Wednesday, 8 September 2010

Dear Ukrainian TV

Dear Ukrainian TV,
Hi there, my name is Chris Wilson and I'm a British person living in the Ukraine who speaks a bit of Russian and no Ukrainian. I happen to be living in Dnipro, a part of the Ukrainian where everyone speaks Russian all the time, as is common in the east of the country and considering 97% of the country actually do speak Russian as opposed to 87.8% who can speak Ukrainian. I do understand that you want to promote the Ukrainian language to help develop a separate national identity and perhaps to even promote a more western outlook (seeing as the Ukrainian language has always been linked with the independence movement, particularly the city of Lviv, and has a lot in common with polish.) and as such when you dub film/write subtitles it makes sense to have them in Ukrainian.... I get that, I'm okay with it (i'd rather you subtitles more and dubbed less [or at least better] but I understand that0
What, however, really annoys me is when you show an amazing Russian language film like Nightwatch (a personal favourite that I was looking forward to watching with no English subtitles and to test my Russian with) Dubbed in Ukrainian and with Ukrainian subtitles!?!?! If you wanted to throw in Ukrianian subtitles, then that would have been fine by me, but to dub it as well when more people in the country actually speak Russian was just quite annoying.
I know you will probably continue to do this with other Russian programs but I just had to say that you lost at least one viewer last night because of this.

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