Just recently, news surfaced that David Sandberg, director and leading actor in the short film "Kung Fury", created with the help of crowdfunding on Kickstarter, is going to shoot a full-length sequel "Kung Fury 2". In this connection, I wanted to review the short film from 2015. As far as you know, this picture is a tribute to the drug-fuelled eighties, films about police everyday life, films about martial arts, and other terminators of America. I saw this masterpiece when it came out. There were no translations then, and naturally I watched in subtitles. But you know… I somehow didn’t get it. Of course, I understood the whole point of what was happening and how much of a masterpiece it was, and how much was crammed into it, but I didn’t feel a nostalgic impulse. I understood all the banter and every joke, but I didn’t even smile much, not feeling emotionally interested. This time, I watched Kung Fury translated by Comrade Volodarsky and Mr. Goblin. That’s when my nostalgia burst! And now I just can’t help but pour it out on you 🙂
The translations themselves were for me the quintessence of my entire VHS childhood and beyond. And the memories just couldn’t help but come flooding back. About those very times when films were not downloaded from torrents, when Steam and GOG did not yet exist, when my father and I walked around the market hand in hand and begged to go to the row where Uncle Zhora sells cartridges on Dandy. And all the movies and games were stored on shelves, not on the hard drive. Eh, romance… This is probably why I still buy games in the store 🙂
But let’s return to our sheep… As for residents of the USA, “Kung Fury” became a nostalgic post about the crazy 80s, for me, as in principle, and for most of my peers, Volodarsky’s translation became a nostalgic message about the nasal, and not so nasal, intonations that sounded behind the scenes of every film recorded on VHS media. And now I just want to remember the great and terrible translators of the era of video piracy, paying them my respect 🙂
LET’S GO!
Oddly enough, it all started back in the late 70s, when VHS players and other newfangled Western gadgets were imported through back roads into the then Soviet Union.
It was then that the first https://fswincasino.co.uk/bonus/ Soviet pirates began their activities, and their accomplices – translators. Naturally, all our favorite translators were simply trying to make money… km… km… illegal activities… As he says Corlione Volodarsky: “It was just business.“Of course, with the advent of “democracy”, all this became “more official” and even some studios began to appear. You may remember West Video, SP Company and others. But, as you understand, no one still respected copyrights, although no one was called to the prosecutor’s office anymore. But in the early 80s, the KGB was chasing translators and their employers. I’m serious right now! And sometimes it wasn’t even a matter of the fact that “Western propaganda” was shown in the Soviet Union; it happened that almost international scandals unfolded. For example, our pirates copied the film “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” right in Hollywood, with subsequent transportation to their homeland, and people of the post-Soviet space saw the film before it was shown in US cinemas. NONSENSE! (Although this incident occurred after Perestroika, 1991). Therefore, the work of translators and editors was mainly carried out in basements. And these recordings were often extremely low-quality, although… as if it was better in the 90s. )
But oh well, we won’t find fault with the quality of the recording today. Still, it’s not even a matter of not wanting to record high-quality sound. In those days, everything depended on the ability and ability to get the necessary equipment, because there was money, but there was nothing to buy with it. It is also worth saying that after the collapse of the USSR, when translation and sound recording studios began to appear, fierce competition between studios began. Then the quality of the recording increased, but at the same time the quality of the translations themselves dropped significantly (as usually happens under capitalism… even under pirated. ), because translators were given 3 or even 2 hours to work. And most of the transfers (of large-budget films) were from several studios at a time. The same “Terinator 2” was voiced by almost all the translators presented below. But it is not possible to get these translations now, since VHS is still the case: most of them are lost, and what is not lost is unlikely to end up on the network.
Next, I will simply introduce you in general terms to the most outstanding translators (in my opinion) and what they are remembered for in the era of VHS piracy.
Mikhalev Alexey Mikhailovich
The now deceased Alexei Mikhailovich is considered by most to be the greatest voice-over actor of his time. Unlike most translators of those years, his linguistic specialization was more narrowly focused, and not on English, but on “Farsi” (Persian dialect). In connection with this, he worked as a translator at the USSR embassies in Afghanistan and Iran, and when visiting these countries, the then “General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee” was assigned as his personal translator. But with his talent for simultaneous translation and conveying the most accurate intonation, he reached a meeting at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), at whose institute he studied. With the subsequent move to Moscow, he often became a translator under Brezhnev. It was then, or rather in 1979, that they began to contact him with requests for translations and dubbing of foreign films, in Persian and English. But still official films brought to the USSR for the Moscow International Film Festival and not only.
But as you understand, Mikhalev gained his fame among ordinary people precisely when he began to conduct “pirate activities,” so to speak. Alexey Mikhailovich was one of the first to start doing this, with his first translated and dubbed film “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” in 1979. As the translator himself said, for the most part he voiced the films that he personally liked, but as he admitted, first of all it was work, and it’s not always possible to refuse work. He worked at home, and the only equipment he had was a microphone, headphones and a voice recorder, and the rest of the installation work and the sound track was carried out by third parties, who apparently were engaged in the distribution of film cassettes. In 1992, when foreign films were already being brought to the newly formed Russian Federation in full (without restrictions), Alexey Mikhailovich came out of the shadows, giving his first interview.
The interview is provided simply as a link. Its most significant moments are highlighted in the blog.
At the same time, the already recognizable translator began working for the Night Taxi studio, essentially the same pirates who acquired official status. He worked on translations until 1994, when he died of leukemia at the age of 49. Having managed to translate more than five hundred films during this time. Compared to the other mastodons of voice-over, this does not look very impressive, but Mikhalev approached his work extremely meticulously and with great love, trying to translate as accurately and understandably as possible for Soviet people. In this connection, his work on such films as: “The Godfather”, “Apocalypse Now”, “Amadeus”, “Some Like It Hot”, “Planes, Trains and Automobiles”, “See Nothing, Hear Nothing”, “Evil Dead 3: Army of Darkness” and “Misery” are still considered the reference and the most accurate, not requiring re-sounding. And how these films became classics for the whole world, taking their place on the pedestal of eternity. So the translations of Alexey Mikhailovich took this place in the hearts of the inhabitants of the post-Soviet space. What can I add here… In loving memory!