I realize how a lousy translation can kill the essence of something and make it sound funny. I can understand it may not be always easy to translate something from one language to another without losing original meaning, humor and flow but why is it so difficult to translate simple dialogues of Bollywood Hindi movies to say English. I wonder how Tagore had translated Geetanjali from Bengali to English. Let me give some examples from some movies that I watched recently.
In "Apne", Sunny Deol was going afroad on business purpose but his father wasnot happy with him . However, his mom said to him, "...Mein unhe samjha lungi..".Subtitle on that diaglogue was: "...Don't worry, I will satisfy him..". In many other movies, translators just translated word-to-word, e.g., Butterfly for 'Titli', 'Bhabi' for sister-in-law. I am wondering how would viewers understandwhat Bhabhi is if they cannot understand original dialogues. I was also surprised to see incorrect translations of dialogues in "Aporajito", a sequel of Pather Panchali by Satyajit Ray. "Appu" (correct one should have been ApU) was baptised as a priest and he was instructed to pour Ghee (like butter) on fire. However, the translation was "Put honey on fire". Is Ghee same as Honey ?
Earlier I used to tell my friend -- I would like to work for Quality Assurance in Netflix, that is, I would like to get paid for watching movies. Now seeing such incorrect translations, I tend to feel more motivated for QA job title.
