By Kate Halim

Sometimes, watching a Nigerian movie with funny and outrageous subtitles will make you laugh, relieve stress and even make you search for more such movies to watch. These funny subtitles are common in indigenous movies.

Saturday Sun spoke to some Nigerians who revealed how watching these movies with funny subtitles helps them laugh and forget about their worries for a moment.

Adekemi Oloyede said that anytime she is watching an indigenous movie on African Magic Channel on DSTV, she gets ready to laugh until tears start pouring down her eyes. She added that at one point, her husband warned her to stop watching those movies late at night because she disturbs his sleep with her uncontrollable laughter. “One night, I waited for him and our children to go to bed before I started watching one movie where a lady was sexually assaulted and the translation said she was sexually defrauded in Ibadan. I laughed until I fell to the floor.”

Oloyede stated that even though these funny subtitles make viewers laugh, it is sad that there is no professionalism when it comes to the making of many indigenous movies. She added that people just want to shoot their scenes, wrap up the movies quickly and start making money from them without being thorough with their work.

Chinwe Abigail told Saturday Sun that any time she wants to laugh, she watches an indigenous Nigerian movie. She said that she does that because on many occasions, the subtitles are hilarious and out of context. “I don’t know if the producers and directors of those movies don’t watch the movies before releasing them to the market. Sometimes, you read a translated sentence and you begin to wonder if the person who subtitled the movie went to school at all,” she added.

The graduate of English from the University of Lagos recalled how she watched one such indigenous movie sometime last year and noticed how the translations were off-point from start to finish. She said she even burnt the food she was cooking that day because she was anticipating more blunders from the movie.

Abigail said: “Whenever I want to laugh, I go to a particular channel on DSTV and then relax for the funny subtitles to begin to drop. These days, I watch these movies with my children and we read the translations and burst out laughing. Sometimes, my daughter asks me if the subtitles are real or if the producers of the movies just want to make people laugh.”

Edwin Umogbai said he is not a fan of Nigerian movies but after reading a Facebook post with screenshots of some funny movie subtitles, he started watching indigenous movies whenever he wanted to relax.  He added that one day while watching a particular movie, he screamed in disbelief and then started laughing uncontrollably after reading what was translated on his screen.

“In this movie, a young lady was sick and was rushed to the hospital. She was so weak and the doctor ran some tests on her. The tests revealed that she was anaemic and the doctor recommended a blood transfusion. To my surprise, when her friend came to visit her at the hospital, one of the nurses told her that the patient had taken ‘ten pants of blood’. I screamed and started laughing.”

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Umogbai said that he has an aunt who loves watching indigenous movies and whenever he visits her, he gets ready for constant laughter. “My aunty gets angry whenever I start laughing about the way these guys translate the sentences of actors and actresses. She reminds me that English is not our first language and I should stop mocking my people. I remind her that they have the responsibility of doing things well and not feeding their fans with rubbish subtitles.”

Temitayo Abiodun is a civil servant based in Lagos. He said the first time he saw a funny translation in a Nigerian movie; he cleaned his eyes just to be sure he saw what he saw. “It was a Nigerian movie in one of the indigenous languages, and because I understand the language and the English language also, I was shocked at what I saw on my screen. I have advised my friends who don’t understand Nigerian languages not to watch some of these movies with me thinking they can understand what is happening in the movie based on the translations. They will be confused all day because those guys who do those movie subtitles will mess with your brain.”

In his late forties, Abiodun said one particular translation in a movie made him laugh so much that he almost peed on himself. He stated that the film was about a couple who got married and didn’t have children for years. He added that the couple faced a lot of challenges from the man’s family until they visited a native doctor who found a solution to their fertility issue.

According to Abiodun, when the man’s wife got pregnant, the man was so happy that he started thanking God in for wiping his tears and giving them a child when all hope was lost. “I didn’t prepare for what I saw on my screen next as the translation for this man’s thanksgiving. It said ‘Thank you God. You are ‘conceive’ of ‘pregnance’. It was so funny that I had to rush to the toilet to relieve myself because I almost peed on my body.”

Salome Ekpeyong runs a beer parlour in Aguda, Surulere Lagos. She said that her customers love watching indigenous movies because of the funny subtitles. The mother of two said that she satisfies her customers by making sure the indigenous movie channel is on in her bar all day.

“I have watched some of these movies and seen some funny translations. Sometimes, I laugh over them and move on. At other times, it pisses me off that people don’t do their jobs well. I really don’t know why many indigenous movies are marred by funny subtitles. Sometimes, you will be watching an interesting movie and before you know it, the subtitle will just mess the whole thing up”, she said.

Ekpeyong who has lived in Lagos for over 20 years said she understands and speaks some indigenous languages but she feels for people who don’t understand the language who have to depend on badly translated sentences in these movies. “There was one where pound sterling was written as ‘pan stalin’. There was another one I watched two months ago where somebody was making a call to another person and said ‘the person you killed is dead.’ I have watched many movies like that and I can say it doesn’t speak well of the people who work in the industry.”

Moses Obidinma loves to watch movies on African Magic channel on DSTV. His only challenge with these movies, he claimed, is the way they are subtitled.

“I am an Igbo man from Anambra state. I love to watch indigenous movies, because I see it as a way of supporting my own people. But the subtitles get on my nerves sometimes,” he said.

Obidinma recalled that he was watching a movie recently but got angry when the translation didn’t match what one of the actors said. “What I saw on my screen was totally off and didn’t come close to what the actor said. I lost interest in the movie immediately and changed the channel to Discovery channel.