Nasal Translator

Synonyms:
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The Nasal Translator is a part of the Russian fannish history of dubbing illegal movies.

"One translator usually did the whole movie, pinching his nose with his fingers, so that his voice became unrecognizable: Since then "a nasal translator" has become a Myth and a Hero of the whole Soviet subculture."

The nasal tone of these translators could be because translators pinched their noses to disguise their voices, because the most notable translators had nasal voices and were therefore imitated by others, or due to the poor quality of the tapes."

Regardless of the Nasal Translator's origin, the tone and style of dubbing became a fannish Russian tradition.

Some Comments

"The Nasal Translation is, of course, a pure myth - as far as I am aware, both Volodarsky and Mikhalev, the two notable pirates, have (or, in M's case, had) their voices like that without pinching them with fingers or otherwise. BTW, if you look at their biographies, they are all (those two and those who came after) professional interpreters and were often working at international movie festivals, so it was no news for them to do a movie on the run ;-) AND they got very little money for this pirate job (and the job they did was just FANTASTIC!)"

"Whell, I knew someone would remember me that pinched nose))). The thing is that the myth is (or used to be) so alive that I couldn't help mentioning it. Ok, I'll add "allegedly" somewhere)). (But: there were more than only V. and M. - also women - and all had this nasal articulation. Was it due to the bad quality of rerecorded tapes? Or were they truing to copy M.'s and V.'s style?))"