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Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Star's Believe it or not


(This post is for the Indiblogger's FireFreeze Challenge competition. Please do vote for me if you like my post. Or if you like me. Or even if you don't. :P)
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Being a translator for a company that subtitles Hindi films and TV shows in English is not easy. I don't know whether I love my job or hate it. 

Believe it or not, I recently had to translate 50 minutes of this:



I really didn't know whether to laugh or to cry. It was one of the worst pieces of Indian television that I had come across so far - on job and out of it. But it was also one of those examples of "It's so bad, it's good." If you are not too sensitive, you can totally enjoy watching this one for it's absolute ridiculousness. And for it's unimaginable commentary.

The sad part for me was that I had to translate that ridiculous commentary in English. 
Okay, correction. I had to try and translate that ridiculous commentary in English. Because, obviously, I couldn't do all of it accurately. 

For example: When this King Kobra person was being beaten up, the commentator once said: "Agar is naag ki koi girlfriend, koi Icchhadhari Nagin hogi, toh woh iski haar ka badla legi." (Rough trasnlation: If this snake had a girlfriend, some snake woman, then she would take revenge if he lost the fight.") That was the moment of my Firefreeze.  I was laughing so hard that I started crying. And once I got over it, I realised that I will have to translate that in English. How would you ever translate "Icchhadhari Nagin"?! I ended up using "Snake woman".

And then, the commentator kept telling during every fight that this is brutal and how could they do this and how they come up with new ways of torturing people and blah di blah di blah. So, umm.. what was he expecting on a Wrestling reality show? Flowers and balloons and lots of kissing? I wanted to scream out loudly out of frustration and also laugh out loudly for the sheer ridiculousness of it all.

All in all, it was a brilliant experience and one of it's kind on my job. I never thought I would say this but after seeing this, I am so glad for the Indian television dramas. Short, predictable and lots of loud background score. :P And easy for translation. Most of the dialogues can be copied in some document and then, pasted in various different TV shows. ;)

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Like I said before, this post is for the Indiblogger's
 FireFreeze Challenge. So, I hope you all like it. Please vote for me here by clicking on "Promote this post". Also, please do leave a comment about similar experiences that you might have had - mood swings, confusions, crushes, heart-breaks - anything and everything. And then, copy-paste the same comment here. Thank you!

4 comments:

  1. How about wishful thinking snake for Ichhadhaari naag...

    And you do have an interesting job, at least it makes you laugh.

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  2. It's probably more accurate! :P I had even thought of "Form-changing snakewoman". But the senior editor said only snakewoman will do. :P hehe! Yes, sometimes my job does make me laugh.

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  3. Oh my....that was.....I am at loss of words here.....
    Like Purba said, interesting job you have

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  4. Thanks! But it used to be interesting at times. Most of the times, I had to do the star episodes with dialogues like "Tumne aisa kyun kiya?" "Maine kisika kya bigada hai?" "Nikal jao mere ghar se" etc etc.

    But good news. I have quit! After the two weeks of noyice is done, I will dedicate all my time to cooking brilliant dishes and baking cakes and travelling and learning languages and indulging myself. Sigh. 5th March can't come soon enough.

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