Sunday, March 04, 2007

Father-god Protection!

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was showing on TV earlier. Dubbed in Hindi. Actually, much as one laughs at the absurd sounding translations (jhadu just sounds way too ... I don't know ... weird, for broom. Even though that's the exact word. "दुनिया का सबसे तेज़ झाड़ु।" See what I mean?)I think it's pretty good, this dubbing of everything into Hindi and the regional languages. (One had a choice of seeing this one in Tamil and Telugu as well.) The vernaculars have been rather neglected since Independence ...

Anyway, so how does one say, "Expecto Patronum" in Hindi ... um, I guess it would be bowdlerized Sanskrit ... ?

... पित्रदेव संरक्षणम् (pitradev samrakshanam). Literally, "father-god protection." Kinda.

Sirius, however, is still Harry's "godfather" in Hindi. They use the English word. There is no Hindi equivalent, I guess!

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