Dubbing to Preserve Endangered Languages
posted December 31, 2022
In surprising projects in Navajo country and in Australia, adaptations of hugely popular films into Indigenous languages are helping to preserve threatened languages, as well as to provide fresh perspectives on the films. Late in 2021, the 1964 “spaghetti western” A Fistful of Dollars, starring Clint Eastwood as “The Man with No Name,” was added to that select group of adaptations. It appeared in the Navajo language as Béeso Dah Yiníłjaa’. “Language preservation is at the core of it — language awareness and issues surrounding it,” said Manny Wheeler, director of the Navajo Nation Museum in Window Rock, Arizona, who headed the project.