Thallumaala co-writer Muhsin Parari, alongside the film’s subtitles team Anju and Shyam Narayanan TK, have called out Netflix for replacing their work with a “substantially edited, watered-down, butchered version.”
In a letter addressed to Netflix, Anju and Shyam wrote, “The English subtitles of Thallumaala, which we delivered to the Netflix team, were reviewed line-by-line and approved by the creative director and one of the writers, Mr Muhsin Parari.
They’ve heavily toned down the songs’ subtitles to their literal meanings and made them soulless. Subtitling, being a creative work, must consider the culture, humour, connotations and local nuances of both the source and target languages. Moreover, we find it unfair and unethical to edit the subtitles without the consent of the subtitle artist/writer/director.”