Friday, April 17, 2009

Nanyuki Special

The bustling megalopolis* of the Laikipia district, Nanyuki, has 1 paved road, about 100 green grocers and hardware stores, one place that sells fried camel hump, and a population of 30,000, 29,000 of whom are curio merchants who want me to buy more of their ebony** carved animals and bootleg DVDs. There is also an awesome ragamuffin*** puppeteer with a hat that looks like he stuck his head up a teddy bear who can sing "Coward of the County" and "Billie Jean" surprisingly well. They sell sandals made from old tires (I got my pair in Baringo, but Josephine bought a pair in Nanyuki. I think the ones from Baringo are superior, but what can you do?) and delicious fresh mangoes for 20 /= (about a quarter).
I've gotten so many gifts and souvenirs in Nanyuki that I am probably going to need another suitcase****. However, the best purchase I made in Nanyuki was a fantastic DVD from Dubai that has The Watchmen, Frost/Nixon, Valkyrie in several languages, and Dragonball Evolution. I was approached by the DVD salesman while I was purposely sitting in the car refusing to get out and look around because I had already spent the last of my Kenyan currency on some final presents, and then a bunch of other stuff that I got pressured into buying. But I've wanted to watch Watchmen since last year, and when I saw it in his big pile of DVD collections (which also include one DVD with every Jim Carrey movie ever made, and biopic called "Life of Bama") I couldn't resist. I had actually spent all of the money I had on hand, but I managed to get the movie in exchange for a Pilot pen and a semi-functioning watch that Sam had given***** me at the beginning of the semester. So now Sam and I are proud co-owners of our very own Nanyuki Special. And that thing is pure gold. Not because of the quality of the in-theater cinematography, or the fact that if you insert the DVD into many computers, it generates a dialog box that has no text, just a bunch of question marks. No, the Nanyuki Watchmen DVD is great because of the subtitles. The movie is in English, most of the time, but inexplicably cuts to Russian about 3/4 through. This is when we turned on the English subtitles. They simply stated (Russian) at the bottom of the screen. About 5 minutes later it cut back to English, and so did the subtitles. Except, only sort of. It was more like the sort of narration you might expect from a half-deaf guy who speaks English about as well as I speak Spanish******. All of the names were given wrong. Not just maybe-their-translation-had-different-names wrong. Totally, utterly wrong. At one point they called Lorie "Jasmine." They referred to Rorschach as "Roll sha" once, which was about as close as it got. Most of the dialog was absurdly summarized, but occasionally they would throw in a hilarious mistranslation: when one character is not impressed with another's "schoolboy heroics," the subtitles boldly declare "You think you a primary school. Not." Then there are points where the subtitles outright lie. They construct relationships between characters that have no logical or contextual basis. They falsify motives, misread actions, and sometimes just put the opposite of what is said. All in all, it is a masterpiece of Engrish, and a horrendous disservice to Alan Moore, Zack Snyder, and anyone who enjoys movies, really. I hope to show it to anyone who has any interest in it.

*the auto-correct feature of blogger says that is a word. Apple dictionary agrees. Me, I'm not so sure, but I'll throw it in there.
**acacia wood and shoe polish
***probably homeless and addicted to stuff
****yes, I got you something. I assure you, if you read this blog, I got you something.
*****ahem, lent.
******If you've heard me sing "Song of the Cucumber" before, you know what I mean