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Common Sense Advisory Blogs
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Viral Videos, Kolaveri Di, and Lessons for Localization
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How did a song in Tamil become a viral video success? Within 10 hours of its release this past November, Why This Kolaveri Di? (which means, "Why this murderous rage, girl?"), became the most-searched YouTube video in India’s history. It was also the first Tamil film song to be premiered on MTV. As of January 11, 2012, this song from the Tamil movie titled 3 had recorded 34 million hits on its YouTube page. The song even spawned several copycat versions in Dutch, Arabic, Punjabi, and so on.
While viral marketing remains a mystery for many, there are clear explanations for Kolaveri’s success and adaptability across linguistic audiences in India and around the world:
- The source content is localization-ready. Composed in “Tanglish” (Tamil + English), the song uses sparse lyrics and is easily understood at some level, even in the absence of much context, even for those who do not speak Tamil. Of course, the words Kolaveri Di require explanation. But the rest of the song can easily be deciphered and adapted to local taste around the world, despite the song having a distinct Indian flavor.
- The structure is simple and brief. The lyrics of the song are key to its adaptability across cultures and languages. The song does not have fully formed sentences, which would have made understanding it, embracing it, and translating it difficult for listeners from diverse backgrounds. Its bare skeleton of lyrics does the job of conveying the meaning, but without crowding the song with alien words. Keeping the source text clean of context/culture-dependent words frees it from its origins and makes it easier to translate, as we pointed out in “Writing for Global Audiences.”
In some cases, the song has not really been translated, but adapted for local markets. That is, the original script is kept intact, but the video is adapted. For example, the rowing team from Groningen, the Netherlands, shakes a leg to the original song. Yet all that heavy and unmistakably Tamil drawl fits right in. Thus, the song retains its originality while still lending itself to contexts around the world. Source content creators, next time you need a little inspiration (or perhaps just a break from the norm) consider adding a dose of Kolaveri-inspired qualities! Who knows, your content may just go viral.
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Keywords: Ethnic / domestic multicultural markets, Global social media, Internationalization, Localization, Translation |
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