Monday, December 1, 2008

Apna Hollywood

A lot of hollywood movies are dubbed into Hindi for the mass audience in India where an American accent is the stumbling block. Subtitles are too distracting and take away from the 'action' ;) on screen.

I have managed to come across several recently including:

1.Indiana Jones aur Chamkili Kapaal ki Saltanat (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull)
2. Mahashaktimaan (The Matrix)
3. Mita Doonga Naam-o-Nishaan (Eraser)
4. LOTR - Anguthi ke Hifaazatgaar (LOTR - Fellowship of the Ring)
5. Mayaawi Talwar (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon)

I could go on and on about these titles. Now we are speechless when titles like these come up because we, desi junta are more used to the sugary sweet titles like K3G, KKHH, DDLG, Mohabattein. This is where Bollywood distributors have got it all wrong. You don't see movies like 50 first dates, Knocked Up, Amelie getting translated into Hindi, thats because we can dish out equivalent romantic comedy types but when it comes to action, now that's a different story. Even the most well executed stunts end up looking hilarious (of course there are exceptions) and we end up splitting our sides.

I wish there comes a day when Hollywood will translate our fare into English and see for themselves how mutilated this whole dub-redub process becomes and that day we get to hear the immortal dialog
"Children of Pigs. They were two and you three !!, even then you returned !!. What did you think, the ringleader would be joyous and shower praises on you !!! " (Any guesses about this masterpiece in its original form)

2 comments:

SEV said...

Dude, no matter what, you CANNOT insult Sholay.

Shrek said...

man...all m sayin is....when wil hollywood ever copy dialogues 4m us too n say...."Come in front if you have drunk your mother's milk...."...LMAO....sholay was just an instance of d same....:)