Barney Lost in Translation

Today was the first time Aga saw Barney. In form of a DVD, of course. Turns out, Aga LOVES Barney. However, this particular DVD I bought was the cheap skate one, dubbed in Indonesian with Indonesian subtitles for the songs. Thank God they didn't dub the songs too, otherwise I won't be able to stop scratching my ear when I hear the Indonesian version of Hickory Dickory Dock! (Actually, Hickory Dickory Dock was some of the rare songs that had English text, but it was translated to "Hickory Dickery Duck")

The dubbing was fine, because I didn't know what they really said in the original English version, so I can't really complain. But the songs, oh! I'd probably rather have the English subtitles for the songs so the parents can teach the kids to sing-a-long. Instead, the subtitle contains the translated version of the English songs into Indonesian. A bad one too. Well, there were 3 episodes in that DVD, and one of the episodes has a decent Indonesian subtitle, but the other two episodes had appalling subs. I was annoyed because you can't even turn the subtitle off so I was forced so see how bad they've done the subs. Oh and because "Mary Mary quite contrary" was a rhyme, they dubbed that one too... grrr... It was one of the things you can't really translate very well because then the rhymes were lost in translation.

Here are some of the examples of how badly done the subs are:
"Do you know the muffin man who lives on Drury Lane?" was translated to "Do you know the muffin seller who lives near the lake." (Lake? What lake?)
"Old King Cole was a merry old soul and a merry old soul was he" was translated to "Old King Cole was a guarding soul and a guarding soul was he!" (Guarding whose soul?)
"Dancing Dancing till you all fall down with me" was translated to "Dance and dance I say dance with me" (Why are you forcing me??!!)

I was too appalled to continue listing the mistakes they did. Too many to mention.

BTW, The Mahalingams are now available in Facebook. Yep, blame Nagi for that.