What makes the “Qartulad” experience unique is the localization of the visual gags. In English, the background newspapers read “Horseman Lost at Sea.” In Georgian, the typesetters actually went in and changed the text to local jokes.
And in Georgian, the void stares back in cursive.
The voice actors for the Georgian dub (who remain criminally under-credited) faced an impossible task. How do you translate “That went better than most of my Christmases” (a reference to his traumatic childhood) without losing the rhythm? The answer, it turns out, is leaning into Georgian fatalism.
The show’s running gag about “Hollywoo” gets a hilarious treatment. They don’t translate it directly. Instead, Princess Carolyn says, “We are in Hollywood… uh, I mean, Tbilis-Doo.” It shouldn’t work. But it does.