Tonight, watching Dariush Mehrjui’s newest film, Santouri, I thought my eyes would pop out of my head when I saw some Persian insults I always thought rather tame (naa-mard, for instance) subtitled “fuck-face,” “dickhead,” and “faggot,” among other choice terms.
Granted, the film is about a junkie, so these words captured the spirit of the dialogue, even though they were most certainly not literal translations. The shock value of seeing these words in an Iranian film kept me almost as engaged as the plot. It reminded me of one very proper Iranian lady I know, who says the word “shit” like it’s nothing, when she would never, under any circumstances, say the Persian equivalent.
Salty language just doesn’t mean that much in a tongue that’s not your own, which makes diaspora life twice as fun.
Post a Comment