The New Wordsmiths

However,there is more to dubbing than a suitable voice and lip-sync. “Dubbing a film is like creating a new film — keeping the visuals from the original intact,” she explains. Once a film project is signed,the first step is to find a suitable scriptwriter,who will rewrite the film in the desired language. A piracy-protected copy of the unreleased film is sent to the dubbing director,who then shares the film with the writer. The delivery time for the script is between three to seven days and the writers’ work goes beyond language and grammar translation,often deciding the fate of the film in India.

Munisha Rajpal,the writer of the television show Saas Bina Sasural on Sony Entertainment,has been writing dubbing scripts for nearly six years. While her experience in translating plays for school children comes in handy,the 36-year-old has to sit with a Hindi and Sanskrit dictionary when writing the script for the Harry Potter films. “Harry Potter is a huge challenge — you have to Indianise the names and magic spells yet maintain the flavour and meaning,” explains the writer,who has also worked on the dubbing scripts for the High School Musical series. Rajpal recollects her dilemma when translating the spell to extinguish fire. “Fire has many Hindi synonyms such aag and agni. But pavak worked best in the context,” she says.

The knowledge of language comes in handy but every writer is not proficient in all genres. Dubbing director Eliza Lewis has a bank of writers,but she assigns films based on the genre and budget. “Munisha is great with films that need one to stay very close to the original in meaning and Baba Khan’s proficiency in Urdu is useful for period films,” she says.

Comedy,she says,is the trickiest subject since the American humour may not translate well in Hindi. She cites the example of Night At The Museum (2006) that was heavy on American history. “Writer Kiran Kotrial deviated from the original storyline to Indianise the content so that the audience could connect and have a good laugh,” she recollects. However,Kotrial adds that such risk is not usually acceptable to the studios. “With The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn,we had discussions on Skype with studio officials detailing every line in the script and they then gave us feedback to carry out changes,” says Ghosh.

The process of improvisation often extends to the dubbing sessions. Shetty,the voice of Collins,has been a voice artiste since the age of five. Now 34 and having given voice to Angelina Jolie in Wanted,Catherine Zeta-Jones in The Mask of Zorro,Cameron Diaz in the Charlie’s Angels series and Kirsten Dunst in Spiderman 3 in their Hindi dubs,she works without a dubbing director and only the sound engineer at hand. “The challenge of thinking on-the-spot”,apart from the fact that she gets to watch these films before anyone else,keeps Shetty going.

This profession makes it mandatory for the writers to do their homework well. “When Avatar was to be dubbed,we were sent an audio guide to Na’vi,the language of the Pandora locals. I had to learn it first before I could teach the artistes,” explains Ghosh,a recipient of the Dada Saheb Phalke award.