Conference Presentations by Ioannis Saridakis
Σύλλογος Διγλωσσίας Κύπρου, 2021
Διάλεξη στο πλαίσιο του διαδικτυακού σεμιναρίου «Μετάφραση και διδακτική ξένων γλωσσών», 10.4.2021
CAD 2018 Conference, Lancaster University, 22-24 June 2018
This paper reports on the findings of a corpus-driven study of the transfer of “bad language”, “p... more This paper reports on the findings of a corpus-driven study of the transfer of “bad language”, “profane” or “taboo” words, in English to Greek film translation, in contrast to original film discourse. Our aim is thus to quantitatively investigate and then socially and register-wise interpret observed patterns (e.g., Mouka et al. 2015) in the translation of Bad Language Words (BLWs, McEnery 2006), in an as yet relatively under-researched area, that of film translation.
In line with McEnery’s remark, in relation to English, that spontaneous spoken discourse is a “much more secure basis for the study of bad language” (2006: 28), and considering that in corpus-wise under-resourced languages such as Greek, the compilation and study of a systematic film corpus is perhaps the only reasonable resource for studying specific traits of oral discourse. Film discourse can in fact usefully represent the oral varieties of a language (Frochini 2012: 90).
In the field of AVT, previous research on the perception and transfer of “bad language” is, for the most part, qualitative (see, e.g., the work of Díaz-Cintas [2001] on the rendition of expressions with a sexual connotation, of Chen [2004] on the Hong Kong Chinese subtitling of English swearwords, of Scandura [2004] on (self-) censorship in subtitling, of Pujol [2006] on the transfer of fuck into Catalan, of Fong [2009] on the translation of vulgarisms and sexually-oriented language, of Greenall [2011] on the non-translation of swearing in subtitling as an example of loss of social implicature, and of Baines [2015] on the use of cues of register for triggering audience reactions to taboo language). This body of research seems to concur to the assumption that this type of language is often omitted or weakened in AVT (Fawcett 1997: 119; Díaz-Cintas & Ramael 2007: 195), accounting for and exemplified on grounds of technical (time and target-text length) contraints (e.g., Díaz-Cintas & Ramael 2007), or as a result of intersemiotic shift on the level of politeness, from an oral to a written mode (e.g., Gambier 2002, in Baines 2015: 437); one that implies downplaying or perhaps censoring “bad language”, which in written discourse is presumably more striking than it is in an oral text: this is the case with film subtitles (see, e.g., Mayoral 1993: 57, in Díaz-Cintas 2001: 51).
By contrast, our work draws on McEnery’s (2006: 1) postulate that “bad language” (and hence, its transfer into another socio-linguistic context, as is the case with AVT) should be investigated systematically, based on ample linguistic evidence, and be considered as a complex social phenomenon, so as to be able to explain “both the source of the undoubted power of bad language and the processes whereby inferences are drawn about speakers using it” (ibid.).
For this purpose, we have compiled: (a) a corpus of transcribed dialogues of four contemporary American films; (b) a corpus of their DVD (i.e. commercial) Greek subtitles; (c) a corpus of their Greek “fansubs” (a genre that is less or not at all subject to self-censorship and technical constraints); and (d) a reference corpus of transcribed dialogues of four contemporary Greek films with a marked use of “bad” language.
Corpora (a), (b) and (c) were aligned, with the aim to statistically investigate BLW-related findings. English BLWs, their corresponding renditions into Greek, and Greek BLWs from the original film corpus (d) have been annotated using McEnery’s (2006: 27) categorisation schema. BWLs in the four annotated corpora have been quantitatively analysed (collocation- and concordance-wise), so as to assess:
(a) the tendency towards a more “standard”, i.e. less “abusive” language in the rendition of BWLs in translated film language, i.e. in the two translation sub-corpora (b and c);
(b) the impact of (self-) censorship on film translation, by statistically comparing and interpreting the corresponding findings from corpora (b) and (c); and
(c) the “status” of translated film language in relation to original film language, by comparing the statistics and the classification of BLWs from corpora (b) and (c) with those of the original film corpus (d).
Not surprisingly, translated film language is found to be more “neutralised” when compared to “natural” film discourse. Thus, self-restriction (or self-censorship) is, indeed, a general pattern, which is to some extent eliminated in the case of fansubs, where subtitlers are not bound by the restraints of the text genre and of the AVT industry. However, research findings suggest that in film translation, the rendition of “bad language” is a considerably more intricate phenomenon. The lexico-grammatical and discourse profiling of Greek subtitles in contrast to original film language suggests that Pym’s (2012: 108) “safety” postulate seems to be at play here, when there are no “ready-made” correspondences. In other words, sociolinguistically, this profiling suggests a reluctance on the part of translators, one that significantly suppresses the source text’s interpersonal metafunction (Munday 2012; Saridakis 2015: 206).
References
Baines, R. 2015. Subtitling taboo language: using the cues of register and genre to affect audience experience?. Meta 60.3, 431–453.
Chen, C. 2004. On the Hong Kong Chinese subtitling of English swearwords. Meta 49.1,135-147.
Díaz-Cintas, J. 2001. Sex, (sub)titles and videotapes. In L. Lorenzo García, and A.M. Pereira Rodríguez (eds). Traducción subordinada II: el subtitulado (inglés-español/galego). Vigo: Universidade de Vigo, 47-65.
Díaz-Cintas, J., and A. Remael. 2007. Audiovisual Translation: subtitling. Manchester: St. Jerome.
Fawcett, P. 1997. Translation and language. Linguistic theories explained. Manchester: St. Jerome.
Fong, G. 2009. The two worlds of subtitling: the case of vulgarisms and sexually-oriented language. In K. Au, and G. Fong (eds). Dubbing and subtitling in a world context. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 39-62.
Frochini, P. 2012. Movie language revisited. Evidence from multi-dimensional analysis and corpora. Bern: Peter Lang.
Gambier, Y. 2002. Les censures dans la traduction audiovisuelle. TTR 15.2, 203-221.
Greenall, A.K. 2011. The non-translation of swearing in subtitling: Loss of social implicature?. In A. Şerban, A. Matamala, and J-M. Lavour (eds). Audio-visual translation in close-up. Practical and theoretical approaches. Bern: Peter Lang, 45-60.
McEnery, T. 2006. Swearing in English. Bad language, purity and power from 1586 to the present. London: Routledge.
Mayoral, R. 1993. La traducción cinematográfica: el subtitulado. Sendebar 4, 45-68.
Mouka, E., I.E. Saridakis, and A. Fotopoulou. 2015. Racism goes to the movies: A corpus-based study of cross-linguistic racist discourse annotation and analysis. In C. Fantinuoli, and F. Zanettin (eds). New directions in corpus-based translation studies. Berlin: Language Science Press, 35-70.
Munday, J. 2012. Evaluation in translation. Critical points of translator decision-making. London: Routledge.
Pujol, D. 2006. The translation and dubbing of “fuck” into Catalan: the case of ‘From Dusk till Dawn’. Journal of Specialised Translation 6, 121-133.
Pym, A. 2012. On translator ethics. Principles for mediation between cultures. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Saridakis, I.E. 2015. Probabilistic laws and risk aversion in translation: a case study in translation didactics. Current Trends in Translation Teaching and Learning E (CTTL-E) 2015, 196-245.
Scandura, G. 2004. Sex, lies and TV: censorship and subtitling. Meta 49.1, 126-134.
13th Int Conf on Greek Linguistics (ICGL13)
Τη διετία 2013-2014, τον ελληνικό πολιτικό και ειδησεογραφικό λόγο, όσο και ευρύτερα τον κοινωνικ... more Τη διετία 2013-2014, τον ελληνικό πολιτικό και ειδησεογραφικό λόγο, όσο και ευρύτερα τον κοινωνικό διάλογο, απασχόλησαν έντονα η εννοιολόγηση και ο προσδιορισμός του ρατσιστικού μίσους και του ρατσιστικού λόγου. Αφορμές για αυτό αποτέλεσαν κυρίως (α) η έκνομη δράση μελών του κόμματος της Χρυσής Αυγής, και (β) η ψήφιση από το ελληνικό Κοινοβούλιο του νόμου 4285/2014 («καταπολέμηση ορισμένων μορφών και εκδηλώσεων ρατσισμού και ξενοφοβίας μέσω του ποινικού δικαίου»). Αν και η ένταση του δημόσιου διαλόγου για τον προσδιορισμό αυτόν έχει έκτοτε αποκλιμακωθεί σημαντικά, ο εθνικιστικός, ρατσιστικός και ξενοφοβικός λόγος αυτός καθαυτός παρουσιάζει έξαρση. Αποτελεί, κατά την έννοια αυτή, ζητούμενο η συστηματική χαρτογράφηση, στο μέτρο του δυνατού, του λόγου μίσους των ακραίων εθνικιστικών ομάδων.
Στην εργασία μας διερευνούμε τις λεξικές σχηματοποιήσεις του μίσους στον εθνικιστικό λόγο του ελληνικού διαδικτύου. Έχοντας ως υπόθεση εργασίας ότι ο ακραίος εθνικιστικός λόγος είναι έμφορτος με λεξικά στοιχεία αρνητικού χαρακτηρισμού και προσδιορισμού του εκάστοτε Άλλου (Gingrich & Banks 2006), τόσο μέσω της σημασιολογικής προτίμησης όσο και μέσω της σημασιολογικής προσωδίας, συγκροτήσαμε, με τεχνικές web crawling, εκτενές σώμα κειμένων από το ελληνικό διαδίκτυο, και συγκεκριμένα από ιστότοπους, ιστολόγια και φόρουμ συζητήσεων που αυτοπροσδιορίζονται ως «εθνικιστικά». Χρησιμοποιώντας τεχνικές της Γλωσσολογίας Σωμάτων Κειμένων διερευνούμε:
(α) τα λεξικά παραθέματα (collocates) των κομβικών στον εθνικιστικό λόγο λεξημάτων (πχ. Τούρκος, Εβραίος, μουσουλμάνος),
(β) τις κύριες λέξεις-κλειδιά με τις οποίες εννοιολογείται το μίσος, τα παραθέματά τους και τις κύριες συμφράσεις τους.
Περαιτέρω, εξετάζουμε την παραθετική ισχύ (collocational strength) και παρουσιάζουμε κριτικά τα σημαντικότερα παραθετικά σχήματα (collocational shapes) (Baker 2016) των κύριων ευρημάτων της λεξιλογικής ανάλυσης ανά εννοιολογική ομάδα.
Κύριες αναφορές
Baker, P. 2016. The shapes of collocation. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 21(2), 139-164.
Gingrich, A. and Banks, M. 2006. Neo-nationalism in Europe and beyond. Perspectives from social anthropology. Oxford: Berghahn Books.
Mouka, E. and Saridakis, I.E. 2017. Golden Dawn in the media and the Greek crisis: Realities, allusions and illusions. In: Hatzidaki, O. and Goutsos, D. (eds). Greece in crisis: Combining critical discourse and corpus linguistics perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins (υπό έκδοση).
Reisigl, M. and Wodak, R. 2001. Discourse and discrimination. Rhetorics of racism and antisemitism. London: Routledge.
Το σύνηθες «ιδεολογικό τετράγωνο» αποτελείται από πόλωση ομάδων, στο επίπεδο του λόγου. Κάθε ομάδ... more Το σύνηθες «ιδεολογικό τετράγωνο» αποτελείται από πόλωση ομάδων, στο επίπεδο του λόγου. Κάθε ομάδα τονίζει τα θετικά «μας», αγνοεί τα θετικά «τους», τονίζει τα αρνητικά «τους» και αγνοεί τα αρνητικά «μας». Το σχήμα αυτό εντοπίζεται σε κάθε ιδεολογικό λόγο (van Dijk 2006) Ρητορική του λόγου • «Εμείς» και «οι Άλλοι»: γενίκευση χαρακτηριστικών μεμονωμένων συμπεριφορών, αγνόηση της πραγματικότητας που βιώνουν οι «Άλλοι» «Εμείς, η Χρυσή Αυγή» -Έννοιες και λεξήματα Αξίες λαός/λαϊκός,
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Conference Presentations by Ioannis Saridakis
In line with McEnery’s remark, in relation to English, that spontaneous spoken discourse is a “much more secure basis for the study of bad language” (2006: 28), and considering that in corpus-wise under-resourced languages such as Greek, the compilation and study of a systematic film corpus is perhaps the only reasonable resource for studying specific traits of oral discourse. Film discourse can in fact usefully represent the oral varieties of a language (Frochini 2012: 90).
In the field of AVT, previous research on the perception and transfer of “bad language” is, for the most part, qualitative (see, e.g., the work of Díaz-Cintas [2001] on the rendition of expressions with a sexual connotation, of Chen [2004] on the Hong Kong Chinese subtitling of English swearwords, of Scandura [2004] on (self-) censorship in subtitling, of Pujol [2006] on the transfer of fuck into Catalan, of Fong [2009] on the translation of vulgarisms and sexually-oriented language, of Greenall [2011] on the non-translation of swearing in subtitling as an example of loss of social implicature, and of Baines [2015] on the use of cues of register for triggering audience reactions to taboo language). This body of research seems to concur to the assumption that this type of language is often omitted or weakened in AVT (Fawcett 1997: 119; Díaz-Cintas & Ramael 2007: 195), accounting for and exemplified on grounds of technical (time and target-text length) contraints (e.g., Díaz-Cintas & Ramael 2007), or as a result of intersemiotic shift on the level of politeness, from an oral to a written mode (e.g., Gambier 2002, in Baines 2015: 437); one that implies downplaying or perhaps censoring “bad language”, which in written discourse is presumably more striking than it is in an oral text: this is the case with film subtitles (see, e.g., Mayoral 1993: 57, in Díaz-Cintas 2001: 51).
By contrast, our work draws on McEnery’s (2006: 1) postulate that “bad language” (and hence, its transfer into another socio-linguistic context, as is the case with AVT) should be investigated systematically, based on ample linguistic evidence, and be considered as a complex social phenomenon, so as to be able to explain “both the source of the undoubted power of bad language and the processes whereby inferences are drawn about speakers using it” (ibid.).
For this purpose, we have compiled: (a) a corpus of transcribed dialogues of four contemporary American films; (b) a corpus of their DVD (i.e. commercial) Greek subtitles; (c) a corpus of their Greek “fansubs” (a genre that is less or not at all subject to self-censorship and technical constraints); and (d) a reference corpus of transcribed dialogues of four contemporary Greek films with a marked use of “bad” language.
Corpora (a), (b) and (c) were aligned, with the aim to statistically investigate BLW-related findings. English BLWs, their corresponding renditions into Greek, and Greek BLWs from the original film corpus (d) have been annotated using McEnery’s (2006: 27) categorisation schema. BWLs in the four annotated corpora have been quantitatively analysed (collocation- and concordance-wise), so as to assess:
(a) the tendency towards a more “standard”, i.e. less “abusive” language in the rendition of BWLs in translated film language, i.e. in the two translation sub-corpora (b and c);
(b) the impact of (self-) censorship on film translation, by statistically comparing and interpreting the corresponding findings from corpora (b) and (c); and
(c) the “status” of translated film language in relation to original film language, by comparing the statistics and the classification of BLWs from corpora (b) and (c) with those of the original film corpus (d).
Not surprisingly, translated film language is found to be more “neutralised” when compared to “natural” film discourse. Thus, self-restriction (or self-censorship) is, indeed, a general pattern, which is to some extent eliminated in the case of fansubs, where subtitlers are not bound by the restraints of the text genre and of the AVT industry. However, research findings suggest that in film translation, the rendition of “bad language” is a considerably more intricate phenomenon. The lexico-grammatical and discourse profiling of Greek subtitles in contrast to original film language suggests that Pym’s (2012: 108) “safety” postulate seems to be at play here, when there are no “ready-made” correspondences. In other words, sociolinguistically, this profiling suggests a reluctance on the part of translators, one that significantly suppresses the source text’s interpersonal metafunction (Munday 2012; Saridakis 2015: 206).
References
Baines, R. 2015. Subtitling taboo language: using the cues of register and genre to affect audience experience?. Meta 60.3, 431–453.
Chen, C. 2004. On the Hong Kong Chinese subtitling of English swearwords. Meta 49.1,135-147.
Díaz-Cintas, J. 2001. Sex, (sub)titles and videotapes. In L. Lorenzo García, and A.M. Pereira Rodríguez (eds). Traducción subordinada II: el subtitulado (inglés-español/galego). Vigo: Universidade de Vigo, 47-65.
Díaz-Cintas, J., and A. Remael. 2007. Audiovisual Translation: subtitling. Manchester: St. Jerome.
Fawcett, P. 1997. Translation and language. Linguistic theories explained. Manchester: St. Jerome.
Fong, G. 2009. The two worlds of subtitling: the case of vulgarisms and sexually-oriented language. In K. Au, and G. Fong (eds). Dubbing and subtitling in a world context. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 39-62.
Frochini, P. 2012. Movie language revisited. Evidence from multi-dimensional analysis and corpora. Bern: Peter Lang.
Gambier, Y. 2002. Les censures dans la traduction audiovisuelle. TTR 15.2, 203-221.
Greenall, A.K. 2011. The non-translation of swearing in subtitling: Loss of social implicature?. In A. Şerban, A. Matamala, and J-M. Lavour (eds). Audio-visual translation in close-up. Practical and theoretical approaches. Bern: Peter Lang, 45-60.
McEnery, T. 2006. Swearing in English. Bad language, purity and power from 1586 to the present. London: Routledge.
Mayoral, R. 1993. La traducción cinematográfica: el subtitulado. Sendebar 4, 45-68.
Mouka, E., I.E. Saridakis, and A. Fotopoulou. 2015. Racism goes to the movies: A corpus-based study of cross-linguistic racist discourse annotation and analysis. In C. Fantinuoli, and F. Zanettin (eds). New directions in corpus-based translation studies. Berlin: Language Science Press, 35-70.
Munday, J. 2012. Evaluation in translation. Critical points of translator decision-making. London: Routledge.
Pujol, D. 2006. The translation and dubbing of “fuck” into Catalan: the case of ‘From Dusk till Dawn’. Journal of Specialised Translation 6, 121-133.
Pym, A. 2012. On translator ethics. Principles for mediation between cultures. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Saridakis, I.E. 2015. Probabilistic laws and risk aversion in translation: a case study in translation didactics. Current Trends in Translation Teaching and Learning E (CTTL-E) 2015, 196-245.
Scandura, G. 2004. Sex, lies and TV: censorship and subtitling. Meta 49.1, 126-134.
Στην εργασία μας διερευνούμε τις λεξικές σχηματοποιήσεις του μίσους στον εθνικιστικό λόγο του ελληνικού διαδικτύου. Έχοντας ως υπόθεση εργασίας ότι ο ακραίος εθνικιστικός λόγος είναι έμφορτος με λεξικά στοιχεία αρνητικού χαρακτηρισμού και προσδιορισμού του εκάστοτε Άλλου (Gingrich & Banks 2006), τόσο μέσω της σημασιολογικής προτίμησης όσο και μέσω της σημασιολογικής προσωδίας, συγκροτήσαμε, με τεχνικές web crawling, εκτενές σώμα κειμένων από το ελληνικό διαδίκτυο, και συγκεκριμένα από ιστότοπους, ιστολόγια και φόρουμ συζητήσεων που αυτοπροσδιορίζονται ως «εθνικιστικά». Χρησιμοποιώντας τεχνικές της Γλωσσολογίας Σωμάτων Κειμένων διερευνούμε:
(α) τα λεξικά παραθέματα (collocates) των κομβικών στον εθνικιστικό λόγο λεξημάτων (πχ. Τούρκος, Εβραίος, μουσουλμάνος),
(β) τις κύριες λέξεις-κλειδιά με τις οποίες εννοιολογείται το μίσος, τα παραθέματά τους και τις κύριες συμφράσεις τους.
Περαιτέρω, εξετάζουμε την παραθετική ισχύ (collocational strength) και παρουσιάζουμε κριτικά τα σημαντικότερα παραθετικά σχήματα (collocational shapes) (Baker 2016) των κύριων ευρημάτων της λεξιλογικής ανάλυσης ανά εννοιολογική ομάδα.
Κύριες αναφορές
Baker, P. 2016. The shapes of collocation. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 21(2), 139-164.
Gingrich, A. and Banks, M. 2006. Neo-nationalism in Europe and beyond. Perspectives from social anthropology. Oxford: Berghahn Books.
Mouka, E. and Saridakis, I.E. 2017. Golden Dawn in the media and the Greek crisis: Realities, allusions and illusions. In: Hatzidaki, O. and Goutsos, D. (eds). Greece in crisis: Combining critical discourse and corpus linguistics perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins (υπό έκδοση).
Reisigl, M. and Wodak, R. 2001. Discourse and discrimination. Rhetorics of racism and antisemitism. London: Routledge.