Recently one of my friends asked me, "Soumya, you being from Odisha, how did you learn hindi?" I replied, "By watching cartoons, Dexter, Courage, Powerpuff girls etc.." My friend, being from northern India burst into laughter. It was funny because it was true.
This reminded me of summer of 2004 when my father had brought the Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone DVD.The audio was in English, and evidently so I couldn't understand a word and developed a disliking towards it.It was not until the summer of '06 when I rediscovered Harry Potter on POGO,but this time in Hindi. That day I was shocked,how was I skipping this my whole life(though not a long time). That day,marked the beginning of an ignorant child's life long love affair with the Potter Universe. And it all happened because I could understand what was going on on the screen, because finally it was in a language I was familiar with.
I still find enormous pleasure in chanting 'neerastra bhava' (stupefy), 'prakashit bhava' (lumos), asta bhuja bhasmam and the best of all, 'tutam, jodam' (Lockhart rocks).
As most of the children of my age, I was introduced to hollywood movies primarily by those dubbed ones on SET MAX. The first movie that was dubbed to Hindi (also in Tamil and Telugu) for a theatrical release in India was Spielberg's blockbuster Jurassic Park, which came 10 months after its U.S. release in 1994.Jacinto Fernandes, marketing head of Universal Studios said, "It was a landmark release for us. The Hindi market was huge and the best way to reach out the audiences was to serve them in their own language. "Not only did Jurassic Park smashed the box-office earning nearly 19 crores in its 25 week run, it also paved the way for the following Hollywood releases for the Indian audience, now in their own language, thus a much wider reach.
Why do we inherently enjoy content in our own language to an extent like no other? Because it gives us a sense of belongingness, a nostalgic touch. Because it is as soothing as home, an Udit Narayan song you can fall back to in your worst of the days. A joke in our mother tongue always guarantees the biggest laughter.
The greater barrier while watching foreign content is cultural more than lingual. Like in Avengers: Infinity war when Star Lord calls Thanos Grimace (a bald purple character used in McDonald's ads in the U.S), the general Indian audience (also English speaking) might have got confused. But in the Hindi version, when he was referred as, "Oye, baingan kahin ke." the audience around me in the theatre burst into laughter. Similarly the movie 'Footloose' reference is changed to 'ABCD'. When Thor mentions the Avengers being Earth's mightiest heroes, Mantis asking ,"Like Kevin Bacon?" is changed to, "Jaise Sunny Paji?" for a more vernacular audience.
It is not that the dubbing always changes the whole thing, they also care about the impact of a sentence by keeping it as it is. Like when me and my brother were watching 300 in Hindi, and were ready to hurt our ears and emotions with the God knows what translation of ,"This is Sparta". Leonidas kicked the Persian messenger shouting ,"This is Sparta.", no changes.
Yes, dubbing sometimes take away the fun of the "original" dialogues, and the debate of dubbing versus subtitles is as unresolving as Messi versus Ronaldo, but it's always a good point to discover an uncharted territory. Because every time I see something horrifying in the dark, the first word from my mouth is, "Pitradev sanrakshanam."
By: Soumya Shekhar Das
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