The un-smart Subtitles
Being a Malaysian, simply watch a movie and you can get a side “entertainment” by just reading the subtitles. No, not the VCDs or DVDs you get at the streets or nowdays.. the restaurants. Really, just hop into a cinema and watch a movie and you’ll get what I mean…
I remember sometime ago, perhaps a coupla’years ago, I watched LOTR with Weipz. We do not usually read the subtitles, but heck. Having to know our proud Malaysia language, it’s simply amusing that it’s not quite possible to take notice of those subtitles. There was a line spoken by either Pippins or Merry… “The nearer we are to danger, the further we are from harm” or something like that. Oh well. So guess what? The subtitle was nicely put in, “Lebih dekat kita dengan bahaya, lebih jauh kita dari bahaya.” Conveniently translated, but why even bother? doink, doink, doink…
Then last month I watched Be Cool, starring J. Travolta and Uma Thurman. I remembered the moment the title came out and rightaway my brother and I were strucked with absurdity, and guess what was the translation? “RELAKS“. Now, how C-O-O-L was that? At least the translators did a good job there by not translating to something like, “Jadi Gaya” or “Bergaya” or worse, “Jadi Dingin”!!! hoho! couldn’t stop laughing… just as me. I guess the distributors made these translators watch the movie first this time. I remembered someone telling me that Ocean’s Twelve was “Kisah Dua Belas Lautan“! Bite me… I think anyone could have died twice. First, baffled by the translation of the title. Secondly, having to laugh and choke to death when the bag that fitted the little Chinese acrobat, Yen went missing. And there’s someone asked right at that moment, “How did he hold his pee?”
The most recent movie i had was Star Wars… which was “Perang Galaksi”. O well, I guess that was quite okay. But when they translated the robots’ names… walau, it was super! R2 was “Artoo”, R4 was “Arfour” and 3-PO was “Threepio” in the subtitles. Oh boy… I figured the translator was either a comedian cum translator or that fella ain’t so much of a “Perang Galaksi” fan.
I sometimes wonder whether these blind translations happen in other countries. Man, it must be hillarious…
you know, here in the states, I’ve watched a few chinese movies; e.g: crouching tiger hidden dragon, hero and shaolin soccer. they never translated or dubbed the movie into english, they only had subtitles that translated the entire movie. so to be fair, the subtitles is just to help the non-english speaking crowd to understand the movie and also, in a way, its to respect the way the director wanted you to see the movie. now, on the other hand, i have to say though, english is a far more developed and evolved language then BM is. there are more subtleties and nuances in english then there is in BM, which is one of the reasons why i think translating something into BM is a bit awkward. just my 2 cents
rainier, on 6-3-2005 @ 10:55 am |