In case you guys are late to the party, Netflix has managed to acquire the streaming rights for the Kunchacko Boban – Joju George Malayalam survival thriller, ‘Nayattu’ and the film has been available for viewing on the OTT platform for the last two days. The movie is doing really well on Netflix, even better than the movie did in theatres (which was as good as it could be in this Covid-19 affected climate), but there has been a surprising few people coming out and pointing out a major issue in the film – the subtitles.
Vivek Ranjit, who has been a subtitler for many major Malayalam films in his career has made his displeasure against Netflix known – particularly at their Quality Control team for what they did to his subtitles for the previously mentioned ‘Nayattu‘. According to him, Netflix changed the order of his subtitles and changed the grammar of some major impactful lines, thereby lessening the effect his subtitles have on the film. The OTT’s quality team also managed to butcher the subtitling of a folk song which he painstakingly worked with the poet to accurately subtitle.
The entire situation becomes worse when it is pointed out that Netflix has used Vivek’s submitting template as the base for making changes to the English subtitles – which means around 70% of the film’s subtitles are still his. Vivek also points out that he has subtitled ‘Nayattu’ in a certain way because the film’s context demanded it – not because he was bad at grammar. Now, normally we wouldn’t think that this would be much of an issue, but many of the film’s theatrical watchers have pointed out that Ranjit has a right to be angry and the QC (Quality Control) team of Netflix has actually managed to butcher his work.
The entire situation is turned on its head when we find out that there have been subtitle butchering done by major OTT platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video for some time now, with multiple subtitlers having coming out and called them out for it. But Netflix rarely changed it and this situation has continued for a long time. Sanjay Gupta, the screenwriter and director for the John Abraham action thriller ‘Mumbai Saga’ said that Amazon Prime Video did the same for the aforementioned Bollywood feature in this thread, expressing his displeasure at the OTT platform. Another screen writer, Jahan Bakshi points this issue out in a tweet of his own, asking the film’s producers and directors to keep an eye on this ongoing issue as subtitlers do not have any power when it comes to this issue.
This is an issue, which by all looks, have been an ongoing trend for half a decade now. We understand the subtitling is an important factor for the international audience to understand and appreciate a local language project, but if there are subtitlers already working on it in the first place, then the OTT platform should work in tandem with them, as they would have a better idea about the film’s context.
‘Nayattu’ is streaming on Netflix currently with the “changed up” subtitles. Check out Vivek Ranjith’s tweet alongside Jahan Bakshi’s tweet about this issue down below:
I don't know why @NetflixIndia QC team flattens out so many lines, robbing all the context or mess with the order in which the lines should appear so that the impact is delivered correctly, just to match some random checklist. My name is on the film & they do this shit to my work https://t.co/8ubYBxEpIC
— Vivek Ranjit (@vivekranjit) May 8, 2021
This is really terrible and a case of arbitrary changes and editorial overreach that sadly happens quite often. I hope filmmakers and producers take cognizance of this and take this up. As subtitlers, unfortunately we do not have the power to fight this. Subtitles matter! https://t.co/fmbPYx9gpJ
— JSB (@jahanbakshi) May 9, 2021
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