There is something about the big screen movie viewing experience that keeps us wanting for more. The experience has taken on an entire different level when subtitles started appearing in the bottom of the screen. Who knew having subtitles would turn out to be such an important part of movie viewing, so much that people today decide to go for movies after checking if it has subtitles.
Vivek Ranjith has tapped into this psyche of movie buffs. Although a script writer at heart, he is today the busiest subtitler in the state. Vivek is the ‘go-to’ person for M’town filmmakers today when it comes to quality subtitling. “Subtitling happened when I was assisting V.K. Prakash in Beautiful. They had to send the movie for a national award and wanted someone to take up the subtitling part, so I volunteered. Both VKP and Anoop Menon encouraged me to take it up and that is how it began.”
Vivek truly had a ‘beautiful’ start as there was no looking back from that point on. Today he has an impressive list of movies for which he has subtitled such as Mosayile Kuthira Meenukal, Natholi Oru Cheriya Meen Alla, David and Goliath, You too Brutus, Nirnayakam, Kohinoor, Kunjiramayanam, Adi Kapyare Koottamani, Charlie and the latest Action Hero Biju.
“Things started changing after Bangalore Days and now with Premam becoming a huge hit outside our state, Malayalam films have a growing number of fans outside Kerala. When we watch dubbed Kannada and Telugu movies, they too are getting a chance to watch ours with subtitles. Writing comes naturally to Vivek, but how tough is subtitling? “I enjoy this work as it is more like writing dialogues in a script.
There is no point in simply translating the dialogues. Sometimes it will require some research to come up with the perfect translation to convey the exact emotion."” He says humour is the toughest.
“Giving subtitles to humorous dialogues is quite tough, especially because our humour and sarcasm is difficult to translate. But my most challenging work till date was Charlie, the dialogues were very realistic. "Vivek recently completed subtitling for Kali and has begun working on Jacobinte Swarga Rajyam starring Nivin Pauly.
