Till a few years ago, subtitling was confined to submissions for National Awards and film festivals. But with films like Baahubali gaining worldwide attention, the film fraternity has finally realised the significance of subtitling.
Rekhs, who has worked on over 400 hundred films in the South Indian languages for seven years, says, “Quality subtitling can help a film reach out to the global audience at international platforms. Many people from all over the world appreciate our films. Indian film industry is not just about Bollywood, but also Tamil and Telugu industries.”
While talking about the process of subtitling, she says that filmmakers send their footage after dubbing and before the final mix. “Subtitling takes about a week — 4 days to translate, 2 days to time code and one day to check.
“We use software (that timecodes the readability of the language), but before that we listen to the dialogues manually and translate.”
Since subtitling is a last-minute activity, the level of filmmakers’ involvement varies from each one. “Most of them leave it to me because they are generally more worried about fixing other works. Actors like Vijay, Suriya, director Shankar, etc., insist that I subtitle their films.”
Rekhs feels the challenge lies in getting the pun and rhyming right. “We have to get the rhyming right in English too whilst retaining the essence. So apart from command over English, one needs a basic understanding of filmmaking and should be a bit creative. For Baahubali, we did not use colloquial English, but used medieval English, since it was a period film,” points out Rekhs, who has command over Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam.
Sometimes, subtitling is not credited in the films. “I want filmmakers to recognise and value our efforts. We do get compliments from abroad that the subtitling is nice, so that keeps me motivating.”
Some of her works of subtitling include Rudhramadevi, Gautamiputra Satakarni, Kanche, Puli, Baasha, Pelli Choopulu, Enthiran and Vinnaithaandi Varuvaaya.
