Lost in Bad Translation

Lost इन Bad ट्रांसलेशन
Russian dubbing sometimes ruins films. But that doesn't have to be the case. Marina Kamenev reports.

http://context.themoscowtimes.com/print.php?aid=184346
By Marina KamenevPublished: April 11, 2008
There are some voices that are suited to their foreign roles. "National Lampoon's Pledge This!" a movie starring Paris Hilton, is dubbed by Russia's own socialite bimbo, Ksenia Sobchak. And Pamela Anderson and Denise Richards in "Blonde and Blonder" are dubbed, most appropriately, by blonde Ukrainian pop star Olya Polyakova and by the blonder and more surgically enhanced television presenter Masha Malinovskaya.Those, however, look like rare examples of when dubbing gets it right in a country where dubbing on illegal DVDs ranges from the incomprehensible to the inaudible. Often, all the characters --male and female, young and old -- speak in the same monotonous voice of a middle-aged man.The combination of amateur translating and dubbing can lead to perplexing moments on screen.

One expat recalled how, in the cult U.S. series "Lost," the heroine, Kate, was telling another character that she was wanted. "Ya khochu [I want]," said the person reading over the film.But some studios and actors insist that dubbing can be done properly. Sergei Kazakov and Stanislav Strelkov both trained as actors and have been dubbing films for over 15 years.Kazakov, who has played everyone from Sylvester Stallone in "Rocky" to Robert De Niro in "The Godfather Part II," said that films are mostly dubbed because Russia does not have a culture of subtitles. "It's a well-read nation. People read so many books that when they come to the cinema, they want to switch off." Kazakov and Strelkov work with official studios and agree that the industry has changed over the last two decades. "Then [in 1991], dubbing had more significance. Before you even had a microphone in front of you, you would be assigned your role and watch the film. They would say, 'You are Stanley, you are Harold, you are Stella,' and then we would watch the film knowing who we were playing, go home, practice our lines and then perform them later."

Goblin (Dmitry Puchkov) is well known in Russia for his uncensored translations of leading English-language films and TV programs.

In the early '90s, new releases hardly made their way into Russia, and most of the films they dubbed were already well known. Today, for many actors, the first time they see the film is when their voice is already being recorded, which makes it more difficult. "You have to judge the personality and adjust your voice from a piece of paper," said Kazakov. Which means that even if movies are professionally dubbed, there is a lot of room for error.There are two ways of translating films from their original: voiceover , where the actors talk over the script, and the original language is still audible; and dubbing, where -- if it's done right -- the actors appear to be speaking in Russian."Dubbing is much harder," said Kazakov. "You have to read the script and determine the character's personality, their intonation, try and imagine the way they speak, their every cough. Everything has to be perfect," he said. Voiceovers are done slightly differently. "There are usually three people that do the voiceover for one film, two males and a female," said Strelkov, because there are more male roles in most films. "To be good at voiceovers, you have to be able to read quickly, have a good, clear voice, with a lot of range and have very good timing," Strelkov said.

Scope
Sergei Kazakov dubbed Robert De Niro in "The Godfather Part II."
Actors have to differentiate their voice when they are responsible for the sound of more than one character. "Sometimes it sounds like there are twenty people in the studio, and not three," said Kazakov. When dubbing, the film can be paused to fit the sentence in with the actors' words, but there is no such possibility with voiceovers, where the film has to play at its original speed while the voices are recorded."You don't need to act as much in voiceovers, because you already have a sense of the original actor -- the way they act, the way they sound," said Strelkov.

Translating voiceovers, however, is much more difficult, and it's a process that involves editing. "You have to translate the words not only so they make sense but so that they fit in and take up the exact amount of space as the original text," said Gennady Maksimov, an expert in the field of film translations. "With dubbing you can be creative, but the rules and parameters for voiceovers are much stricter."Maksimov usually works with French translations, but has also translated "The Godfather" into Russian."It's very difficult because its not just translating words: You have to make sure that things make sense culturally. Taking something that is American and making sure that every aspect of it will translate to a Russian audience is the real challenge."Russia's most famous film translator is Dmitry Puchkov, known as Goblin. He is notorious for not toning down the bad language from the original films, ranging from Guy Ritchie's "Snatch" to "The Big Lebowski." His aim, he said in an email interview, is to make the translation as authentic as possible.Puchkov said that a good translation requires expertise in a variety of fields, from medicine, to law, to astronomy. "The issue is not so much knowing English, as knowing everything that allows you to understand the original adequately enough to translate it into Russian."

Top Film Distribution

"Blonde and Blonder" is dubbed by Russia's own stars.
Puchkov said one of the reasons that dubbing is so awful is that the people doing it often don't care enough about the finished product. "It's obvious to everyone that American films are stupid. Any idiot can translate them, and in fact idiots are hired to do so. To this you can add the work of the actors who do the dubbing and don't care about the films, and the sound director, who decides how it should sound. As a result you end up with a totally different film, with different dialogues, different intonations, and different accents."Puchkov has a set method of translating. First he watches the film for understanding, then he consults a dictionary. "Where before you had a shelf of books, now you have the web." He then looks at specific clauses that may not be understood in Russia. "How to quickly explain what a famous company does ... what's funny about the last name of a comic character, what kind of details you need for translating jokes."

If there are things that Puchkov does not understand, he asks the author of the text. "I have never encountered a refusal for help."If a direct translation does not work, than Puchkov will work something different into the film. "Most jokes are a play on words, so translating them word for word is impossible. You have to make your own joke up, or insert an analogy," he said.While there are a lot of fans of Puchkov on Internet forums, not everyone is a Goblin follower. "I think only young people can possibly like his translations, because they are fascinated by the swearing, but it caters to the lowest possible audience," said Maksimov. "It's butchery. It's like taking Pushkin and interpreting it with some kind of modern, vulgar voice."Maksimov recalled trying to watch the Sopranos on NTV3. "The series said that it was a professional translation by Goblin, which I thought was the height of rudeness," he said. "It was insulting to the actors and to the profession of translating."

The fact that there is no professional training in the field of dubbing is, perhaps, the source of these conflicting ideas. This is a problem that Kazakov and Strelkov hope to solve next year -- by opening Russia's first school to teach trained actors how to do dub.