Imagine Sam Neill warning his friends about a T-Rex in the Hindi version of Steven Speilberg’s 1993 cult classic Jurassic Park. Would he say, “Bhaago, dirghakaya rengnevala janwar jo ab nahin paya jata aa raha hai (“Run, a large-bodied, crawling animal that has gone extinct is coming”!)?“.
Unlikely, because chances are that Neill’s friends may not get to hear him out fully.
But the problem is that there isn’t a specific
Hindi word for a dinosaur. Hence, the dubbed television version of the
seminal movie simply called the marauding monster “badi chipkali”—big lizard.
And ever since, “badi chipkali” has stuck to popular imagination among Hindi speakers.
Dubbing
producer Ashim Samanta, however, detests the coinage, and describes it
as an example of the early amateurishness in rendering of Hollywood
films in Indian languages. “TV channels used their own dubbing artists
at low costs and quality, and this created a bad impact on audiences and
threw the market for dubbed films,” Samanta said.
That tackiness is now a thing of the past. The
mini-industry that has sprung up around dubbed Hollywood in India has
its own rules, brand names, and star system. A-list Hollywood releases,
especially the franchises, are almost routinely released in Hindi, Tamil
and Telugu. In fact, Indian language versions can contribute between
40% and 45% of the domestic box office for such movies.
There have been attempts at new languages, such as Bhojpuri for Spider-Man 3, Bengali for Jurassic World, and Malayalam for Exodus: Gods and Kings. The comic book adaptation Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which opened on March 24, has been dubbed, as will be the upcoming Kung Fu Panda 3 (April 1), The Jungle Book (April 8), and Angry Birds (June 3).
American movie studios want to expand their
market in India in the same way that dubbing has conquered the lucrative
Chinese territory.
Dubbed content is in greater demand by television
channels, said a studio head on the condition of anonymity. “The market
for dubbed films is incremental, and the audiences have been growing
over the years, but there are limitations in terms of the genres. Films
with cerebral content, like Inception, historicals and sci-fi films don’t perform that well, for instance.”
The Hindi version of The Jungle Book,
which opens on April 8, is making every effort to be seen as a Hollywood
production with local talent rather than yet another dubbed film. The
live action adaptation is based on Disney’s popular 1967 animated film,
which in turn was based on Rudyard Kipling’s books. The new version
stars American child actor Neel Sethi as Mowgli and top-line Hollywood
voices for Mowgli’s friends and foes, including Idris Elba as Sher Khan
the tiger, Scarlett Johansson as Kaa the python, Ben Kingsley as
Bagheera the panther, and Bill Murray as Baloo the bear.
Rather than using voice artists for Hindi, Disney
India signed up Nana Patekar as Sher Khan, Priyanka Chopra as Kaa,
Irrfan as Baloo and Om Puri as Bagheera. The dialogue for Hindi has been
written by Mayur Puri, in a departure from the convention of merely
using a rough translation of the original script.
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