Films provide us with an invaluable window onto the world, shaping our understanding of foreign communities, their values and lifestyles. Hence, it is difficult to overestimate the role of screen translation in mediating between cultures and promoting cultural diversity.
One of the most vivid examples of a film that has recently exerted enormous cultural influence on popular imagination in Poland is Karan Johar’s Khabi Khushi Khabi Gham, the first Bollywood production ever to open at Polish cinemas. Released in 2005, the film had an electrifying effect on the audience, confronting it with a completely unknown genre originating in a relatively unfamiliar culture. Despite these difficulties, the film managed to capture the hearts of the viewers and marked the beginning of real Bollywood mania in Poland (as exemplified by the emergence of numerous fan-clubs, blogs, regular film releases and Bollywood film festivals).
In view of this success, it is hard not to recognise the crucial role of screen translation in the popularisation of Indian culture in Poland. Hence, in my presentation, I would like to characterise the strategy adopted by the Polish translator of Khabi Khushi Khabi Gham in terms of Lawrence Venuti’s concepts of domestication and foreignisation, and contrast it with the strategy adopted in the British translation of the film (addressed at an audience more familiar with the source culture).
By way of illustration, I will compare selected scenes from the film (the ones most clearly alluding to Indian values, symbols, heroes and rituals) in their alternative Polish and English subtitled versions, with the use of analytical tools offered by the field of cognitive linguistics. Referring to Ronald W. Langacker’s dimensions of imagery, I will characterise the semantic make-up of the scenes in terms of perspective, selection and the level of specificity imposed upon the represented world by the visual and verbal components. This will allow me to describe the ways in which Polish and British translators handled the parameters of selection and specificity to help the target audience overcome the cultural barriers.