When dialogues desiccate, a song blooms. A unique feature of Indian cinema, it dignifies and depicts emotions so oceanic, so fluid, that prosaic expressions fall short. If feelings are water, a song is a vessel. How do you, for example, capture the exhilaration of a young woman growing up in an oppressive family, seeing the world for the first time, absorbing not just what바카라s outside but inside her? Sure, you can use a monologue or a dialogue바카라maybe even a voiceover바카라but would any of it hit home? Probably not. So you do this: As her fingers jog outside a truck바카라s window, a song plays in the background: O jugni o / Pataakha guddi o. And, as if reveling in coded communication, we get it바카라instantly, instinctively. Because if a picture paints a thousand words, a song paints a thousand pictures. Bollywood songs, as a result, have reinforced what we바카라ve (intuitively) known for long: that prose can be a prison.
A film song is not just a musical composition. Placed in an existing narrative, it underscores mood, develops characters, propels subplots. If you know Hindi, a Bollywood song will almost always make sense to you바카라even if you don바카라t know all the words. But how would a song talk to you if you don바카라t understand the language? Musically pleasant, yes, but linguistically alien, as if living in a rented house. Or, to summarise an excerpt from a Gulzar song, it바카라d make you feel as if you바카라re in 바카라someone else바카라s courtyard wearing socks, even when barefoot바카라.
That바카라s when translators, or film subtitlers, help diminish the divide. Even though dialogues, too, pose translational challenges, a song is especially tricky because, besides transporting mood and meaning, it demands at least one more layer of interpretation: rhythm, rhyme, and metre. In fact, the task can be so daunting, and silly mistakes so easy, that translational goof-ups have spawned memes, listicles, and a website (Paagal Subtitles). Consider this blooper from a Karan Arjun (1994) song, where Yeh bandhan toh pyaar ka bandhan hai / Janmon ka sangam hai became 바카라This bondage is the bondage of love, it is the intercourse of many births.바카라
The main difficulties, of course, transcend the literal translations, as they pivot on interpretations. Take the recent Besharam Rang song. A literal mould might tempt a novice subtitler to use 바카라shameless colours바카라. But Nasreen Munni Kabir, who has subtitled over 800 movies (including Pathaan), used something else: true colours. So Besharam rang kahan dekha duniya waalon ne turned 바카라The world has not seen my true colours바카라. Besides bearing similarity to the idiom 바카라show[ing] one바카라s true colours바카라, it also, very unobtrusively, plants a narrative seed in the viewers바카라 minds because it바카라s sung by Deepika Padukone바카라s character, a spy, someone whose 바카라true colours바카라 are difficult to discern.
바카라If you say shameless colour, the non-Hindi audience won바카라t understand,바카라 says Kabir. 바카라And when you make obscure connections in English, you make the audience think about the subtitles바카라not the shot, not the film, not the story.바카라 Besides tussling with individual words, subtitlers also have to consider the form: Do you rhyme, or do you not? Do you match the rhythm or catch the words? 바카라I like to stay as close to the original imagery as possible,바카라 she says. 바카라Because otherwise, you dilute the cultural atmosphere of the song. Sometimes you can work the rhyme, sometimes you cannot. But if you바카라ve to change the meaning to make the words rhyme then, I feel, you should not rhyme.바카라
Every subtitler then must bring to their work their own take on translation, especially while resolving the tension between content and form. 바카라While I make a point of producing a rhymed translation when subtitling songs,바카라 says François-Xavier Durandy, who has subtitled such films as Pyaasa (1957), Slumdog Millionaire (2008), and Titli (2015) into French, 바카라I don바카라t necessarily strive to keep all content 100% intact.바카라 He prefers 바카라target-oriented translation바카라 which, 바카라more than doing justice to the original author바카라, allows 바카라continuous immersion바카라 in a movie. 바카라My approach would likely be different if I translated poetry to be published in print, but in the case of subtitles, there are no footnotes, no foreword, and no chance to read a line twice.바카라
The structural multiplicity of a Bollywood song바카라it can be a poem, a conversation, a story (or in short: anything)바카라flings further challenges. 바카라The beauty of a Hindi film song is that it바카라s truly cosmopolitan and democratic,바카라 says author Akshay Manwani who, in his books on Sahir Ludhianvi and Nasir Hussain, transliterated and translated several iconic songs. 바카라There are no rules. It바카라s at times also full of rubbish words.바카라 He reels off such classic examples as 바카라Eena Meena Deeka바카라, 바카라C-A-T cat/ Cat maane billi바카라, and Amitabh Bhattacharya바카라s alliterative gibberish genius: 바카라Paan mein pudeena dekha / Naak ka nagina dekha / Chikni chameli dekhi / Chikna kameena dekha. I mean, how do you translate these lines? Do they even need to be translated?바카라
As if resolving Manwani바카라s doubt, Durandy says, 바카라If I had to translate paan main pudeena dekha, I바카라d probably try not to bother too much about content and context and straightaway focus on alliteration. I may say something like un cafard dans mon café [a cockroach in my coffee], which has nothing to do with paan or pudeena, but hopefully would serve the stylistic purpose.바카라 So this is how Jahan Singh Bakshi tried to tame a tongue twister in Shakuntala Devi (2020): 바카라Oont ooncha / Oont ki peeth oonchi / Oonchi poonch oont ki바카라 transformed to 바카라crazy camels, calm camels, the camel clans clashed!바카라
I ask Kabir about the Badtameez Dil conundrum. She tells me to repeat the first two lines, so she can note them down. 바카라You see the trouble is, the majority of the Western audience doesn바카라t know what a paan is. So you keep it as it is. What do you think nagina means in this context바카라is it a nose ring?바카라 Perhaps, I바카라m clueless myself. 바카라So it바카라s an imagery that will work very poorly in English.바카라 She laughs. 바카라You바카라d have to say something like: The glint of mint in the paan / The glint of her nose ring. So I바카라d do the whole song, email it to Amitabh, and ask, 바카라Is this alright?바카라바카라
Like most pieces of translation, Hindi film songs throw two common roadblocks: translating cultures and translating across cultures. Because, in the former, what바카라s true for one may not be for the other. While subtitling Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998), Durandy struggled with zulfon ki ghata lehraai / paigham vafaa ke laai from the song Tujhe yaad na meri aai. It wasn바카라t the words as much as the metaphor: 바카라Clouds are usually harbingers of bad news in France.바카라 Kabir finds 바카라jugaad바카라 and 바카라aukaat바카라 particularly tough. She says a famous Bollywood line, Apni aukat mat bhoolo. 바카라But in England바카라바카라she lives in London and translates for an international audience바카라바카라the class division isn바카라t like that. So what do you say: Don바카라t forget your standing, don바카라t forget your status, don바카라t forget who you are?바카라
Translating across cultures requires close attention to shifting styles. Most Bollywood songs of the 바카라50s and the 바카라60s followed a different literary mode바카라more formal, more chaste바카라as compared to the clipped, conversational lingo dominant today. Which is why, translating Sahir Ludhianvi바카라s songs, Durandy felt free 바카라to omit articles바카라, as it 바카라makes French sound archaic바카라. Kabir underscores a 바카라marked difference바카라 between the songs of the two periods. 바카라Even though the language of the 바카라50s was much richer,바카라 she says, 바카라they were far easier to translate.바카라 Such songs had two main aspects: they told a story, and they used a subtle style to describe emotions. 바카라What do I mean by storytelling? Sahir, Zindagi bhar nahin bhoolegi woh barsaat ki raat. He바카라s describing a whole night, and it바카라s very easy to translate. But today they talk in concepts about love. The words are drowned in music. They are tougher to translate because they mean less.바카라
Unlike a pure textual translation (say, a poem or a novel), film subtitles also accompany sounds and images, two more avenues of information, which impose their own restrictions. Kabir says the 바카라shot duration바카라 and 바카라dialogue delivery바카라 determine the length of the subtitle. So movies with fast cuts, and quick dialogues, are more challenging to translate, as a 바카라subtitle should not go over the cut바카라. Durandy ran into a visual problem while subtitling Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam (1962); the song Piya Aiso Jiya Mein featured 바카라extreme close-up shots바카라 of Meena Kumari. 바카라For the first time, I felt my subtitles were like a blot on a beautiful face,바카라 he says. 바카라They would inevitably land on her chin or lips and there was not much I could do, because I had to use subtitles.바카라 So he split them. A normal subtitle would have looked like the following on screen, a big block of text:
Mon bien-aimé a pris
possession de mon cœur
바카라But it would have encroached too much on Meena Kumari바카라s face,바카라 he explains, 바카라which is why I went for two separate one-line subtitles, looking like this:
Mon bien-aimé a pris
+
possession de mon cœur.바카라
It was awkward to separate the verses, Durandy clarifies, 바카라but it would have been even more awkward to hide Meena Kumari바카라s face.바카라
Some subtitling problems can be as simple, or as complicated, as the authorial intent. Durandy bashed into one such wall while subtitling Jai Ho from Slumdog Millionaire (2008). He hadn바카라t received the lyrics바카라 transcript from the production team and had to rely on online sources바카라a linguistic minefield, especially when it comes to Gulzar. 바카라Most websites had Aa ja, aa ja jind shamiyaane ke tale as the first line,바카라 he says. 바카라But is there any such word as 바카라jind바카라 in Hindi or Urdu?바카라 Another possibility multiplied his confusion. 바카라How did the Punjabi jind find its way into the lyrics and how did it relate syntactically to the rest of the verse?바카라 Durandy asked around, then wrote a Twitter thread바카라nothing worked. He found out the actual word much later: 바카라jinde바카라. Eventually, he dropped the 바카라mysterious jind but still managed to produce a translation바카라, which he is 바카라not ashamed of바카라: Retrouve-moi sous ma tente bordée de voiles / Retrouve-moi sous le ciel bleu brodé d바카라étoiles (Come meet me under my veils-lined tent/ Come meet me under the stars-embroidered blue sky). Even though he had to sacrifice some text, the symmetric construction바카라바카라brodé echoing bordée바카라 and 바카라twelve syllables with two caesuras: 4바카라4바카라4바카라바카라pleased him. Trying to unravel the jind-jinde mystery on his Twitter thread, Durandy wondered: 바카라If only I were Nasreen Munni Kabir and could fine-tune the translation with Gulzar himself!바카라
Kabir바카라s book with the lyricist, Jiya Jale: The Story of Songs (2018), itself emerged from a translation project: She had been asked to subtitle the restored print of Dil Se (1998). She speaks fondly about collaborating with Mani Ratnam, checking 바카라every line바카라 of his latest, Ponniyin Selvan (2022), with him. 바카라When the producer and the director [or their assistants] are involved, it바카라s a much better subtitle because the intention of the dialogues comes across much clearer,바카라 she says. 바카라So, as a translator, I can refer to them. Mani Ratnam knows both Tamil and English very well, so he understands when I get it, and when I can improve it. To be honest, it바카라s a great pleasure to sit next to a director whom you deeply respect. Because then you바카라re part of the team.바카라
