When 'Bandar' Became 'Monkey'
Saw 'Pather Panchali' after nearly 20 years - twice in 24 hours. I won't try to add to the review literature on the masterpiece.
The English subtitles on the DVD contained a few interesting nuggets. Here is one sample:
The street corner showman's loud invitation: "dekho dekho Dilli dekho, Bambai dekho, Dilli ka Kuttab, Agre ka Taj, Mathura ka Mandir, Bambai ka Bandar!"
was subtitled: "Come! See! Qutub of Delhi, Taj of Agra, Mandir of Bandra,... Monkey of Bombay!"'
'Mathura' had turned to 'Bandra' in translation. And yes, 'bandar' had become 'monkey'.
The English subtitles on the DVD contained a few interesting nuggets. Here is one sample:
The street corner showman's loud invitation: "dekho dekho Dilli dekho, Bambai dekho, Dilli ka Kuttab, Agre ka Taj, Mathura ka Mandir, Bambai ka Bandar!"
was subtitled: "Come! See! Qutub of Delhi, Taj of Agra, Mandir of Bandra,... Monkey of Bombay!"'
'Mathura' had turned to 'Bandra' in translation. And yes, 'bandar' had become 'monkey'.
posted by R.Nandakumar @ 8:09 AM
2 Comments:
At 6:08 PM,
Anonymous said…
Off-topic comment: I did not finish Kayar. I got confused because of the many characters in the novel! Perhaps there should be a glossary of all the characters like the family tree in One Hundred Years of Solitude!
At 10:57 PM,
R.Nandakumar said…
vishnu,
i feared as much. anyways, i am sure you have enough exciting things to do in berkeley not to worry about finishing (what to me is) a rather overrated piece of literature!
'kayar' is one book i could not read beyond 100 pages; it was many years ago. but i do remember reading patches of it beyond that point and finding some historically interesting parts deeper in the book - some 'victims' remember the malabar rebellion, for instance. there is also a debate between two (muslim) brothers on whether they belong to pakistan or to india, against the backdrop of partition.
the main problem with takazhi, in my opinion, is the tedious prose and dullish dialog!
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