On Friday November 30th, 2018, Professor Tejaswini Ganti presented at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at an event titled “‘English is so precise and Hindi can be so heavy!’: Language Ideologies and Audience Imaginaries in a Mumbai Dubbing Studio.” The event was sponsored by the Centre for South Asian Studies, and co-sponsored by the Cinema Studies Institute and the Department for Visual Studies. Professor Tejaswini Ganti is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at New York University and a member of the core faculty in its Program in Culture & Media.
This event was the first public presentation of Professor Ganti’s fieldwork. Her ethnographic study of multilingualism examined production practices in the film and television industries, such as subtitle dubbing. In particular, she observed the scripting and dubbing of films and television series from English to Hindi. Some of the studied productions are very well-known and popular, including shows such as “Sacred Games” and “House of Cards,” the dubbing of which took place at the Netflix-chosen studio in Bombay.
Since “Jurassic World” was dubbed first into Hindi in 1994, the market has grown significantly. All science fictions films started to be released in dubbed versions. 40% of English releases were dubbed into at least one foreign language, usually Hindi. Dubbing allowed Hollywood studios to enlarge their audience in India, and thereby increase profits from the Indian market. In her presentation, Professor Ganti showed Box Office pamphlets from Indian theatres between the years of 2013-2015, including blockbusters such as “X-Man,” “Iron Man,” “Godzilla,” “Fast & Furious,” and “The Jungle Book”. However, she explained that the ‘hit’ rankings on these pamphlets are reflective of profits made by the distributor, rather than the producer.
In Professor Ganti’s research, interviews with dubbing professionals brought to light the presence of language ideologies that were articulated, performed and manifested through ‘hit’ films. Dubbing, as Professor Ganti notes, is not just a meta-semiotic activity. It is entangled with the assertion of social difference, and represents a movement across different social systems.
One of the challenges facing dubbing professionals is the issue of translation. However, it is not that there is no equivalent of English words in Hindi, but rather that there is no colloquial equivalent. Professor Ganti gave the example of the word ‘getaway,’ which in the trailer for Shallows (2016) expresses the double meaning of both escape and vacation. Due to the lack of a colloquial substitute in Hindi, the dubbing team decided to keep English writing in the trailer and insert a dubbed voice in Hindi that communicates the meaning-at-large, rather than providing a literal translation. As a result, the trailer in Hindi is completely different from the original trailer in English.
Everything colloquial or ‘light’ in English becomes ‘heavy’ and formal when translated to Hindi. This was the explanation dubbing professionals gave when they were asked about their strong emphasis on the use of colloquial vocabulary. On one hand, as Professor Ganti notes, this explanation can be understood as reminiscent of ideas from India’s colonial era, when Hindi was perceived as inadequate and unable to fully express ideas. However, her research shed light on a different perspective. According to dubbing professionals, the problem does not lie in the deficiency of Hindi as a language, but rather in the comprehension of Hindi speakers. This idea illustrates the understanding that dubbing is done for people who speak Hindi but are not necessarily literate. Therefore, by emphasizing issues of literacy, dubbing is aimed at those with poor socio-economic backgrounds. Indeed, as Professor Ganti’s research further illuminated, dubbing is often done for those who are unfamiliar with English. There is a consensus that if one could understood English, he/she would watch the film in the original. Another underlying assumption is that those who only speak Hindi do not understand all Hindi words. As such, there is a need to keep dubbing simple and make content easier to comprehend.
These assumptions were brought forth in Professor Ganti’s conversations with dubbing professionals, who assigned great importance to avoiding formal language, instead using conversational equivalents. In addition to assuming that the audience does not speak English, the audience is presumed to not have extensive Hindi vocabulary. Professor Ganti reports that according to dubbing professionals, nobody would watch a film if it is in pure Hindi, because the audience would not be able to understand it.
Another important factor in the practice of dubbing from Hindi to English is to make films not sound dubbed, because this perception will decrease the value of films. Dubbed films are often criticized for being too literate and for commending the wrong ideas. Thus, any disconnect between off-screen actors and the dubbed voice are avoided. In the opinion of dubbing professionals, the dubbed film should not only sound natural, but also look natural. This can be achieved through means such as synchronizing closed lips with its sound equivalent in Hindi. The goal of such practices is to make the audience believe that despite the person on the screen being white, he/she can speak Hindi. Erasing traces of English is thus important for adapting and localizing Hollywood films.
Interestingly, dubbing professionals describe their work as ‘transcreating’ instead of ‘translating’. The practice of ‘transcreating’ involves translating concepts, rather than merely words. Professor Ganti illustrates the work of ‘transcreating’ through an example from “The Jungle Book”. In the film, the ‘red flower’ – how animals in the film refer to fire – carries meanings of mystery and beauty. In Hindi, the literal translation ‘laal phool’ loses its original meaning, and even becomes somewhat comic. Thus, the concept has been localized and translated as ‘rakht phool’ – or if translated literally, ‘blood flower’.
The work of ‘transcreating’ can be highly successful, but also transformational, such that it enables a dubbed Hindi version to compete with its English original. “Dead Pool 2” is one of such examples. Its source material was difficult to dub, because the film included many sexual references that would never obtain the approval of the film board in India. As a result, the dubbed version still retains the film’s original genre of comedy, but the jokes are completely different. Therefore, “Dead Pool 2” was perceived as better and funnier in Hindi than in the original English version. The Hindi version also attracted an audience from sophisticated socio-economic classes, notably disrupting the language hierarchy of social difference.
These ideologies correspond with the assumption that dubbing is aimed at audiences from poor socio-economic backgrounds. On the flip side, there is a perception among social elites that watching dubbed movies places one in the category of lower socio-economic classes, because it indicates one’s inability to understand English. Watching a dubbed film is viewed as something one would do out of necessity rather than preference. However, Professor Ganti notes that the post-2004 shift in dubbing practices from translating to ‘transcreating’ has the power to disrupt older binaries of relative positionality between Hindi and English, thereby bringing language hierarchies into question.
During the Q&A session, Professor Tejaswini Ganti gave several transnational and regional examples of dubbing. Her talk also included a number of excerpts from movies and trailers, further highlighting language ideologies in place. The larger goal of Professor Ganti’s research is to complicate nation-based practices in the filming industry, rather than take such approaches for granted.
Anna Aksenovich is an event reporter for Synergy: The Journal of Contemporary Asian Studies, South Asia section.
Leave a Reply