References for film subtitle translation

Film subtitle translation is an important part of multimedia translation and occupies an important position in the field of translation. The following is

References for film subtitle translation

Film subtitle translation is an important part of multimedia translation and occupies an important position in the field of translation. The following is what I collected for you. Welcome to read the reference!

Analysis of Difference Translation in Film Subtitle Translation

I. Introduction

Since its birth, the film has won the favor of the audience with its unique artistic expression. With the development of information globalization, film and television works have become one of the important ways to understand foreign cultures and learn foreign languages with their intuitive and convenient advantages. Therefore, film and television translation has also achieved unprecedented development. Compared with dubbing, subtitle translation has become one of the most commonly used methods in film and television translation because of its low production cost and short cycle.

However, as Birgit Nedergaard-Larsen said, subtitle translation is a special language conversion process, not a single conversion process from the source language to the target language, which involves many factors other than words, such as the integration of sound, image and picture [1]. Due to the limitation of time and space, film subtitle translation usually adopts methods such as concentration, deletion and addition to keep the picture, sound and subtitle as unified as possible, and over-translation and under-translation are inevitable. At the same time, over-translation and under-translation have always been hot topics in translation studies. Therefore, how to treat over-translation and under-translation in subtitle translation is an urgent and practical problem.

Second, over-translation and under-translation.

Peter Newmark put forward the concepts of communicative translation and semantic translation in Translation Methods. Communicative translation tends to be fluent, simple, clear and direct. By observing a certain register, it is an "under-translation". Semantic translation is often meticulous, complicated and obscure. Compared with the translator's intention, translation pays more attention to the reproduction of thinking process, so it is an "over-translation" [2]. Over-translation refers to the supplementary processing of translated materials and the transformation beyond the scope of translation, while under-translation refers to the type of language intermediary that does not meet the translation norms in some aspects, that is, abbreviation or abridgement. In short, over-translation means that the target language carries more information than the source language, and the expression is relatively specific; Undertranslation means that the target language carries less information than the source language, and the target language is more general [3]. Over-translation and under-translation are both information increase or decrease in the process of translation, so they can be collectively called differential translation.

Thirdly, redundant and insufficient translation in subtitle translation.

Georg-Michael Luyken pointed out in the book Language Barriers in TV: Dubbing and Subtitling for European Audiences that, unlike literary translation and interpretation, the characteristics of film and television production make subtitle translation limited by time and space: the screen space occupied by subtitles; Subtitle display time; The switching time between subtitles and the display and form of subtitles. At the same time, due to cultural factors, cultural presupposition is often an obstacle in the translation process. In order to avoid the above restrictions, the translator's translation methods such as concentration, deletion and addition will inevitably lead to differential translation. Look at the following three examples:

Example 1. I manage five police officers. That's five personalities and five groups of questions. If you do well, you can be the sixth. But I won't hold your hand, do you understand? I won't look after you.

I have five people with diametrically opposite personalities. Your good behavior is the sixth. But I won't take special care of you, okay? Training day

Example 2. There is an e in the mail today, and a friend wrote this to me: ...

Today, I received a letter from a friend, which said: ... Leave Africa.

In the above example, the original sentence is long, and if it is translated word by word, it will inevitably affect the integration of pictures, sounds and subtitles. Therefore, the translator revised the whole sentence and deleted the italics.

Example 3. What if you stay a little longer?

What's going on here? Are you going to stay a few more days? The Jazz Singer

Example 4. Fear, humiliation, petrification, numbness ... by you.

Scared to death. Trembling with fear, stunned with fear, scared crazy! But not afraid of you! A Beautiful Mind

In Example 3, the original language is slow, so the translator added "What is this?" Match the sound. Example 4, the original text is positive and the ending rhyme "ied" is used. The translator translates the ending rhyme "ied" into the alliteration "fear" and directly translates it into a negative tone.

It is not difficult to see from the above examples that information increases and decreases in the process of translation. Although the translation of 1 ensures the consistency of pictures and subtitles and basically retains the information of the original text, it weakens the momentum of the protagonist's attempt to * * *. In Example 4, the translator racked his brains to deal with the ending rhyme, but if the negative tone implied in the original text is directly translated, the audience cannot appreciate the subtlety of the source language, so the audience's reaction to the subtitle film will be slightly different from that of the source language audience.

Subtitle translation is often influenced by non-literary factors such as pictures and sounds. If literary translation is "dancing with shackles", then subtitle translation is "dancing with shackles". Translators can only keep the information and ideas conveyed by the film as much as possible without affecting the echo of pictures, sounds and subtitles, and it is inevitable that the translation will be over-translated and under-translated.

Fourth, how to treat differential translation in subtitle translation?

Due to different language structures and cultural differences, translation can never achieve absolute equivalence. Subtitle translation is both literary translation and multimedia translation: on the one hand, we should deal with the cultural factors involved in the lines, on the other hand, we should also consider the technical constraints. Adding or deleting information is inevitable, and equivalence is out of the question. Fu Lei, a famous translator in China, pointed out: "Even the best translation is still better or worse than the original. When translating, you can only shorten this distance as much as possible. If it is too late, you should ask too little. " Fu Lei's "excess" and "deficiency" are the translation of excess and deficiency discussed in this paper. However, although there are inevitably some shortcomings in translation, as long as the degree of "over" and "under" is reduced as much as possible and the charm of the original text is expressed as appropriate as possible, isn't subtitle translation a beautiful thing of "killing two birds with one stone"? I put forward the following two viewpoints, aiming at helping translators to look at over-translation and under-translation from a new perspective in the process of subtitle translation.

1. Literary translation and subtitle translation are inevitable. The gap between the target language and the source language has existed since the beginning of translation, and subtitle translation is often influenced by non-literary factors such as technology. Therefore, I think it is acceptable to translate up and down properly without affecting the normal appreciation of the film. Professor Xu Chongxin once had such a metaphor: it is almost impossible to avoid the up-and-down shaking and left-and-right shaking of the car body when the train is running, but such shaking and shaking will not affect the smooth execution of the train as long as it is within a certain range, and accidents will occur if it exceeds a certain range. Translation is the execution of the train, and "jitter" and "swing" are inevitable. For example, this dialogue in Growing Pains:

Example 5. Teacher: Ah, Mike. Can you explain to us the meaning of the sea in Moby Dick?

Mike: Ah, sure, sure. This is the letter between I and K.

The humor of this dialogue lies in the homonym pun of "sea" and "c", but there is no corresponding pun in Chinese, so the translator must use flexible differential translation to ensure the smooth implementation of "train". Teacher: Ah … Mike, can you explain to us the meaning of the sea in Mobidick?

Mike: Oh, sure, sure, but the sea and the river are different.

It is helpless for the translator to convert puns in the original text into alliterations in Chinese, but the sense of humor in the original text is preserved. In order to faithfully translate the original text, notes and annotations are essential, which not only loses humor, but also allows the space and time factors of subtitles. Compared with notes and annotations, the transformation between similar attributes, such as rhetorical devices, may reduce the degree of "jitter" and "swing" more effectively.

The translation of Example 5 is over-translation by supplementing the translated materials and transferring the translated materials out of the scope of translation. However, it is this kind of processing that achieves the expected purpose of the source language film. Therefore, over-translation here is an acceptable and effective way to deal with it. Example 1 Due to the limitation of time and space, it is necessary to reduce the amount of information conveyed by the source language. However, if the information of example 1 is completely translated, it will inevitably affect the readability and coherence of subtitles. Therefore, due to the influence of literary and non-literary factors, it is acceptable to carry out moderate over-translation and under-translation.

2. Mastering moderation in subtitle translation should be based on film types. Different types of movies, different target audiences and different expected effects. For the analysis of this paper, I divide movies into two types: serious and entertaining. Serious films include documentaries, science and education films and other films used to provide and transmit professional knowledge and information; Entertainment movies are for the audience to entertain and cultivate their sentiments, such as comedies, thrillers, action films, literary films and so on. Subtitle translation of different types of movies adopts different translation methods. For example, Example 5 above, Growing Pains is a comedy, and its purpose is to make the audience laugh. Pun is one of the jokes. If literal translation is adopted, the audience will not know what it is, and the comedy effect will be greatly reduced. For example, thrillers and horror movies, the audience will focus on the development of pictures, sounds and plots. If the lines are translated in a literary way, the audience will laugh and cry because they are out of tune with the plot.

Because the purpose of serious films is to convey information, clarity is the key, so they tend to adopt simple, clear and direct translation methods, which are prone to under-translation; Entertainment films can be properly "processed" and "transformed" according to the context, that is, over-translated. However, these two translations are not based on differences and try to be faithful to the source language. Under the condition that it does not conflict with technical restrictions, it is still as different from the source language as possible.

Verb (abbreviation of verb) conclusion

To sum up, subtitle translation is a complicated task, which is limited by both literary and technical factors, and over-translation and under-translation are inevitable. Translation scholars have been arguing about two typical types of errors: over-translation and under-translation. In my opinion, in the case of conflict with technical factors such as time and space, moderate translation can be regarded as a compromise. Moderate over-translation or under-translation of different types of films can not only get rid of technical restrictions, but also achieve the expected purpose of the film.

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