CHANNAI: When Rekha was called to subtitle for the magnum opus Enthiran, she was on top of the world. Nearly a month of hard work and now Rekha is expecting her words to speak for her. “We started the subtitling work (Tamil to English) early August and it went on for over a month till early September. However, I took a break in the middle to do another movie, Vande Mataram,” says Rekha, who started subtitling in 2007 for her husband Haricharan’s project, Thoovanam. It was a self-taught experience.
Rekhs’s (as she is fondly called) journey into the world of subtitling took a twist when her friend Krishnan Seshadri Gomatam (director of M3V) introduced her to short film director Nagesh. She subtitled for his film Bimbam, which was screened at an International Film Festival. “I strongly believe that subtitling is the backbone for a film. It is only with subtitles that non-Tamil speaking audiences are going to understand a Tamil film,” says Rekhs, who also did the subtitles for Vinnai Thaandi Varuvayaa.
Talking about Enthiran, Rekhs says, “The songs were the toughest part, especially the song Kilimajaro, in which the lyrics go like this:
hey nooru gramthaan idai
unakku ini yaaru naan thaan udai.
In Tamil it’s very poetic but to preserve the same flavour in English, it was tough. I translated it like this:
Your waist weighs a delicate 100gms
I am the apparel that adorns you.”
Another example is:
Muthaththaala vaega vechchu
singa pallil uriyaa
It was translated to:
Cover me with your kisses
Consume me completely
“And there were words like saavu graaki and I would be frantically hunting for words. I first came up with ‘Death Client’ (as literally translated) and we finally settled for a more colloquial word — ‘Dead Meat’. There were words like metal thalaiya and aluminium thalaiya used by Santhanam and Karunaas and I’ve used a variety of words like dunderhead, blockhead, knuckle head, tin head and metal moron to translate these,” she smiles. “After translation, positioning the dialogues into the frame was a long process. That alone took eight days. I am thankful to editor Antony’s assistants Sridhar and Thyagu. We used to work from 9 pm to 3 or 4 am.”