Reel drama more fiction than fact or lost in translation?
THE disputed documentary Stolen is full of mistranslations and incorrect subtitles, a translator who worked on the film, Oumar Sy, says.
The Bondi filmmakers, Violeta Ayala and Dan Fallshaw, claim slavery exists in Western Saharan refugee camps.
Controversy surrounded a screening of the film at last month's Sydney Film Festival, when one of the main subjects, Faitim Salam, left the refugees camps at Tindouf in Algeria to protest against the documentary's claims.
Ayala and Fallshaw stood by the film, saying it had been verified by three separate translators including Sy, who works as a Hassaniya Arabic to English translator for the United States Immigration Court.
Sy went through the film with the documentary makers in February, pointing out several mistakes in their subtitles.
He said Ayala and Fallshaw wrote down his corrections and promised to alter the subtitles. They arranged to meet for a screening of the final cut, but cancelled the appointment.
"They told me they would send a copy of the film for me to check, but they didn't," Sy says from New York. "They didn't respect their commitment to me. I was surprised and disappointed."
He saw the final version of the film for the first time last week and was shocked at its inaccuracy. "There is still a lot of work to do on the film," he says. "The translation I put on paper was correct. I went through [the film] minute by minute, but a lot of the mistakes have not been changed."
In one scene Salam's mother and sister appear to confirm that she is a slave to her white foster mother. More recent translations show they are discussing Ayala, who they say has misunderstood the family relationships.
Another problem was that some of the film's dialogue was in a local dialect that Sy could not understand. "If you don't live locally, you cannot understand what they say," he says.
In an email to Sy on Thursday, seen by the Herald, Ayala and Fallshaw accused the translator of "negligence".
They say he failed to tell them his concerns about the translations and has damaged the film's credibility. In a statement, they suggested Sy's comments were part of an ongoing campaign by the organisation that runs the refugee camps, the Polisario Front, to undermine the film.
"If he had concerns, there were many opportunities to clarify these for us at the time," the filmmakers say in the statement. "We asked him if he was sure all the translations were correct; he signed a letter to say this."
They say only a small amount of dialogue was in question and most of the talk about slavery was in Spanish. "There are millions of Spanish speakers who will be able to hear for themselves key conversations about slavery used in the film."
A translator from Australia's National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters will check the film before its next screening at the Melbourne International Film Festival on July 31.