens in cinema when language is separated as a construct and re-engineered to fulfill the overall experience.
That said, i’ve watched a lot of dubbed Western films but hardly anything comes close to the lingual aesthetics of Troy (2004). This film starts with a battle scene and the first dialogue delivery is by Brian Cox peering who peers at the sky above before saying, “Aaj cheel kawwo ki daawat hai.” Which translates to “It’s going to be a feast for the eagles and the crows.” This pugnacious setting, aided by a fatal bon mot, sets the tone for the movie. However, the original dialogue was “Good day for the crows.”
No feast. No eagles.
Nonetheless, the dubbed version of Troy carries on mightily with one verbal gem after another, proving that sometimes—just sometimes — the translated words can overtake the original ones. I’m sure there are many such examples where the team of translators did a fabulous job but the problem is, our eyes rarely get to greet such films. Most of the time, we are inundated by embarrassing translation and pitiful dubbing.
