Tamil

Have you ever seen one of these irritating, half-assed, Tamil dubbed versions of English movies on the various Tamil channels?

I recently saw The Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy dubbed into Tamil. Not only was it totally silly, they changed the story all together.

Every dialogue was changed to something that didn't even resemble what was originally said.

For instance, there's a scene where Ford Prefect warns the patrons of a bar that the Earth will be destroyed in 10 seconds. The Barkeep (originally) responds by asking him whether they should cover their head with a paper bag or something. In the Tamil Dubbed version, this was changed to the Barkeep asking Ford to stop his insanity. The joke of this moment is entirely lost on Tamil audiences.

To someone who hasn't read the book or seen the original movie, I am sure watching it in Tamil would have been bewildering. Needless to say, I switched channels within 10 minutes.

You know what would be great, take an entire movie that has been dubbed in Tamil and transliterate it back in English.

That would be hilarious!!!

I will do it someday.

Oh and here's a transliteration for this month.

Quote: Mayirai katti malayai izhu - vanthal malai ponal mayir (மயிராய் கட்டி மலையை இழு - வந்தால் மலை போனால் மயிர்) Intended meaning: Pull a mountain by tying a hair to it. If you succeed you will get a mountain, if you lose you will lose a hair. There is no harm in trying. Transliteration: Hair tie mountain pull - coming mountain going hair.

Cheers!

This is harder than I thought! I thought it would be easier to keep this blog updated. I thought ideas would just float into my head. They didn't. At least not so far.

So, here's the plan. Every time I don't get anything to say, I am going to transliterate a Tamil quote or proverb into English.

Years ago we had a manager who had, shall we say, a little trouble with English grammar. It seemed that his internal monologue was Tamil and he was transliterating everything into English on the fly. The result was hilarious. That's the inspiration of posts like these. I will categorize these posts as #tamiltransliterations.

Transliterating is not translating. Most translation tools found on the web do this. "To be or not to be" from English to German translates to "Zu sein oder zu nicht sein" and the same from German to English translates to "To be or be to not". Subtle, but hilarious.

So here we go. I'll start with my favorite Tamil quote.

Quote - "Ellu na ennai ya vandu nikkanam". (எள்ளு ந என்னைய வந்து நிகனம் ) Intended meaning - "Do more than what is expected of you." OR "...going the extra mile". Transliterate - "Sesame seeds means you should come and stand oil".

Oh by the way. I had a blogspot years ago meant for just such a thing. I am borrowing stuff from there.