Socrate Sarfo, a movie director and an entertainment critic says telenovelas dubbed in Twi is a good omen for the industry. He explained that Mexican and Indian soap operas translated in Twi comes at cost which will in the future force stakeholders in the industry to rather ask for the script of these television series and reproduce with Ghanaian actors to enhance the movie.
Telenovelas is the Latin Americans’ equivalence of soap operas. Telenovelas are undoubtedly Ghanaian main source of entertainment. From the days of old when TV3 captured our attention with series of telenovelas woven around themes like love, deceit, revenge and romance, we have embraced the cultural dynamism of fiction into our very own lifestyle.
Multimedia Group Limited (Adom TV) capitalized on the widespread approval of telenovelas and decided to translate them Twi for their viewers, majority of whom do not understand English language. The experiment became an instant success-Kumkum Bhagya has become a national sensation.
Despite Group Limited, owners of UTV also follow suit and now more telenovelas dubbed in Twi have been thrown into the fray. However some stakeholders have expressed misgivings about the development saying if the trend continues, it will kill our movie industry. Socrate Sarfo spoke to Accra 100.5FM and said:
“I see a good trend coming up in terms of the telenovelas. Now we have started translating them into Twi, which I think is a good sign. I see hope there, hope in the sense that they have realised people enjoy the telenovelas in the local context or Twi language, and translating them into Twi is expensive. So, for example, if you buy the content for $1000 and the Twi translation also costs you $1000, you ask yourself what the patrons like: ‘Is it the Twi or the story?’ and it’s the story. So I see a future soon where the scripts will rather be picked and we will re-enact it locally so the format will change,” he said.
