Hearing Voices
Perhaps I’m unwise to mention this, but for some time now I’ve been hearing voices. It doesn’t happen all the time, but I've noticed it's most common when I'm watching Polish TV, and especially when I'm watching non-Polish films on Polish TV. I don't mind most of the time, but it gets very annoying when I'm trying to follow Bruce Willis' dialogue in Die Hard.
The usual sources of disembodied voice are demonic possession and god. If I have been possessed by demons or am receiving revelations directly from heaven, I'm surprised the voices are speaking Polish. There could be all kinds of misunderstandings that might lead me to commit the wrong evil acts or pass on incorrect commandments to mankind.
I talked to a friendly psychiatrist about the problem and he suggested that I was hearing neither the voices of gods nor demons, but lektors. "A lektor," he said "is an actor paid to speak the translated words of all the characters in a foreign film so that everybody can understand them." He must think I'm crazy. Why would anybody do that when the much simpler and effective solution of providing subtitles exists?
The phenomenon of the lektor is a strange one. I've not encountered anything like it anywhere else in the world. Rather, I hadn't encountered anything like it until I visited other countries east of Poland. The whole concept seems to be a Slavic invention. From a purely selfish perspective, it also seems to an invention solely designed to annoy me.
There appears to be only one lektor, or a group of lektors with exactly the same voice. I think it's the same guy who does the safety announcements in Polish on EasyJet flights too. If this guy ever dies, which seems likely given the amount of work he has to do, Poland is going to be in big trouble. If there is more than one lektor, why are none of them women?
What I don't understand is why foreign films on television have a lektor, but foreign films at the cinema don't. If I go to see Shrek at the MultiKino, Donkey has been dubbed with the voice of Jerzy Stuhr, but he doesn't do all the other voices too. If I go to see The King's Speech, nobody has been dubbed – there are perfectly adequate subtitles instead. The lektor is clearly a powerful man, but why doesn't his influence extend to the world of cinema?
The only other place I sometimes hear disembodied voices is on the tram. They helpfully tell me which stop is coming up next. Given my already established propensity for experiencing voices, I had assumed I was the only one who could hear them. I'm now disappointed that Anna Dymna isn’t talking exclusively to me.
Jamie Stokes
