Translating Subtitles – Translating Cultures

Language Value, Volume 14.1, 2021

Audiovisual translation studies (AVT) have experienced an exponential growth in the last twenty years, have consolidated proven analysis methodologies, and attracted the interest mainly of Western scholars. It is interesting to investigate whether these methodologies are also applicable to the study of subtitling of films from linguistically and culturally distant cultures such as Egyptian and Spanish. Therefore, the main objective of this work is to verify whether the translation norms proposed in the translation methods for dubbing and subtitling, traditionally based on language combinations with English, are applicable for the specific case of the Arabic-Spanish language combination, based on the analysis of the treatment of the cultural elements present in the audiovisual texts selected for this research. Among the findings, the distinctive features and colloquial character and spontaneity of the original versions are frequently lost.

2000

Linguistica Antverpiensia, New Series – Themes in Translation Studies, 2021

An Empirical and Descriptive Study of the Translation Method for Dubbing and Subtitling is the title of a doctoral thesis submitted in November 2006. This research project developed a theoretical framework where the notion of translation method was defined in terms of a graphical and parametrical representation as a function of three parameters: constraints active in audiovisual translation, translation norms and translation techniques. The object of study consisted of several independent American films shown in Spain, in dubbed and subtitled versions, in the period between 2001 and 2004. Both the preliminary and the translation phases of the translation process were taken into account in the scope of work. Empirical data were gathered through interviews with the translators of the films for the preliminary phase of the translation process; the compilation of almost 500 micro textual samples of the two translated versions provided the empirical data for the translation phase itself....

2018

represented through audiovisual translation (AVT). Empirical, case-studybased research over recent decades has given us a lot of data on the kinds of transformative actions carried out on audiovisual texts by the operations of dubbing and subtitling, which are the principal modes of AVT. But a related question also needs to be addressed—namely, the way in which AVT is itself represented in the paratexts of films. This may seem a slightly rarefied topic, when we already know that AVT shares in the invisibility problem of translation as a whole (Venuti 1995, 2008; Nornes 1999, 2007). But it is timely to look again at the visibility, or otherwise, of AVT. The United Kingdom, where I am based at time of writing, has recently seen a rise in visibility both in literary translation (Tonkin 2017: 8) and in subtitling, particularly on television (Frost 2011; Lawson 2016; Tate 2016). The DVD format, which revolutionised the consumption of AVT, turned 20 in 2017, in which time it has seen a su...

Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 2021

Subtitling is a challenging task making subtitlers use precise strategies to improve the quality of the subtitles. This paper aims at identifying the subtitling strategies employed in subtitling the culture-bound terms in the Jordanian movie entitled “Theeb” and assessing the translation of such culture-bound terms. The dialect used in this movie is the Bedouin Jordanian Arabic. So, the translator faced two dilemmas: (1) Understanding the Bedouin Jordanian-Arabic dialect and understanding the dimensions and features of this distinguished culture. (2) Translating this work, which is loaded with cultural expressions, into English. Furthermore, the study deals with the issue of overcoming the difficulties faced by translation of Arabic-language audiovisual dialogues into English. To achieve the purpose of this study, the data was collected from the movie "Theeb" and then analyzed. The results show that not all the subtitling strategies were used. Those left unused were disloc...

For the past decade the issue of audiovisual translation (AVT) has been taking attention of both Russian and foreign language professionals, although most of Russian researchers concentrated on a textual aspect of audiovisual productions. However, the research paradigm shift in modern Russian Translation Studies requires developing of new research tools and methods, together with original translation strategies, which can be successfully applied during translation process, particularly in case of AVT. The aim of the present research is to study one of the most contradictive translation strategies – a strategy of transcreation, which has always been considered as the tool, used only by copyrighters dealing with domains of marketing and advertising. The author argues that the strategy of transcreation can be effectively used in the context of constrained translation, particularly in case of subtitling, defines the challenges of constrained translation and outlines the solutions that can be made using the strategy of transcreation.

2017

Research on audiovisual translation (AVT) has undergone considerable growth in the area of teaching and learning of languages for academic purposes. The interest in this field leads to an increase of research on dubbing, subtitling and, at the same time, on the teaching and learning of linguistic aspects in AVT didactics. These studies are being significantly fostered by computational linguistics, Computer Aided Translation Technology (CATT) and discourse analysis based on multimo-dal corpora of audiovisual documents. Corpus linguistics becomes then a meth-odological assistant for text linguistic analysis and represents, together with elec-tronic resources and software, two basic tools for audiovisual text analysis. In this article we work with a bilingual corpus of subtitles which is distributed in two dif-ferent subcorpora: CORSUBILIN (Corpus de Subtítulos Bilingües en Inglés) and CORSUBILES (Corpus de Subtítulos Bilingües en Español). In so doing, we try to show and develop some of the potential applications that Corpus linguistics has in the study of AVT.

In order to tackle the typology of the audiovisual text this study focuses on the translation of humour, a situation in which the challenges encountered by the translator are even more specific. The main questions resulting from the analysis are: “What does one actually translate in AVT? Are these texts or pseudo-texts? How much of the original dialogue can be translated and what is left out? With all the constraints and challenges imposed by cultural references, puns, dialects, idiolects, taboo language, rhythm of speech, etc. how can audiovisual translators make sure the perlocutionary effect, i.e. the skopos of the original dialogue was maintained? Some of these questions can be partially answered, while a few will remain rhetorical. Yet the aim of this study is just to suggest a certain attitude for the translator, who is, when dealing with AVT, challenged by a new type of text. Key words: AVT, perlocutionary effect, audience, humour, cultural-bound terms