An investigation into difficulties in translating movie subtitles challenging english translation and interpreting majored seniors at can tho university

CAN THO UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND CULTURE -------- B.A THESIS An Investigation into Difficulties in Translating Movie Subtitles Chall

CAN THO UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND CULTURE



B.A THESIS

An Investigation into Difficulties in Translating Movie Subtitles Challenging English Translation and Interpreting Majored Seniors at Can Tho University

Field of study: English Translation and Interpreting

Can Tho, May 2015

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STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY

I certify that this thesis “An Investigation into Difficulties in Translating Movie Subtitles Challenging English Translation and Interpreting Majored Seniors at Can Tho University” is the product of my own work under the supervision of Ms Truong

Thi Ngoc Diep, M.Ed, Department of English Language and Culture, School of Foreign Languages, Can Tho University This study has not been submitted by any organizations

or individuals and all of the sources and materials I have used or quoted have been mentioned in the references

Lê Sang Thiên Phú

May, 2015

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First, I would like to send my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Ms Truong Thi Ngoc Diep, M.Ed who has given me precious advice and guidance Without her dedicated support and tireless correction, I could not have finished the thesis

I would like to express my appreciation to students in English Studies major, especially Ms Nguyen Do Phuong Lien, who helped me with the test and translation

My sincere thank is to 35 English Translation and Interpreting seniors of the School of Foreign Languages, I could not have finished this thesis without their participation

Finally, I wish to send my acknowledgements to my classmates and my friends who gave me their encouragement and support, which helped me a lot to finish the thesis They were great motivation for me to overcome difficulties in doing this study

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iii

LIST OF FIGURES v

LIST OF TABLES vi

ABSTRACT vii

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Rationale 1

1.2 Aims of Research 2

1.3 Significance of Research 2

1.4 Thesis Organization 2

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 4

2.1 Definition of Translation 4

2.2 Kinds of Translation 4

2.2.1 Common Classifications 4

2.2.2 Audiovisual Translation 6

2.2.2.1 Subtitles 7

2.2.2.2 Subtitling Process 8

2.3 Difficulties of Movie Subtitles Translation 9

2.3.1 Cultural Difficulties 10

2.3.2 Linguistic Difficulties 10

2.3.3 Spatial and Temporal Restrictions 13

2.4 Translation Strategies 14

2.5 Research Questions 17

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODS 18

3.1 Research Design 18

3.2 Participants 18

3.3 Data Collection 19

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3.3.1 Instrument 19

3.3.2 Procedures 20

CHAPTER 4: RESULTS, DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION 21

4.1 Translation Test Results 21

4.2 Discussion of Translation Test Results 23

4.2.1 Cultural Difficulties 23

4.2.2 Literary Style Difficulties 24

4.2.3 Vulgarism Difficulties 26

4.2.4 Dialect and Slang Difficulties 27

4.3 The Methods Students Preferred in Translating Subtitles 30

4.4 Conclusion 31

CHAPTER 5: LIMITATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 32

5.1 Limitations 32

5.2 Implications 32

5.3 Recommendations for Further Research 32 References

Appendix 1: Translation Test

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1 Kinds of translation by Larson 5

Figure 2 Gottlieb’s Schematic representation of subtitling and revoicing 8

Figure 3 The subtitler’s work 9

Figure 4 A dialogue and translated subtitles in the movie “Blood Diamond” 11

Figure 5 Baker’s translation strategies 15

Figure 6 Items with high percentage of inappropriate-answer choices for subtitles 22

Figure 7 Items with high percentage of appropriate-answer choices for subtitles 23

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 1 The result of Clip 3 translation – from the movie “Captain America” 24

Table 2 The result of Clip 7 translation – from the movie “Tangled” 24

Table 3 The result of Clip 10 translation – from the movie “The Dictator” 25

Table 4 The result of Clip 11 translation – from the movie “Battle: Los Angeles” 26

Table 5 The result of Clip 12 translation – from the movie “Big Hero 6” 26

Table 6 The result of Clip 4 translation – from the movie “Captain America” 27

Table 7 The result of Clip 9 translation – from the movie “The Wolf of Wall Street” 27 Table 8 The results of Clip 1 translation – from the movie “Life of Brian” 28

Table 9 The result of Clip 2 translation – from the movie “Gone with the wind” 29

Table 10 The result of Clip 5 translation – from the movie “The Avengers” 29

Table 11 The result of Clip 6 translation – from the movie “Tower Heist” 30

Table 12 The result of Clip 8 translation – from the movie “The Help” ……….30

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ABSTRACT

Watching movies is one of the most popular ways of entertainment Though the majority of foreign movies are subtitled when they approach Vietnamese audience, the quality of subtitles is still not stable since many mistakes exist In fact, this field of study has been developed very quickly in the world, little has been found in Can Tho University A twelve-item online test is used in this thesis to investigate (a) difficulties that English Translation and Interpreting seniors at Can Tho University have to face when translating movie subtitles, and (b) the strategies they prefer to use to translate those difficult terms With the participation of 35 students, the test results showed that participants had difficulties when facing cultural and stylistic elements The most frequently chosen strategies that students preferred in translating movie subtitles were literal translation that was applied in nine out of twelve items, and as swearwords appeared in spoken language of movies very often, the strategy of translation by a more neutral/less expressive word was also frquently used This thesis can be used as reference for those who want to learn about translation in general and subtitles translation in particular

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TÓM LƯỢC

Xem phim là một trong những phương tiện giải trí phổ biến nhất ngày nay Mặc

dù phần lớn các phim nước ngoài đã được làm phụ đề khi đến với khán giả Việt Nam, nhưng chất lượng của phụ đề vẫn chưa được ổn định khi vẫn còn tồn tại nhiều lỗi Trên thực tế, lĩnh vực này đang được phát triển nhanh chóng và mạnh mẽ trên thế giới, nhưng

ở Đại học Cần Thơ lại có rất ít nghiên cứu về chủ đề này Luận văn này sử dụng một bài kiểm tra dịch thuật 12 câu để tìm hiểu về (a) các khó khăn mà sinh viên năm cuối ngành Biên dịch – Phiên dịch tiếng Anh ở Đại học Cần Thơ gặp phải khi dịch phụ đề phim, và (b) là các phương pháp họ sử dụng để dịch khi gặp các khó khăn đó Kết quả kiểm tra cho thấy sinh viên gặp khó khăn khi gặp phải những yếu tố về văn hóa và văn phong Phương pháp dịch thuật được chọn thường xuyên nhất khi sinh viên dịch phụ đề phim là dịch theo nghĩa đen của từ, phương pháp này được chọn trong 9/12 câu hỏi Vì ngôn ngữ của phim

là ngôn ngữ nói nên từ ngữ thô tục xuất hiện rất thường xuyên, do đó phương pháp làm giảm mức độ thô tục của từ ngữ cũng được sử dụng thường xuyên Luận văn này có thể được dùng làm tài liệu tham khảo cho những ai muốn tìm hiểu về dịch thuật nói chung,

và dịch thuật phụ đề nói riêng

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CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale

Watching films is one of the most popular recreational activities nowadays However, many people do not consider films as an only way for relaxation; they can be

a perfect way to learn a language as well as the culture of that language In the past, people in developing countries like Vietnam only had chances to watch old-fashioned films on television with relatively poor quality subtitles or voice-over One of the first kinds of subtitles appeared in the world (a more precise term for this is „intertitle‟) was

in 1902 in the film Dorothy‟s Dream (Liepa, 2005) There was a short description of the

content before each scene was displayed Thanks to the development of technology, people now have various means to enjoy latest blockbuster films beside other countries

in the world Television, cinemas, computers, and mobile phones are becoming common and almost integral to our daily life, which allow us to watch films almost everywhere

We see them at home, in our work place, on public transport, and restaurants (Cintas and Remael, 2007) Therefore, the need of better quality subtitles is taken into account The quality of subtitles translation is in great concern not only in Vietnam but also in other countries In the past, the subtitling process was very hard and costly, so movie producers had to be extremely careful with every word they added to the movie (Ho, 2012) With the advances in technology, adding subtitles for a film is relatively easy today; and quality of subtitles now depends on translators, which may affect greatly to experiences of audience of the target language

Nguyen (2012) states that translation of subtitles has become a common concern for many researchers; however, most studies found in Vietnam were only the about translation of specific movies and the titles of English movies

In addition, in two last semesters, the students of Interpreting 3 and 4 courses had chances to organize a movie show at the Learning Resource Center of our university to serve English learners; although they showed typical classic works of the world cinema,

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dozens of the audience noticed that the subtitles had errors and sent their reflection to them The research on “An investigation into difficulties in translating movie subtitles challenging English-major seniors at Can Tho University” is conducted to explore this potential field and contribute to the general translation field as well

1.2 Aims of Research

This research aims to discover (a) difficulties that English Translation and Interpreting students at Can Tho University have to face when translating movie subtitles, and (b) the strategies they prefer to use to translate those difficult terms

1.4 Thesis Organization

The research is divided into 5 chapters as follows:

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: Literature Review

Chapter 3: Research Methods

Chapter 4: Results, Discussion and Conclusion

Chapter 5: Limitations and Recommendations

Chapter 1 presents the current situation of movie subtitles in Vietnam, background information and the reasons to conduct this research Besides, the thesis organization is also presented

Chapter 2 presents definition of terms and reviews previous studies related to this research

Chapter 3 includes research design, participants and data collection procedures

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CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Definition of Translation

One of the most prominent definitions of translation is stated by Newmark (1988, p.5) who defines translation as “rendering the meaning of a text into another language in the way that the author intended the text.” This definition indicates that the translators have to keep the message of the source language as much as possible Besides, Hatim and Munday (2004) define translation as the process in which a written text is transferred by translators from source language to target language in a concrete socio-cultural context In this definition, they merely state that translation is a process without mentioning the meaning or the message of the source text In addition, Catford (1965, p.20) states that translation is “the replacement of textual material in one language by equivalent textual material in another language” Although the definition seems to be unclear at first, he advocates that it is intentionally to be wide

Mansella (2005) believes that translation is the rendering of written communication across barriers created by different languages and cultures In this definition, the barriers in terms of language and culture are mentioned, which makes translation more challenging More than that, Bassnett (2002) states that translation is usually known as rendering the source language text into the target language text, which fairly remains the similarity of the meaning and preserves the source language‟s structures as closely as possible but not to distort the target language‟s structures seriously

As a whole, translation is the process that reproduces the meaning from the source language text to the target language text and tries to keep the style, the author‟s tone and idea as much as possible Moreover, translators have to be proficient in both the source and the target language so that they are able to transfer the culture to the readers

2.2 Kinds of Translation

2.2.1 Common Classifications

According to Larson (1984), translation has two main kinds: literal and idiomatic translation Literal translation is called form-based whereas idiomatic translation is

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called meaning-based In some cases, literal translation can be helpful to reproduce linguistic features of the SL text; for example, when the SL and TL are in the same language, they may have the same grammatical forms However, in other cases, literal translation may sound nonsense when translating into another language Sometimes, translators who tend to translate literally actually make a partially modified literal translation They modify the word order and the grammatical structure enough to make the text become acceptable in the target language However, the result still does not sound natural in the target language He illustrates this by the following example, a text

in Papua New Guinea language translated into English:

ro ahombo ngusifu pamariboyandi

I her heart I-fastened-her (literal)

I fastened her in my heart (modified literal)

The structure of the modified literal translation is acceptable; however, it does not sound naturally in English He suggests the idiomatic translation should be, “I never forgot her,” or “I‟ve kept her memory in my heart.” Therefore, translator‟s goal is to find the idiomatic level because a real idiomatic translation would sound like it was written in the target language However, it is not easy to make a completely idiomatic translation Those kinds of translation are depicted by the following continuum:

Figure 1: Kinds of translation by Larson

Jacobson (1959, cited in Gerzymisch-arbogast, 2008) states that translation types include intralingual translation (the SL and TL are the same), interlingual translation (the

SL and TL are different languages) and intersemiotic translation (text is transferred to unwritten text) However, they are considered „traditional forms‟ of translation (Gerzymisch-arbogast, 2008) As the modern technology is developing rapidly, a new special kind of translation was brought into the world that the source language is spoken

Translator‟s goal

Very

literal Literal

Modified literal

Inconsistent mixture

Near idiomatic

Idiomatic Unduly

free

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language; and the target language can be either oral or written text This kind of translation is called „audiovisual translation‟ and it has a close connection with the development of technology (Cintas, 2005)

Finally, Roberts (1988) notices that none of the available classification is comprehensive and well-established, so a more detailed classification of translation types needs to be developed She presents a preliminary typology of translations with some major characteristics for classification as follow:

1 Overall source text function, in which translations are divided into literary and

pragmatic

2 General purpose of translating, the translations can be classified as professional

and non-professional

3 The third is translation approach, which is used in producing the text in the target

language; translations can be divided as semantic and communicative

4 Medium of translation, which means whether the translation would be produced in

oral or written way Oral translation here is not only for interpretation but also for translation, which is done aloud for a customer, or for audiovisual translation (for example, dubbing or subtitling)

5 Direction of translating, the translations can be divided into two kinds as “being

into the dominant language or out of the dominant language” (p 74)

2.2.2 Audiovisual Translation

Audiovisual translation (AVT) is considered a new field of translation, but it is now a well-established field of Translation Studies (Denton and Ciampi, 2012) According to Mujagic (2013), audiovisual translation has been neglected for a long time; however, it has become one of the fastest developing areas of translation Chiaro (2012) defines audiovisual translation as the transference of verbal components in audiovisual works and products from one language to another language Audiovisual translation is developing in accordance with the development of modern technology, so its classification is also diversified

In terms of linguistic aspects, Reich (2006) divides AVT into two groups: intralingual and interlingual In intralingual audiovisual translation, the source and target

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language are the same, which is mostly used for hearing impaired, blind people, and language learners On the other hand, interlingual translation aims to make the audience

of target language understand the content of the source language production

Gambier (1994) and Cintas (1999) distinguish up to ten different ways of translating audiovisual programmes (Cintas and Remael, 2007), but there are three main ones that are most familiar with our daily lives: dubbing (also known as lip-sync), voice-over and subtitling In fact, before a movie reaches the audience, one of those kinds of translation will be applied

However, this thesis only concentrates on translating interlingual subtitles for movies because of some following reasons Firstly, only subtitling can keep abreast with the number of newly released movies, especially serial movies, since it is increasing more and more Secondly, subtitling is easier and cheaper than other techniques like dubbing or voice-over (Reich, 2006) Basically, this work is suitable for students because they only need a computer to carry out the whole subtitling process Another reason is that the need of learning English in Vietnam is augmenting, and watching movies with subtitles is one of the best ways to learn languages In fact, films and programmes with translated subtitles from other languages help the audience to develop and expand their linguistic skills, as well as contextualize the language and culture of other countries (Cintas and Remael, 2007)

2.2.2.1 Subtitles

Subtitling is a branch of audiovisual translation in which viewers can read statements of dialogues on the screen while watching the images and listen to the dialogues (Reich, 2006) According to Antonini (2005), one of the most frequently used forms of audiovisual translation is subtitling Subtitling is adding condensed texts written in the target language on the screen Subtitles as defined by Luyken et al (1991, cited in Reich, 2006) are lines of text translated from the original dialogue, which usually appear at the bottom of the screen Similarly, Gerzymisch-arbogast (2008) claims that subtitles are the condensed written translation of film dialogues appearing synchronously with the corresponding dialogues produced on the screen In short, most scholars share the same idea that subtitles are on-screen concise written texts that are

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translated from the source language dialogue In American English, sometimes the word

„caption‟ is used instead of „subtitle‟

2.2.2.2 Subtitling Process

All translation methods involve the translation of an SL text into the TL However, subtitles translation is unique and different from traditional translation: spoken words are transferred to written words on the screen, two different forms but the meaning and the sense of both forms have to be equivalent and synchronized A general view on subtitling process besides revoicing is illustrated by Gottlieb‟s Schematic representation of subtitling and revoicing (1994, cited in Georgakopoulou, 2003) While revoicing is a horizontal type of translation and its schematic representation coincides with that of interlingual interpreting, subtitling is a different type and can be either vertical or diagonal Vertical (intralingual) subtitling is usually used for hearing-impaired people or for foreign language learners, whereas most subtitles belong to diagonal (interlingual) subtitling to serve a wider range of viewers

Figure 2: Gottlieb’s Schematic representation of subtitling and revoicing

In fact, subtitling deals with spoken dialogue, so the process of subtitling involves

a triple adaptation as follow (Nir, 1984, cited in Gerzymisch-arbogast, 2008):

1) from one language to another

2) from verbal speech to a written text

3) from a non-condensed (verbatim) to a condensed (nonverbatim) form of text

SPEECH

WRITING

speech

vertical subtitling writing

revoicing speech

diagonal subtitling

writing

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From audio to written Transcription Spotting

Adaptation Translation

Condensation Rendering Elimination Simplification

Synchronization

Therefore, through the process, subtitling reduces the spoken language text by about one third (Gerzymisch-arbogast, 2008)

Antonini (2005) describes the process of subtitling by the following figure:

Figure 3: The subtitler’s work

When the information in aural text and the dialogue are excessive, the subtitler must make the translated text condensed by carrying out three main operations: elimination, rendering and simplification The first one involves eliminating all elements that do not modify the sense of the message; the second involves reproducing or depriving the features such as dialects, slang, humor, acronyms, taboo language; and, finally, the third is what translators do to make the target text more concise and simple to read

2.3 Difficulties of Movie Subtitles Translation

The fact that when the medium changes from oral to written, problems will occur (Lever, n.d) Catford (1965) and Abdellah (2002) believe that translation difficulties include linguistic and cultural ones However, according to Cintas and Remael (2007), subtitling is constrained by new translational parameters of image and sound (subtitles

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should be synchronized with what the characters are doing on screen), and time (the time that subtitles appear and disappear should coincide with the original speech) Therefore, besides cultural and linguistic difficulties, the restrictions of time and space would greatly affect the subtitles translators‟ work because they have to encounter difficulties

of literary translation together with the additional constraints of subtitling (Luyken et al

1991, cited in Antonini, 2005)

2.3.1 Cultural Difficulties

Newmark (1988) comments that translation problem appears due to the culture gap or distance between the source language and target language He does not regard language as a component or feature of culture because translation would be impossible if

it were so He adds that most cultural expressions are easy to spot, as they are associated with a particular language and cannot be literally translated Durdureanu (2011) says that culture and translation are so interrelated to the extent that translators can no longer ignore cultural elements Moreover, the difficulty to transfer a message from one culture

to another is related to the signifier/signified relation because even in the case of the same country, the signifier can signify something else that it is socially signifying in another region An example for subtitles affected by cultural elements is the movie

“Olympus has fallen” (Vietnamese translated as “Nhà Trắng thất thủ”), which is a

fiction film about the patriotism of the American In the original movie, it directly specifies that the culprits attacking the White House are from North Korea, but in the Vietnamese subtitle, they are only described as “a small group of terrorists” The subtitles were adapted to make the source language suitable to the culture of target

language

2.3.2 Linguistic Difficulties

Newmark (1988) suggests the stylistic scales from officialese to taboo with examples that are:

Officialese The consumption of any nutriments whatsoever is categorically

prohibited in this establishment

Official The consumption of nutriments is prohibited

Formal You are requested not to consume food in this establishment

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Neutral Eating is not allowed here

Informal Please don't eat here

Colloquial You can't feed your face here

Slang Lay off the nosh

Taboo Lay off the fucking nosh

Ideal subtitles should correspond with the language use of each character However, most Vietnamese subtitles use too formal language illogically even in a normal context of daily life, which makes they hard to convey the meaning and sense of the movie scene completely In the movie “Blood Diamond”, most characters use very vulgar words, but that way of speaking is appropriate to the context The following dialogue and its subtitles are from a scene in that movie

Figure 4: A dialogue and translated subtitles in the movie “Blood Diamond”

(Subtitles from website www.phimmoi.net)

Original dialogue Vietnamese subtitles

Hey! What the fuck?

What‟s going on there?

Chuyện quái gì thế?

Chuyện gì xảy ra?

Come on! Fix that shit now! Nhanh lên, sửa nó ngay!

Wasting my time here!

What in the shit is that?

Mất thời gian của tao!

Cái quái gì thế?

Fuck that stuff! Fix that shit! Khốn kiếp, sửa nó ngay!

The target audience should feel a film the same way the source audience does – this means the subtitles should also include swearwords and vulgarisms The given subtitles to some extent can express the anger, but they cannot convey the rude, obscene style in a threatening, frightening and deadly context Hence, it leads to another issue: should vulgar words be literally translated in subtitles?

Swear words, dirty words, vulgarisms, profanities, taboo words are many names can be used to call “bad” words (Ferklová, 2014) It shows how important their role is in human languages, cultures and in some contexts, nothing is more suitable than those

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words Andersson & Trudgill (1990, cited in Lie, 2013) suggest three criteria for constituting swearwords that the expression:

(1) refers to something that is taboo and/or stigmatized in the culture;

(2) should not be interpreted literally;

(3) can be used to express strong emotions and attitudes

The second criterion is of the same idea with Cintas and Remael (2007) that in subtitles, taboo words, swearwords and interjections are often moderated or even deleted because of spatial restriction More than that, a swearword can have different meanings depending on the context

For example, Pujol (2006) analyzes the word „fuck‟ in the movie “From Dusk till Dawn” He states that this word expresses six different emotions depending on the movie scene, they are: extreme anger, emphasis, disgust, contempt, surprise and happiness Pujol gives an example that when the mood of the character in the move is amused, he

said, “Oh baby, we did it We‟re in Mexico We‟re fuckin‟ in Mexico, you little piece of fuckin‟ shit!” When the character felt surprised, he said, “What the fuck?” Since such

words have their own function in expressing the character‟s mood, in the dialogic interaction and, in the film story, deleting them is surely not the only or the best choice available (Cintas and Remael, 2007)

In addition, Cintas and Remael (2007) also believe that linguistic choices are never random in film, so the translator has to be careful not to suppress them too much as they may affect character‟s presentation and the film‟s message Therefore, translators must ascertain and evaluate the effect and emotional value of those bad words or expressions in the source language, and then translate them into the target language by equivalents that are suitable for the context of the target language culture

It is not easy to define the term dialect; moreover, factors like geographical location, social class and ethnic origins contribute to the varieties of dialect (Trudgill,

2000, cited in Hamaida, 2007) Besides, dialect refers to differences in the way that speaker use vocabulary and grammar and pronunciation as well This can be illustrated in the following extract from the movie “The Full Monty”:

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A character named Gaz’s words in Sheffield dialect:

“I‟m trying to get some brass together…so as you and me can keep seeing each

other.”

Standard English version of Gaz’s words:

“I‟m trying to earn some money so that we can continue to see each other.”

Slang is somehow similar to dialect and often refers to the non-standard use of words in a language as well as involving informal and colloquial spoken language (Hamaida, 2007) As the language is ceaselessly developing, new slangs are also created Some particular forms of slang are often used as a means of expressing identity among members of a group, for example, the slang used by teenagers Hamaida (2007) and Cintas and Remael (2007) have the same conception that accents and pronunciation are very difficult to render in subtitles, but they may be important That difficulty could be seen in the following example; this is an extract from “The Life of Brian” that Pilate, a character in the movie, cannot pronounce the letter “r” Although it can make hilarious effect, the subtitle is almost illegible

Pilate’s pronunciation:

“Stwike him, centuwion, vewwy woughly.”

Standard English version:

“Strike him, centurion, very roughly.”

Georgakopoulou (2009) states that when the mother tongue of the subtitler is not English, he or she may have problems in understanding the source language, especially spoken slangs and colloquialisms, which can only really be acquired by living in the country where the language is spoken However, as dialect and slang are both developing and changing, if the translator lives in an English-speaking country for some time, he or she may lack language knowledge of new words in their own mother tongue Therefore,

it is necessary to update knowledge in both source language and target language

2.3.3 Temporal and Spatial Restrictions

According to Mujagic (2013), audiovisual translation has been neglected because many people consider it as adaptation instead of translation They argue that it is an adaptation because of its spatial and temporal limits that were imposed by the

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medium itself Cintas and Remael (2007) believe that a normal viewer can comfortably read two lines of subtitles in six seconds, which is known as „the six-second rule‟, each line has 35-37 letters, and the space between two words is counted as one letter Therefore, an average viewer is able to read 70-74 letters in six seconds The subtitle lines should appear when a person starts speaking, and should disappear when that person stops speaking If subtitles stay on screen longer then the time the viewer actually needs to read it, they may tend to read it again Thus, the six-second rule is considered as

a standard reading speed that the viewer can read leisurely Subtitling process requires dialogues to be condensed because they only appear on screen for a limited time, and viewers need time to read them without missing any of the action on the screen (Antonini, 2005; Munday, 2009)

The standard position for subtitles is horizontal at the bottom of the screen because this part of the screen is usually less important for the action Nevertheless, subtitles can be moved from the bottom of the screen to another position if the background at the bottom of the screen is too light; some important action is taken at the bottom of the screen; some important data are displaced at the bottom of the screen (Cintas and Remael: 2007) In addition, Caimi (2006) argues that factors such as duration of subtitles, the screen space, the speed of the dialogues, and the viewers' reading speed all influence comprehension In other words, the subtitles must link up with what the viewer is seeing and hearing on the screen, so they are able to maintain their coherence

2.4 Translation Strategies

Translation strategies include the basic tasks of choosing the foreign text to be translated and developing a method to translate it (Venuti, 2000) In this section, some suggested strategies would be presented

Baker (1992) calls translation difficulties non-equivalence, she offers eight strategies for professional translators to overcome the non-equivalence

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Figure 5: Baker’s translation strategies

Cintas and Remael (2007) propose nine strategies for subtitling that some of which are very similar to Baker‟s ones Some of the strategies are more commonly used

in subtitling than others These strategies are loan, calque or literal translation, explicitation, substitution, transposition, lexical recreation, compensation, omission and addition

First, loan means the word in the source language is incorporated into the target language, because in some cases translating would be unnecessary or impossible In fact, most Vietnamese know what TV, radio or Internet mean when they see those words without any translation

Calque is a literal translation and sometimes it needs an accompanying

explanation At first, a calque may sound nonsense in the target language but when it is accepted widely, it will sound natural in the target language For example, „black

market‟ can be translated as „chợ đen‟ in Vietnamese or „heavy industry‟ can be transferred as „công nghiệp nặng‟

In the strategy of explicitation, the translator attempts to make the source text

familiar with the viewers either by specification - using a more specific word, or generalization - using a more general word Cintas and Remael (2007) are of the same opinion with Baker that hypernyms or superordinates are one of the most common used strategies in translating because it provides general information for the context, whereas

Translation strategies connected with non-equivalence on the word level

1) Translation by a more general word (superordinate)

2) Translation by a more neutral/less expressive word

3) Translation by cultural substitution

4) Translation using a loan word or loan word plus explanation

5) Translation by paraphrase using a related word

6) Translation by paraphrase using an unrelated word

7) Translation by omission

8) Translation by illustration

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hyponyms narrower the meaning of a word For example, when watching movie, the viewers only need to know the characters use „gun‟ for action instead of a specific type such as „AK‟ or „M4A1‟

Substitution is a variant on explicitation, which is used when translator wants to

express something in the target language, which is similar but not exactly the same with the source language Examples can be found in many proverbs in both languages

Transposition is the strategy that a cultural concept of one culture replaces a

cultural concept of another culture A pronounced tendency in subtitling for Vietnamese audience is that Western measurements are often adapted to the system used in Vietnam; for instance, pound would be transferred to kilogram as well as mile or inch would be also converted to metric system

Lexical recreation means that the translator coins a new vocabulary This strategy

is not regularly used as the other ones because the new word may cause misunderstanding or may not be widely accepted among readers However, it would be inevitable if the source text has neologism as well When being put in the subtitles, the neologism is placed between quotation marks

Compensation is a popular strategy in subtitling, especially in humorous movies,

in which the subtitles would be overtranslated or added more detail in subtitles due to the loss of other translation parts

Because of the limitations of space and time, omission is the most frequently used

strategy in subtitling Sometimes it becomes unavoidable if the target language does not have a corresponding term or the detail is not necessary

The last strategy is addition, which especially occurs in passages with cultural

details that could cause comprehension problems but are essential for understanding the passages Hence, information needs to be added For example, along with the background, the sentence “Now you can send him to the chair” can be transferred to

“Anh có thể đưa hắn lên ghế điện rồi.”

Overall, each of those strategies has its own advantages and disadvantages in translation, so the translator needs to choose the suitable one for each text depending on the context and the purpose of translation Indeed, subtitling can never be a complete and