Bojack Horseman — Qartulad

There is a Georgian word: “წყენა” (ts’q’ena). It means a specific kind of sorrow, resentment, and melancholy you hold for someone you still love. The English script uses 20 words to describe this. The Georgian Bojack says one word, and you feel it in your bones.

For the uninitiated, “Qartulad” simply means “in Georgian.” But in the context of this Netflix animated masterpiece, it has become shorthand for a specific kind of beautiful, tragic localization.

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. Bojack Horseman Qartulad

When Todd says, “You are all the things that are wrong with you,” the Georgian audience doesn’t see it as a therapy line. They see it as “Romeli khar, is khar” (რომელი ხარ, ის ხარ)—a local proverb meaning “You are exactly what you are.” There is no escape clause.

For English speakers, Bojack Horseman is a masterclass in wordplay, puns, and rapid-fire Hollywoo(d) satire. But for a growing cult audience in Georgia, the show exists in two forms: the original English, and the legendary, almost mythical (ქართულად). The Georgian Bojack says one word, and you

Dubbed in Georgian? No way. A look at how the existential dread of Bojack Horseman translates into the Georgian language, the cult following in Tbilisi, and why “Qartulad” might be the most depressing—and best—way to watch the show. If you had told me five years ago that I would be sobbing over a cartoon horse speaking Georgian, I would have laughed. But here we are.

One fan favorite from Season 3 shows a billboard for “Secretariat.” In the Georgian version, the subtitle jokes that the movie is “produced by the Rustavi 2 news team”—a dark nod to Georgia’s own tumultuous media landscape. How do you translate “That went better than

Georgia has a history. It has survived revolutions, wars, and the collapse of empires. There is a cultural understanding of “sadness as a default state” that Americans simply don’t have.