On English-Subtitled Yoruba Film

I love to see movies. The Nigerian movie industry (Nollywood, as it was christened) has been ranked second in terms of volumes of work in the world, only behind Hollywood (America), with Bollywood (India) occupying the third position. This dais is worth celebrating, especially when considering the lens, through which the country has been viewed over the years by the developed nations.
This recognition of the efforts of ardent Nigerians in the sector is commendable. Despite the fact that the sector is capital intensive and there are no adequate provision from the government at all levels for support right from inception, the sector was still able to make headway. From my heart, I offer real kudos to those who have been involved in the sector over the years to make it what it is today.
However, the Nigerian movie sector is quite diverse. As a nation with three major ethnic groups, I will restrict this right up to the Igbo movie makers (by this, I mean those who produce films in the Igbo language), Yoruba movie makers, the Hausa movie makers and the one that is ‘supposed’ to merge all together, the English film genre.
I guess you would understand why I chose to use the word ‘supposed’? It is quite obvious that many of the people in the sector over some years have grumbled about the segregation that exists in the English film genre of the industry. This however is not the focus of this write-up. This may stand for a topic some other time.
This write-up is however focusing on the Yoruba movie making sector with a particular emphasis on grammatical and sentence construction errors in English-subtitled Yoruba films. Here, I do not stand to condemn anyone or the work of any producer.
As with the first line I started with, I love to see movies. However, I get turn on by professionalism whenever I see any movie that has been put together with all diligence. Most Yoruba films that have been produced over the years to some extent have won my heart in this regard.
Nevertheless, with regard to subtitling, I have seen too many Yoruba films well enough to be able to confidently say that the subtitling culture to a large extent lacks professionalism. For clarity, a number of English-Subtitled Yoruba films were examined recently for both grammatical and sentence construction errors and a sizeable amount of the films failed this test. It is estimated that in a collection of ten English-Subtitled Yoruba films, just about three are adequately subtitled while the remaining seven are either packed with wrong sentence construction and/or bad grammatical expressions.
Though, as one who understands the Yoruba language, I indeed need no one to subtitle the films for me to comprehend the message being passed. However, I believe the main rationale behind subtitling is for the people who might not understand the scripting language or the language the film is made to truly see the movie and be able to understand just by reading along the subtitled information on the screen.
With regard to the aforementioned, many Yoruba film producers have really erred. Many devote more attention to the actual making of the films, which is perfectly okay, but leave the subtitling of the film to the appropriate language in the hands of people who do not have proper command of the English language. This reduces the overall quality of the films.
It is high time professionalism is introduced in every aspect of the movie making process of which subtitling is a part. Yoruba movie making houses should have a unit in the whole movie making process that will ensure that qualified people are employed to do the work of subtitling the films being made into apposite language (English) if the drive is actually towards professionalism.
There are people who have read courses like Yoruba in the University and as part of their course have also studied the English language and have done major works on translation. This set of people could be given the job of subtitling Yoruba films into the English language.
There are a number of times I have seen Indian films and some American films that it was only through the subtitled message I was able to understand what the films were really saying. I believe there are many people who would love to see Yoruba films, especially for the knowledge of how things are done in the Yoruba setting, but naturally be put off by poor subtitling.
It is not to say however, that the foreign films I have seen over the years are not without their own shortcomings in this regard, but it is noteworthy that such errors are not as unbridled as we have it in most English-subtitled Yoruba films.
As a matter of urgency, something need be done concerning this quandary in other to ignite people’s interest in the Yoruba movie sector of the Nigerian movie industry and for the obvious reason of professionalism, which is what will show people how much you are ready to give to what you do. Let the change begin!