Lost in translation
Have you felt your heart sink deeper than the Titanic? Seen your sensibility bleed more than Uma Thurman in Kill Bill or felt more stung than from a thousand Anacondas pitched together? We bet you have, if you happened to see a Hindi dubbed version of your favourite flick being aired on several channels these days. To make Hollywood more accessible to the Hindi speaking audience, what these channels actually end up doing is making even serious dramas appear comical, with the real meaning lost in translation.
When an English-Hindi/regional language translation is carried out, one needs to be careful as to not literally decode one language to the other, a problem often witnessed in this case. Rishi Rana, a voiceover artiste feels it is an integral issue with translating as the meaning, nuances and length does not match.
“A sentence when translated in Hindi or a regional language ends up slightly longer than the original dialogue and in order to fit the duration and the lip sync, the artiste ends up rushing the dialogue, making it expressionless and even amusing at times. The same pauses and meters are not considered as with the original discourse,” he says. However, the blame can’t be put on the artiste’s shoulders alone. The script also plays a more crucial role during the dubbing. Saurabh Chauhan, who dubs regularly for the National Geographic Channel feels the writer needs to understand the context and come up with text that fits the scene rather than simply doing A to B.
“I guess the deadlines given to the writers don’t allow them the luxury to carefully go through each sentence and come up with something unique as opposed to a book. Here, he needs to follow a time frame and present the draft to the client,” he says, adding that it could be the classic gamble of quality over quantity, where one suffers at the cost of another.
Financial constraints and low budgets often curb the enthusiasm and quality of the tone. As voice trainer and former anchor, Jitendra Ramprakash tells us it is the pressure of finances and not the talent of the team that often mars the product. “With minimal costs, the time spent in the studio is limited and so is the time spent giving the takes. Most studios, though well equipped, don’t have quality machinery available and due to this technicality also, the dub sounds jarring,” he tells us.
Though, all is not lost, with some exceptional dubbing quality on display on television these days. And that comes from an unlikely contender of Cartoon Network, which pulls all stops to ensure that Hindi versions are pitch perfect. From localising the characters, transcribing the scripts to even developing entirely new scripts for the visual content, they do it, keeping the hawk-eyed consumer in mind. Krishna Desai, from the channel tells us that this has been a strategy ever since their inception in 1995. “With our annual surveys, we figured that kids respond better to humour that is inspired from their surroundings rather than an alien country. So, we take strict measures to ensure the cartoons connect with them on a local level,” he tells us.
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