It is an open secret there isn’t much to admire about the local language speaking movie industry we’ve christened Kumawood.
There is lot of bad acting, terrible storylines, direction and production. Intersperse this with the brazen capitalisation on current social issues without any sense of propriety and you have an industry that does not have too much going for it.
For a while they’ve taken to providing English subtitles for the Akan spoken in the movies, and as with anything relating to the industry it comes off as half-hearted and not terribly professional.
To begin with the wall of text often does not correspond to what is being said. There are stretches where a few sentences are on the screen but they keep talking for like five minutes. I do not know the word conversion rate for English to Twi but surely it’s a hell of a lot more than that.
But my main gripe is at the type of translation that’s carried out, which is often a literal translation of the Twi spoken. Anyone who knows the slightest thing about linguistics can tell you that literal translation of one language to another is often a terrible way to get meaning across.
Our local languages especially often translate to grammatically incorrect English, and we have the problem enough without an industry as big as Kumawood promoting it. English such as ‘I am going to come’, or ‘something is doing her’; are the results of literal translation and have become common speak in Ghana.
It’s a big enough problem as is; often our spoken language heavily guides the written, so sometimes these incorrect phrases also slip into the written English of some people.
Honestly I do not see what the need is for subtitles with these movies. Kumawood targets a particular demographic that is well known, and I find it difficult to believe any Ghanaian patronising any of these movies would bother with the subtitles.
If the intention is to attract a more international audience, well you cannot do that with the current shambolic subtitles being used. Aside the incorrect grammar turning you off the product, the way five minutes of talking correspond to two sentences on screen means they would never effectively tell the story to someone who does not have any familiarity with Twi.
If there is the need to have these subtitles the least that can be done is to do it right. Twi can never be completely translated satisfactorily to English, there would be challenges due to the nuances of either language; but what is certain is that doing a better job than what is being currently done is far from a herculean task.
We can begin by attempting to convey meaning, rather than directly translating what is being said. And please, idioms does not translate well at all, so how about finding the equivalent English saying, rather than a literal translation which would make zero sense to anyone without a background in the first language.
Sure it’s a much more difficult task than it seems, but if we’re deciding to pursue this we might as well do it right. As it is currently, I’m struggling to find what it contributes to the movies, rather serving as distractions to the action going on screen.
With so many challenges facing the industry, this is one that can be solved with a little more attention to detail and comparatively at little cost. Why not try to get this right, and maybe the feeling of triumph can be translated towards tackling the other more technical challenges.
Otherwise it should just be stopped; it adds nothing to the movie and displays a terrible unprofessionalism on the part of the filmmakers.
Source: ghanacelebrities.com
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