My brother came back the other day with a trophy he won third place in a competition called "Perbicaraan kes buku yang membosankan". I tell you, schools getting creative in coming up with interesting competitions with bizarre names. And I'm proud to say this is the same high school I attended.
One thing though. "Perbicaraan kes buku yang membosankan"...... Perbicaraan tu membosankan atau buku tu membosankan? (did it mean that the competition was about criticizing boring books, OR that the book-criticizing competition itself was boring?)
Lost in translation. And interpretation. Sigh. It wasn't even an English-medium competition to begin with. Even the Malay version wasn't all that clear.
Just like how "Lord of the Rings" was translated to "Tuan punya cincin", "Star Wars" to "Peperangan Bintang" and "The fast and the furious" as "Yang pantas dan yang mengamuk". That's why I find reading subtitles hilarious sometimes when I come across wrong words used which totally change the whole meaning of the sentence itself, into something ridiculous. Either that, or the meaning is completely lost. And I also find them irritating if I was relying on subtitles to understand the show/movie in languages completely foreign to me (like Spanish).
No matter how good the translation is, there is no such thing as a perfect translation. The best, yes. But perfect, no.
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