Những khó khăn trong việc giao dịch các thành tố văn hóa trong tài liệu âm hình nghiên cứu qua bộ phim mỹ cướp biển vùng caribê nơi tận cùng thế giới

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN DUY ANH AUDIOVISUAL TRANSLATION PROBLEMS OF CULTURE-BOUND

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

NGUYỄN DUY ANH

AUDIOVISUAL TRANSLATION PROBLEMS

OF CULTURE-BOUND ELEMENTS:

A STUDY OF THE AMERICAN FILM

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD’S END

Những khó khăn trong việc dịch các thành tố văn hoá trong tài liệu âm-hình, nghiên cứu qua bộ phim Mỹ:

Cướp biển vùng Caribê: Nơi tận cùng thế giới

M.A COMBINED PROGRAM THESIS

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60220201

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

NGUYỄN DUY ANH

AUDIOVISUAL TRANSLATION PROBLEMS

OF CULTURE-BOUND ELEMENTS:

A STUDY OF THE AMERICAN FILM

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD’S END

Những khó khăn trong việc dịch các thành tố văn hoá trong tài liệu âm-hình, nghiên cứu qua bộ phim Mỹ:

Cướp biển vùng Caribê: Nơi tận cùng thế giới

M.A COMBINED PROGRAM THESIS

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60220201

Supervisor: Prof Dr Hoàng Văn Vân

Hanoi, 2016

RESEARCHER’S STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY

The work presented in this thesis is, to the researcher’s knowledge and belief, is

original and done by the researcher’s own effort, besides, all sources of the

materials quoted in the thesis are also acknowledged adequately Finally, the current

thesis has not been submitted for any degree at this university and others and also

has not been published

Hanoi, 2016

Nguyễn Duy Anh

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This MA thesis was successfully completed with the supports of many people to whom I want to express my gratitude

Firstly, I want to express my gratitude to my supervisor, Professor Hoàng Văn Vân for his valuable instruction, aids and encouragement throughout my research process

Secondly, I want to express my thanks to the professors, doctors, lecturers and all other people at the Post-graduate Faculty of ULIS for their lessons and supports during my MA course

Last but not least, I want to express my gratitude to my beloved family and friends whose supports and understanding contributed a lot in the success of my MA thesis

Hanoi, 2016 Nguyễn Duy Anh

ABSTRACT

In translation studies, the term audiovisual is not so strange to scholars and researchers With the development of the film industry around the world, the field

of AVT study plays the role of an effective tool which facilitates the directors and producers’ need of bringing film products across the country borderline

As discussed by many scholars, the notion of culture plays an essential role in translation In AVT where the verbal text is supported by the other media, the cultural elements become a challenge Thus, this study aims at investigating the issue of culture-bound elements in audiovisual translation

Analysing the selected American film entitled Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s

End, the study seeks to (1) identify the culture-bound elements in the film, (2) find

the translation problems of these elements and (3) suggest some strategies to improve the translation of these elements The study is hoped to bring some helpful insights to the translation of films

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

Presently, with the advance of science and technology, the film industry is also rapidly developing in both quantity and quality All nations across the world have developed for themselves different film culture and at different level of development A movie is not only a product of entertainment It shows the level of development of the country where it comes from, and re-animates the language, culture as well as the history, the society and the beauty of this country

At the end of the era of the silent films, when the language was bought into the movies as an effective tool of expression, a new problem also rose, challenging film directors and producers all over the world: their audiovisual products must be translated in order to bring them across the boundaries of language and culture The term audiovisual translation (AVT) was born as a tool to facilitate the understanding and transferring of culture and ideas which are presented in film products and other audiovisual products such as TV show, TV dramas and video games

AVT has become an important part of our daily life Many scholars and scientists have been investing their properties and intelligence into the subject As a result,

many documents namely Topics in Audiovisual Translation by Pilar Orero (2004), Jorge Dìaz Cintas and Gunilla Anderman’s Audiovisual Translation: Language

Transfer on Screen (2009) were created The information for the field is also

provided in many academic associations in the world, such as the European Association for Studies in Screen Translation (ESIST)

A feature film, or a movie, is a complete product which consists of many features These features include the language of the film, presenting the verbal communication, and the non-verbal communication, namely the music, sounds, objects, gestures of the characters and other features Besides, the film contains the

cultural characteristics of the country where it was produced and also the social characteristics of the historical periods that it presents These features of a feature film bring lots of challenges to translators

Translators are the people who bring the understanding of the texts to the “readers” from different language communities and at different knowledge background When translating a movie, translators have a very important role of not only transferring the meaning of the language of the directors but also transferring the culture from the source to the target language In the translation of a movie, there are many difficulties for translators in terms of language and culture The audience’s main need is to understand what the characters are talking about on the screen However, there is another issue that is not less important: it is that the translation must be acceptable in the receptive society This problem lies on the differences between the two communities with different cultures and civilizations

Focusing on culture-bound elements, this thesis has the main aim of identifying the problems in terms of culture that occur during the English – Vietnamese translation

of the American feature film entitled: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End

directed by Gore Verbinski This is an American entertaining movie; however, it also contains many features for translators to concern The film was written based

on a historical period in the past in the Caribbean area, when the pirates were a part

of the society During that era, most of the countries were under the reign of feudalism, in which the social values, the culture background and also the language style were very different from present One of the film’s appealing factors is that when watching it, the audience will come through many different tones of feeling, from horror to romance, from hatred to love, and from peace to war Telling the story of a golden reign of pirates of the Caribbean area, the film consists of elements from many cultural backgrounds, from the mysterious China to the wild

Africa, thus, it is really a challenge for translators to transfer the culture-bound

elements in this movie to the audiences who speak another language and come from

another community

The differences in culture may cause translators to misunderstand the text and to mis-translate it This study aims to find out the problems related to culture-bound elements in the conversations of the movie’s characters that bring challenges to

translators and to give some suggestions to transfer these items into Vietnamese In

Vietnam, there are few researchers interested in this field; therefore, the researcher hopes to bring some useful suggestions for translators of movies and other audiovisual products The study, thus, is expected to be helpful for translators and interpreters of other fields

2 Aim, Objectives and Research Questions

The overarching aim of this study is to investigate the audiovisual translation

problems of culture-bound elements (CBEs) in the film Pirates of the Caribbean: At

World’s End This aim is broken to be the following objectives:

CBEs in the film

To achieve the above aim and objectives, the study raises the following research questions for exploration:

1 What are the main culture-bound elements contained in the film Pirates of

the Caribbean: At World’s End?

2 What are the major problems in translating the culture-bound elements in the

film Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End?

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Online Sources

www.dialectblog.com/2011/05/24/pirate-accent/ (Retrieved in 2015/06/30)

www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/JO391t6cRtGxstjbE4EEmg (Retrieved

in 2015/10/12)

Film and Script:

Filmscript: www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/a2/pirates of-the-caribbean-worlds-end-script.html (Retrieved in 2015/06/22)

Film and Vietnamese subtitle: www.phimmoi.net/phim/cuop-bien-vung-caribbe-phan-3-noi-tan-cung-the-gioi-483 (Retrieved in 2015/06/22)