A few days ago, I was watching television late at night. It was around 1:30, the channel was RTV and the programme was 'Good Shot' featuring a short film. It could only catch the first letter of the maker, 'M' and it was about superstition. It was the story of a man who was being tormented by an evil spirit or jinn. It also hinted that people should not believe in such superstition.
With all due respect it was an amateurish film quite poorly made but that is not the reason why I am writing this letter. It was the subtitles that I found outrageous. It seems it was written by a half literate imbecile. It was hardly decipherable and obviously written by someone who cannot be trusted to write a coherent "Journey by boat" essay. It was rape of the English language. Sure, even Indian films or television dramas sometimes carry a few errors here and there or the language has quaint expression but the subtitles of the Bangladeshi short film in question was so horrible that a foreigner simply couldn't understand what the story was all about! It was so bad that it was not even funny after sometime.
The question is when people know that RTV can be seen from foreign countries why didn't the channel do something about the ludicrous subtitles? And, what about the filmmaker? Did the person not realise that if there are subtitles it means you want people watching the movie to understand what they are seeing? Why can't they just get someone who knows the language better so that he or she is be able to write something an English reading audience can understand?
One explanation I can put forward is that it is possible the writer of the subtitles was possessed by a 'jinn'. On the other hand, others will insist that if that were the case, we would have seen better subtitles. Whatever, the subtitles were a torture to the mind and I would request people to kindly desist from such sadistic exercise.
MA Mannan
Gulshan-2
Dhaka
Rape of the English language
FE Team | Published: August 31, 2008 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00
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