Lost in translation

"Mon coeur oscille doucement, pour quoi je ne sais pas"

What is this? Well, it's a famous Hindi song! Now a days, when I watch movies, I prefer to keep subtitles in French - just a way to learn French while watching movies. Alas! subtitles come with songs too. I gave my DVD of Black to one of my friends here who is French. While returning the DVD back, she told that movie was very good but subtitles were pathetic, and somehow she could follow. Well, I have no right to comment on the quality of French subtitles, afterall I don't know the language. I thought, may be people who translate the movie are not native speakers of the language they are translating into, and thus these mistakes are understandable.

Then I encountered an interesting incident and realised that perhaps these are not humans who write subtitles. Why did I think so? Well, here is a sample:

• [Hindi] Kaise ho? = [English] How're you? = [French!] How're vous? (in French, vous = you = aap).

According to the translator, "How're" remains unchanged! OK! Why not check this page! Because the sample above makes me think that this is the "person" who writes subtitles! At least the typist could have written "How are you?" (in full) before clicking the translation button!

Well, this was not the only example, after that I could locate lots of funny mistakes and immediately put off subtitles!

By the way, any idea which song is "Mon coeur oscille doucement, pour quoi je ne sais pas"?

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Glossary (so that people are not lost in translation!) : Mon = my; coeur = heart; oscille = oscillate; doucement = slowly, gently; pour quoi = why; je ne sais pas = I don't know

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