Kofi held his breath. The white text flashed at the bottom of the screen in clean, accessible French.
Now, at the premiere of his subtitled version, a group of visiting cultural attachés from France and ivory coast sat in the front row. They did not speak a word of Ewe. As the film reached its climax, the old woman on screen delivered her famous proverb. Togo subtitles French
The challenge was not simply translating the words, but translating the soul. In one scene, an elderly woman uses an Ewe proverb about a bird that flies too close to the sun. A literal translation into French made no sense. Kofi spent three days debating with himself over a single line of text. He sat in small cafes, drinking local tea, scribbling in his notebook until he found the right French equivalent that captured the humor and the warning of the original dialogue. Kofi held his breath