R ecently, journalists of The Hindu interacted with Tamil film director Mari Selvaraj at the office in Chennai. A native of southern Tamil Nadu, Mr. Selvaraj spoke of how reading literature helped him understand where to draw creative boundaries.

Much like how words get lost in translation in literature sometimes, Mr. Selvaraj’s films are littered with local imagery and dialects which are either difficult to grasp for those from other regions, or offer a different meaning. In Vaazhai , characters often used the words thoora po . When translated into the English, this means “go away”, but in the dialects of southern Tamil Nadu, it means “get lost”. During the interaction at the office too, some of what was said got lost in translation and needed to be clarified.

Journalists als

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