Dangerous Dummies Dubbing our Films

I’m sure a lot of people around the world watch original movies dubbed in their own language. I’m sure you must have done so too. Come on, you can’t deny having watched at least one beautiful English movie torn to shreds in Hindi just for the fun of it. You were just bored on a Sunday and had nothing to do. You had a good movie but only the dubbed version which you are too good to watch because you are a true connoisseur of cinema. But what the hell might as well get a laugh or two out of it.

So you saw it.

You sat through the entire film and were laughing the whole time because you’d seen the one in English. But you’re also disgusted because you’ve degraded yourself by watching a ‘dubbed’ version, have you not? Aah! That short smile of guilt and regret tells me you’ve gone and done it… Tch tch tch… poor you.

Image Courtesy: Google Images.

But. If you haven’t or you regularly watch English films dubbed in Hindi because of reasons like the Americans don’t speak British English or speak it too fast or speak Americanese because they think that’s English… it’s ok. I can understand.

In that case, be aware that what you’re hearing being spoken in the film isn’t actually what the dialogues are. You might as well be watching a Hindi film with American actors.

To put it straight – What you’re watching isn’t exactly the literal translation of what is being spoken by the characters in the film.

If you didn’t know that then it is my unfortunate duty to inform you that thou hast been made what we in India call a ‘Bakra’. In other words, ‘a damn fool’.

Oh you already knew that? Damn. Then you read all the above for nothing. However, if you can still bear with me for a moment, I’ll explain myself.

You see, Hindi is as of now the third most spoken language in the world, Mandarin Chinese and English being at first and second places respectively. So when a widely popular film is dubbed into Hindi and is seen by the Hindi speaking audience of the world, can you imagine how many people only hear the bullshit that the dubbing artists spew out? I’m not saying that all movies are dubbed badly but in my experience, most of them are and when this happens, a lot of people less smart than you actually believe that load of nonsense.

Films, I believe, are the mirror of society, not wholly representative, but a foggy mirror nonetheless. People actually do connect with movies and believe what is shown therein to be a reflection of the civilization they come from. So when and if you watch a movie that has been dubbed in Hindi, let it be Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Arabic, French, Spanish, Austrian, German, Australian, British or American, there may be discrepancies in the translation and since you may or may not know all these languages, you may not realize the differences between the original and dubbed dialogues.

This is dangerous.

It is not always apparent but we do understand different cultures only by watching the films made there unless you are a globe-trotting multi-millionaire intellectual who understands culture only by going to different countries and observing them closely. So our thinking is affected largely by what we see in films. This effect is unimaginable if viewed from a global perspective of the number of films dubbed wrongly and viewed by the Hindi populace of the world. Try to think about that. I’ll wait.

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Ok, now what one generation thinks about another culture is bound to affect the next generation because that is how one gains preliminary knowledge about the world. So the effect of dumb dubbing is not restricted to space alone, it also has an effect over time.

Whoa! Right? I thought so too.

So you see how dummies dubbing our films can be dangerous? If not, then please do watch the film ‘Men in Black II’ in English and in Hindi. My team and I found 74 discrepancies in dialogues ranging from geographical to cultural to racial to language based errors.

But damn is it hilarious!

The Parasitic Language

Quite an unusual title to a post, right? ‘The Parasitic Language.’ I’m sure that a majority of you reading this post right now came here hoping that this was a short story of some kind. I assure you now, well in advance that it most certainly is not. I also know that a lot of you will probably leave this page after reading the previous line which makes this line sort of obsolete but those of you who've managed to persevere till this point, I’m sure this will be worth it.

First, a slice of history.

Image courtesy: Wikipedia.

We humans developed language as a means to communicate since we seem to have lost the awesome power of telepathy, well most of us anyway. Every part of the world developed its own language and then each specific region in turn developed a dialect of their particular language. In time, we humans also figured out that we could use our hands for something other than hunting and killing both animals and people, thus the weapon mightier than the sword was born and the written word came into existence.

Skipping a few millennia we come to the age of expansion wherein the ‘civilized’ nations carried the burden of educating the rest of the ‘barbarian’ world with the concept of colonization and international trade (read: Forced Globalization). And in the race to be the mightiest world power, the British came out on top there came a time when it was said, ‘The sun never sets on the British Empire.’ Yeah, they were basically what USA was to become in the modern age, but more aggressively so.

The result of the above events.

Image Courtesy: Google Images.

Since the British managed to conquer various parts of the globe, they obviously became the rulers there and spread their technology, religion and the most important thing: their language. Over time, the English language became the primary language of governance and finance in most of the world simply because the Empire managed to survive that long. However, even after they relinquished their hold over their colonies because the natives had become smart, thanks to their education policies, the language was deeply entrenched in the society and refused to leave with its departing countrymen.

Unlike certain languages like Sanskrit (in the Indian context), English managed to stay rooted and blossom wherever it was sown because it had the ability to adapt. The scholars in England were smart enough to realize that to survive; the language had to adopt words from the cultures they were spoken in, simply because there weren't words in English to describe some things in their former colonies. Things that were either not found in England or not been recognized before. It was only this long-term planning that allowed this language to not only blossom but turn into the massive banyan tree that envelopes the world today.

Now, the point I’m trying to make.

Image Courtesy: Google Images.

Now it’s all hunky dory to have an international language that binds most of the world together and promotes everything from business to international relations. But I wonder if English is becoming a threat to the regional languages which with it co-exists. Again in the context of India, as far as I know, English is becoming a threat at least to a number of languages; to their spoken as well as written form. In this Age of Information, it is a almost a sin if one doesn't know to speak English. It has slowly turned from being spoken in compulsion to something that is a requirement if one has any sort of ambition. To not know even a smattering of English is considered illiteracy and a sign of incomplete and second–grade education.

Because of this situation, India is experiencing a dearth of candidates who opt for the state or national languages. One might expect that due to the rainbow of cultures residing in not only this country but the entire subcontinent, languages might have no fear of dying out. But it is frightening to see how fast dialects and whole languages spoken by a small number of people are on the verge of extinction. Is this what is survival of the fittest? It is not like other languages do not adopt words from other languages, they do so unofficially but since English has the advantage of having an institution of its own that constantly updates words into its lexicon, I fear there will come a time when this language will finally eliminate its competition to emerge as the one language of the world.