Ảnh hưởng của bản dịch tiếng anh đối với bản dịch tiếng việt của lời nói thân mật trong chương trình thực tế hàn quốc nghiên cứu điển hình roommate dịch bởi subteam14

To meet Hallyu Vietnamese fans’ demand for Korean dramas and reality show, more voluntary subteams have appeared and produced Vietnamese subtitles for a huge amount of videos. Despite this fact, these subteams’ translation is out of researchers’ attention because it is considered nonprofessional and too complex to research on. In fact, most subteams use English subtitles available on other websites for their translation in stead of producing their translation directly from Korean. Therefore, this paper was conducted to put a step into this area to shed a light on the contemporary situation of fansubbing phenomenon in Vietnam as well as the effects of intermediary translation method. Because of time and capability limit, the research used case study as its method, focusing on Subteam14, an online subteam, and two clips which are extracted from a Korean TV reality show named “Roommate” and were subtitled by the team. By utilizing qualitative method, the researcher drew conclusions on main reasons for nonprofessional subtitling’s low quality seriously concerned by previous researchers. Moreover, English subtitles not only play a crucial role in helping subtitlers understand the content of the original videos but greatly affects their translation method regardless of their knowledge of the source culture and source language. English subtitles may drag subtitlers far away their initial translation method which sourceculture targeted due to the gap between Korean and English languages. Besides, there is inconsistence among the subtitlers engaged in the study. To overcome these problems, amateur subtitlers are suggested to improve their language proficiency and cultural knowledge, to have closer cooperation to unify their translation method.

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION

GRADUATION PAPER

EFFECTS OF ENGLISH SUBTITLE ON INTIMATE SPEECH LEVEL OF VIETNAMESE SUBTITLED KOREAN TV REALITY SHOWS

A CASE STUDY: “ROOMMATE” SUBTITLED BY

ĐẠI HỌC QUỐC GIA HÀ NỘI

TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ KHOA SƯ PHẠM TIẾNG ANH

KHÓA LUẬN TỐT NGHIỆP

ẢNH HƯỞNG CỦA BẢN DỊCH TIẾNG ANH ĐỐI VỚI BẢN DỊCH TIẾNG VIỆT CỦA LỜI NÓI THÂN MẬT TRONG CHƯƠNG TRÌNH THỰC TẾ HÀN QUỐC NGHIÊN CỨU ĐIỂN HÌNH: “ROOMMATE” DỊCH BỞI

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I hereby state that I: Vu Thi Nga, QH2011 F1 E20, being a candidate for the degree of Bachelor of Arts (TEFL) accept the requirements of the College relating to the retention and use of Bachelor’s Graduation Paper deposited in the library

In terms of these conditions, I agree that the origin of my paper deposited in the library should be accessible for the purpose of the study and research, in accordiance with the normal conditions established by the librarian for the care, loan, and reproduction of the paper

Vu Thi Nga

Approved by the supervisor

Ngô Hà Thu

Date: 01/06/2015

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ACKNOWLEDEMENTS

First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitutes to my supervisor, Ms Ngo Ha Thu, Lecturer of the Faculty of English Language Teacher Education, for her effortfully precious guidances and advice throughout the process of conducting this graduation paper

I also highly appreciate Subteam14 and particularly the three participants who devoted their time and effort to help me accomplish this study

Finally, I am thankful to the viewer and other friends providing me valuable knowledge of Korean culture and language Without their help, I would not complete thepaper

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ABSTRACT

To meet Hallyu Vietnamese fans’ demand for Korean dramas and reality show, more voluntary subteams have appeared and produced Vietnamese subtitles for a huge amount of videos Despite this fact, these subteams’ translation is out of researchers’ attention because it is considered non-professional and too complex to research on In fact, most subteams use English subtitles available on other websites for their translation in stead of producing their translation directly from Korean Therefore, this paper was conducted to put a step into this area to shed a light on the contemporary situation of fansubbing phenomenon in Vietnam as well as the effects of intermediary translation method Because of time and capability limit, the research used case study

as its method, focusing on Subteam14, an online subteam, and two clips which are extracted from a Korean TV reality show named “Roommate” and were subtitled by the team By utilizing qualitative method, the researcher drew conclusions on main reasons for non-professional subtitling’s low quality seriously concerned by previous researchers Moreover, English subtitles not only play a crucial role in helping subtitlers understand the content of the original videos but greatly affects their translation method regardless of their knowledge of the source culture and source language English subtitles may drag subtitlers far away their initial translation method which source-culture targeted due to the gap between Korean and English languages Besides, there is inconsistence among the subtitlers engaged in the study To overcome these problems, amateur subtitlers are suggested to improve their language proficiency

and cultural knowledge, to have closer cooperation to unify their translation method

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDEMENTS i

ABSTRACT ii

LIST OF TABLES, FIGURES, AND ABBREVIATIONS v

GLOSSARY vi

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1 1 Statement of the research 1

1.2 Objectives 4

1.3 Research questions 4

1.4 Scope 4

1.5 Significance 5

1.6 Organization of the research 5

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 6

2.1 Descriptive translation studies 6

2.2 Audiovisual translation 7

2.3 Fansubbing 8

2.3.1 Causes of fansubbing 8

2.3.2 Features of fansubbing 10

2.3.3 Effects of fansubbing on professional translation 14

2.4 Subtitles in screen language 15

2.4.1 Screen language 15

2.4.2 Subtitles in screen language 16

2.5 The so-called intimate speech level in Korean language 17

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 20

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3.1 Selection of subjects 20

3.1.1 Description of subjects 20

3.1.2 Sample selection 23

3.2 Research instruments 24

3.3 Procedure of data collection 25

3.4 Procedure of data analysis 25

CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 27

4.1 General view on subtitling Korean TV reality shows in Vietnamese subtitler community 27

4.2 Subtitlers’ awareness of and reactions to the potential effects of English subtitles on their translation 31

4.3 Role of English subtitles in Subteam14’s translation 32

4.4 Effects of English subtitles on intimate speech level of Vietnamese subtitled shows 34

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS 37

5.1 Major findings of the study 37

5.2 Limitations of the study and suggestions for further studies 37

REFERENCES 39

APPRENDIXES 41

v

LIST OF TABLES, FIGURES, AND ABBREVIATIONS

Tables

Table 1 Participant profiles

Table 2 Summary of Korean honorifics

DT Direct Translation (Korean-Vietnamese)

IT Indirect Translation (Korean-English-Vietnamese)

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GLOSSARY

Subtitle/caption: a written translation of the dialogue of a foreign-language video

shown at the bottom of the screen Subtitling/captioning: the activity of subtitle production

Subtitler: a translator who do subtitling

Fansubbing: a phenomenon in which subtitles are made by the admirers of a certain

audiovisual product Fansubber: a fan who does subtitling

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

This chapter aims to give an overview on the present situation of fansubbing in

Vietnam Besides, the researcher explains rationales for this study topic

1 1 Statement of the research

In her research conducted in 2012 on Korean Wave in Vietnam, Dr Ha Thanh Van asserts that Korean Wave or Hallyu, the popularity of Korean culture with entertainment products like music, TV dramas, and so on, has had an increasingly considerable influence on young Vietnamese people From her survey, 78% of participants at the age from 15-30 said that they fancy Korean culture At the heart of this cultural phenomenon, perhaps, is numerous Korean artists’ fan clubs (FCs) in Vietnam like DBSK FC, Miss A FC, etc Not only do the infomants show their admiration for Korean artists, they also contribute to the popularity of their beloved artists by voluntarily making free subtitles of any kind visual products featuring their beloved Korean artists This activity is commonly known as “fansubbing”

Actually, fansubbing does not need to wait until Hallyu to become phenomenal

Cintas and Sánchez (2006) state that fansubbing is the most important manifestation

of fan activity, and it has become a mass social phenomenon across the world In

Vietnam, 360Kpop may be considered the most well-known group for this activity

This group’s website functions as a forum for its members’ talks on Korean artists and

as a platform where they present others Korean screen products Vietnamese subtitled

by themselves Kites is another typical example This group provides subtitles not

only in Korean but also other languages such as English, Chinese, Thailand, Japanese, etc In spite of this complex and ever-changing phenomenon, translation academians show little attention to those groups and their translation Diaz Cintas (2004) claims that this contrary has been noticed and comments that this makes “[a] clear paradox exists, which emphasizes the surprising imbalance between the little research on audiovisual translation and its enormous impact on society” (p.50) Besides entertainment, subtitling, one of three types of audiovisual translation (AVT), is applied for different purposes like serving visually impaired people or language learner (Mireille Pelletier, 2012) Cintas (2004) indicates that one reason for this

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imbalance is “the perception of AVT as a marginal activity, mainly if compared to the translation of canonical works such as the Bible and literary classics” (p.51) This implies that AVT products are considered not as serious and academic as other highly literary ones, and AVT not as professional and respected as other translation activities like interpreting or news and book translation Another cause is AVT’s complexity According to Cintas (2004), AVT requires translators to work with not only two texts, two cultures, but also other things such as screen language, technology, to name but a few Hence, AVT possibly brings more difficulties to researchers in comparison with other translation activities

Actually, AVT is not completely undiscovered in research field Cintas (2004) says that more than 1300 bibliographical references relating to subtitling has been collected by Gottlieb in 2002 (p.54) This impressive number shows an increase in researchers’ interest in this “marginal activity” “Given the youth and stamina of most of the researchers, the future of this branch of study could not be more promising”, predicts Cintas (p.53) J Munday spends his last chapter in his book

“Introducing translation studies – Theories and applications” (2008) discussing AVT and calls it as one of “[n]ew directions from the new media” All of these pinpoint that there need to be more explorations of this emerging translation form

Like the general situation of AVT research in the world, in Vietnam, few studies focus on screen translation Available ones like “A study on some techniques for film script translation” (Quynh, 1999), or “A study on screen translation” (Thuy, 2007) provide basic information of subtitling activities and describe difficulties translators usually encounter, for example, profanity, sentence length, addressing and

so on Their findings to a certain extent have laid a foundation for research on AVT using local material Yet, most of samples taken for those studies are films while subtitled products are varied in genres such as reality show, sitcom, and so on; and each of them may have distinctive features Besides, all of the studies just focus on the product, not the process of subtitling itself Therefore, their conclusions may not be objective enough to reflect what really happens with subtitlers

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Another point to add is the studies were conducted a long time ago (the latest was 7 years ago) and therefore might not catch up with changes of entertainment industry Today, subtitlers are not necessarily professionally trained and employed translators working offline when a normal fan can sit at home and work individually

on his/her computer aided with technical software; and the subtitlers do not only work

on a bilingual basis when cultural products are also globalized This is somehow reflected in the scenario of fansubbing activity in Vietnam Despite subtitling Korean screen products, most of them work on English subtitle version as the input language, instead of Korean In this case, English becomes an intermediate language in Korean-Vietnamese translation, which may have considerable effects on subtitling products Having watched some American TV shows and English subtitled Korean TV shows, the researcher noticed that English language in the latter is not as rich in slangs or daily expressions as it is in the former

Thus, a hypothesis should be formed here: Possible non-equivalence due to cultural and linguistic differences may occur when using English as the intermediary for translation

The researcher, therefore, wishes to affirm or negate the hypothesis by conducting a research on any effect of English subtitled version on the Vietnamese translation Due to her constraint of time, the researcher only chose the reality show

“Roommate” subtitled by Subteam14

Under the power of Hallyu, not only Korean movies but also TV reality shows are getting more popular at an incredible speed “Running man” (SBS – 2010), “Dad, where are you going?” (MBC - 2013) and “We got married” (MBC – 2008) are some typical instances “Roommate” is a new show produced by SBS in 2014 Briefly, celebrities are invited to live together in a shared home and the show records their truly daily lives The birth of new TV programs like this show leads to an increase in

Korean translation demand in Vietnam Subteam14 is one of fansub groups providing

Vietnamese subtitles for the show Its members are frequent surfers of the website

phim14.net, a Vietnamese film website providing movies of all genres from various

countries (see the website’s display at Appendix 1) The website’s admin gathered

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members that have good foreign language proficiency and love for dramas to produce its own subtitled videos; and most of the website’s products are currently Korean dramas

In short, all of the above reasons drive the researcher to conduct a study on

“Effects of English subtitle on intimate speech level of Vietnamese subtitled Korean

TV reality show A case study: “Roommate” subtitled by Subteam14” Hopefully, the

study will bring some updated and better understanding of non-professional subtitling phenomenon in Vietnamese subtitler community, and the role and effect of English subtitle on their translation particularly regarding to intimate speech level

1.2 Objectives

Firstly, the study is expected to shed light on subtitling activity of an online group, especially translators’ awareness of possible effect of translating via an intermediate language Secondly, as mentioned in the title of the study, the research wishes to know whether subtitling the sampled show via English translation version has any certain influences on the final product Hopefully, from the possible answer for the second objective, she can make some suggestion to reduce the traces of English translation version in Vietnamese one as much as possible

1.3 Research questions

To achieve these above goals, this study tries to answer the following questions:

1 What do subtitlers perceive as the possible impacts of English subtitles

on their Vietnamese one and how do they respond during the translation process in accordance with their perception?

2 What roles do English subtitles play in the case study? How does English subtitle change intimate speech level in the original video?

1.4 Scope

It is apparent that translation phenomenon is complicated and dynamic With the limitation of time and the researcher’s knowledge and experiences, she is not ambitious in covering all aspects of subtitling activity Hence, it is necessary to indicate that she will investigate only Subteam14 translators and Episode 1 from

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Roommate season 2 Vietnamese subtitled by Subteam14 in 2014 More importantly,

the focus of the study is dialogue’s intimacy and formality level shown in language

1.5 Significance

This study is first conducted just to satisfy the researcher’s curiosity of effects

of translating via an intermediate language After reading some of graduation papers

in university library and books and research on the Internet, the researcher wishes to somehow make former voices in descriptive translation and subtitling studies be heard and make online translation groups be paid attention to Furthermore, she wants to contribute something contemporary to the overall translation pictures If possible, she hopes other researchers would find this paper inspiring for their further research

1.6 Organization of the research

The study consists of four chapters as follows:

Chapter 1 is a brief introduction of investigated translation phenomenon and

the main content of the study

Chapter 2 presents relevant knowledge as well as available research findings Chapter 3 informs research methodology applied in the study

Chapter 4 is to present and analyze the results obtained after data collection stage

Chapter 5 is spent for conclusion

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CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter sums up translation theories, studies on screen translation and linguistic knowledge needed to carry out the study

2.1 Descriptive translation studies

Descriptive translation studies (DTS) was first mentioned by James S Holmes

in “The Third Congress of Applied Linguistics” (Copenhagen, 1972) Below is the basic map of translation studies Holmes put forward

Figure 1: Homes’ basic ‘map’ of Translation Studies (Toury, 1995, p.7)

Not until 1995 when Gideon Toury’s book titled “Descriptive Translation Studies and beyond” was published was DTS seriously studied and attracted scholars’ attention (Pym, 2010) Scholars favoring DTS believes that translation phenomena should be objectively described rather than critically adjusted based on existing translation theories From Pym’s view, DTS focuses on applying objective scientific methods into cultural products; therefore, it is used in smaller cultures Cultural and social elements occupy an important position in DTS

Emphasizing socio-cultural context’s impacts on translation activity, Toury designated the term “norm” referring to “intersubjective factors” which took up the

“middle-ground” between two extremes: rules and idiosyncrasies (ibid) Toury explained that rules are more objective while idiosyncrasies more subjective If translators direct their products to source norms in source text, source culture, their products will get adequacy Otherwise, if their focus is target norms in target culture,

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acceptability will be obtained In the researcher’s opinion, the two terms “adequacy” and “acceptability” are respectively similar to “domestication” and “foreignization” coined by Lawrence Venuti in the same year-1995

2.2 Audiovisual translation

Audiovisual translation or screen translation is defined by O’Connel (1998) as

“a general term that refers to the various language versioning techniques now used by the post-production industry to make audio-visual material such as TV programs, films, video, etc., available to wider audiences than the original language format of such products allows” (cited in Thuy, 2007, p.10)

AVT is categorized into three types, namely dubbing, over-voicing, and subtitling In dubbing, actors’ voices in original videos are replaced by the voices of dubbers who speak target language; and the number of dubbers is equal to the number

of actors speaking in a scene Meanwhile, in over-voicing, over-voicers’ voices are recorded over the original sound track which can be heard simultaneously but in a lower volume, and there is only one over-voicer for all actors in a video The third type is totally different The original sound track is kept and the translation appears in the form of writing text at the bottom of the screen According to Pellitier (2012), dubbing gives a domestic feeling because this type is “is often associated with a stronger nationalism and pride (or defensive attitude) towards a national language” (p.132), while subtitling gives an authentic feeling Sharing the same idea, Szarkowska (2002) stated that subtitling involves the least interference with the original (cited in Thuy, 2007, p.11)

Discussing about screen translator, Newmark (1998) said “Unlike the translator

of fiction, he cannot gloss, explain puns or ambiguities or cultural references, nor transcribe words for the sake of local color: his text is dramatic, with emphasis of verbs, rather than descriptive and explanatory” (cited in Trang, 2006, p.19) Film translation “must be concise-it must not be over-translation Each character has a fixed amount of time to utter their utterances in the dialogue The translation, therefore, must be shorter than or at least as lengthy as the original utterances,” added Newmark This points a common difficulty every film translator encounters: time duration

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2.3 Fansubbing

Subtitling or widely known as captioning in US, according to Hassanpour

(2001), is the written translation of the spoken language of a TV program or film into the language of the viewing audience (cited in Thuy, 2007, p.10) In a video, subtitling

is normally shown with two lines at the foot of the screen simultaneously with dialogue in source language Through a proposed set of standard subtitling in Europe (Fotios Karamitroglou, 1997), it can be seen that subtitling is restrained by a lot of factors such as spatial layout, temporal duration, punctuation and letter case, and so on Cintas (2004) also claimed that subtitling was time-consuming because of timing part

in which original sound track was transcribed, and “subtitling was a team activity (p.52)

Fansubbing refers to a phenomenon in which admirers of a particular culture’s

audiovisual products are involved in subtitling process The term is, therefore, a combination of fan and subtitling Fansubbing is believed to originate from a Japanese anime (animated films) fandom movement in USA in 1970s (Diáz Cintas & Munoz, 2006) At that time, the small number of Japanese anime officially shown on screen was not enough to feed American fans’ desire of accessing to anime in particular and Japanese culture in general Hence, those who had grounding of Japanese language themselves organized to produce their own subtitles instead of waiting for broadcasting enterprises to do subtitling

Generally, translation researchers concern three points when digging into this phenomenon: the causes of fansubbing, its features and its effects on professional translation

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sufficient, to “have fun” as stated by Fernández Costales (2012, p.12) Next, due to their sense of belonging to a fan community, fansubbers want to share videos they

approached with other fans or to “spread love” as declared by Viki, a website

providing raw videos and allowing its audiences translate them online Fansubbing abolishes language barrier which prevents many fans from enjoying videos made in a different language, a different culture It is believed that the accumulation of fan knowledge would be considerably reduced without this translation practice (Lee, 2014) Adding to fan communities, it also serves a wider range of general audiences According to Kayahara (2005), fansubbing makes “minor films more widely available

to non-Japanese speakers” and “noticed and distributed by major companies”, minor films here refer to films which are not shown on televisions or at theaters (p.69) It appears that fans attempt to boost the image of that culture in their countries by increasing people’s frequency of exposing to it Agreeing with this idea, Orrego Carmona (2011) said that this involvement of fansubbers contribute to the popularity

of what they are interested in target culture (p.4) Moreover, fan communities are not contended with the interference of professional translators in the content of source videos just for the sake of audiences’ comprehension Orrego Carmona (2011) asserted that the main concerns of fansubbing orginate from fans’ interest to a culture (p.3) They reckon that domestication method broadcasting corporations applies in subtitling cultural products like that deprives of cultural flavors which mainly make up the products’ attraction (Dwyer, 2014), which worries fans that its beauty would not

be transferred correctly and adequately to audiences This notion of preserving cultural heritage motivates fans to produce their own subtitles (Fernández Costales, 2012) That is how Cubison (2005) called fansubbers “guardians of the text” (p.54)

The second important driver in facilitating fansubbing is technology development According to Leonard (2005, p.291), the earliest known subtitled film cost over $4000 and consumed 100 hours due to the limitation of subtitling electrical tools Thanks to technological breakthroughs, expense and time are no longer obstacles to a non-profitable translation practice like fansubbing Many researchers on fansubbing claimed that the development of technology and Internet network

125 million of subtitles in 157 languages has been contributed by only Viki

In the researcher’s mind, ever-improving language knowledge of people is another factor which is worth being mentioned because language is a vital element in any form of translation Supposing that language competence of fansubbers was not good enough, noone would watch their subtitled video and an end to fansubbing would be unavoidable However, translation practitioners and experts pay little attention to fansubbers’ linguistic competences because they are still considered non-professional translators and their competences are varied

2.3.2 Features of fansubbing

Discussing on characteristics of fansubbing, researchers mostly focus on fansubbers’ identity, fansubbing process, translation methods, as well as the quality fan-made subtitles

up subtitling because fansubbing is commonly known non-profitable (Lee, 2014)

From his interview with an online fansub group named aGENTeaM, Orrego Carmona

(2011) draws that fansubbers’ decision of joining a fansub resulted from their satisfaction after several times watching that groups’ subtitled products Because there

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is no commitment that he/she has to continuously contribute to those groups’ subtitle production, that person can withdraw from the groups with ease This flexible rule of fansubbing groups shows a highly voluntary spirit which keeps generations of fansubbers investing their time and energy in subtitling more videos of diversified genres Besides, fansubbers are recognized as amateur or non-professional translators compared to professional one in mainstream translation This identity comes from the fact that most of them do not receive an academic training on translation or subtitling Their translation act is subconscious and simply related to their interests instead of translation causes However, their interests in a particular area turn them to genre expertise, which makes up for their lack of schooled training to some extent

Next to voluntary nature is collaboration without which fansubbing would not

be so productive Dwyer (2014) said that this translation phenomenon is constructed

on “collective labor, online networking and web assistance” (p.228) Taking advantages of technology, the working environment of fansub groups is boundless in term of both space and time Fansubbers themselves gather then cooperate via online communication The aim of their work is to provide subtitles of fast speed and cultural accuracy, thereby making team spirit an essential requirement for fansubbing Two heads are better than one Being explorers approaching to a culture, fans hardly know and understand every cultural element to be shown in videos By using online forums, fansubbers utilize members’ knowledge to “access in-depth cultural knowledge” and

to find solutions for translation-related issues (Dwyer, 2014, p 228) O’Haggan (2008) confirmed that this nature of fansub groups offers fansubbers an excellent environment to sharpen their translation competences through knowledge accumulation (knowledge of genre, language, culture, translation, and technology) Therefore, their work has gradually considered the most active paraprofessional translation activity from a non-professional one (Orrego Carmona, 2011)

b Process of fansubbing

The fansubbing process was described thoroughly in “Fansubs: Audiovisual Translation in an Amateur Environment” (Diáz Cintas & Munoz, 2006) Below is a brief summary of the two experts’ full description

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Firstly, the raw provider obtains raw or untranslated video and sends it to the encoder who will decide whether the source material’s sound and image quality is good enough Next, the copy is sent to the translator for translation step If necessary, the raw can be reduced in quality and size so that it can travel more easily over the Internet Before subbing a series, the translator should visit some websites for genenal information about it In case of, some episodes of its have already been subtitled and uploaded on the Internet, the translator needs to watch previous episodes before starting his/her translation to know more about the plot The translator should mark in the translation whether the subtitles are characters’ voices or just background sounds

to help the typesetter in the coming step Once the translation is finished, it is then sent

to the timer The timer listens to the audio and decides time duration for each line in the subtitle After that, timed subtitle is sent to the typesetter The typesetter's task is

to choose what fonts and colors should be used for dialogue lines, for inner thoughts, and for background sounds The typesetter also devises the target language signs screen (school signs, newspaper headlines, street names and so on)to explain written characters and inserts them on the The new script is then passed on to the editor who revises the target text and makes some changes if necessary to perfect the subtitle After the last content modification, the encoder integrates provided raw video with final translation version to produce the subtitled products

In Orrego Carmona’s research (2011), there mentioned some other names and the whole above translation process is just part of another bigger one Actually, Orrego Carmona considers it the third also the last sub-process, the others are administrative and moderation process In the first process, administrators who manage the website organize the team and decide what series for it to work on In the moderation process, moderators and collaborators are responsible for posting and organizing threads and comments on the web forums In addition, a teammate can take charge of many tasks, depending on that one’s ability and willingness Nevertheless, what the researcher cares about is fansubbers along with their works, so she would not take other members much into her consideration

c Translation methods

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Fansubbers’ translation methods are greatly influenced by their motivations for

subtitling As stated above, fansubbers are laymen in translation field and their biggest

concern is to preserve cultural colors in source videos Consequently, they

unhesitatingly choose foreignization approach in order to produce subtitles faithful to

source content and culture They are not afraid of breaking watchers’ comprehension

which is thought to be not as important as culture recognition Unlike professional

translators, readership has a lighter weigh in fansubbers’ mind Regarding to

readership, Diáz Cintas and Munoz stated that “translators know that they are

addressing a rather special audience made up of people very interested in the world of

anime and, by extension, in Japanese culture” (2006, p.46) Hence, fansubbers are

encouraged to make their translation products close to the original ones as much as

possible, even translate literally or transfer phonetically (Gambier, 2009, p.21) For

instance, fansubtitled anime retains the Japanese custom of adding suffixes “-kun” for

boy teenagers and “-sensei” for teachers Nonetheless, fansubbers’ tendency of

maintaining the bridging capability in target version probably hinders general

watchers and new entrants of fandom from absorbing this kind of cultural products,

which is contrary to fansubbers’ wish of spreading their love To solve it, fansubbers

have no other choice but become more dependent on headnotes – explanation lines

written in a different color in the same subtitle and put on the top of screen Pérez

Gonzáles (2007, p.76) assumed that headnotes is likely a signal for an interactive

space between fansubbers and audiences, thereby “allow[ing] fansubbers to max their

own visibility as translators” The case study conducted by Orrego Carmona also

pointed out that aGENTeaM fansubbers experienced a feeling of being recognized on

online community when seeing their nicknames on the screen He claimed that this

mental reward not only encouraged fansubbers to continue their works but also raised

a sense of responsibility of providing better quality subtitles in them Yet, if

fansubbers abuse headnotes, they may burden watchers’ cognition as their eyes have

to keep track with video flow and subtitle lines plus headnotes at a time

d Quality of fansubtitles

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Fansubbing might catch translation experts’ sight for its extreme activeness and productivity, but it takes up a small place in their minds due to its quality Bogucki (2009), La Forgia and Tonin (2009, cited in Orrego Carmona, 2011) and many other researchers agree that fan translation are of much lower quality than professional one This conclusion is based on two findings they have drawn on fansubbers The first is fansubbers’ lack of training, which leads to their ignorance to watchers’ cognition The second is fansubbers’ weak language competence, which is greatly blamed for disqualified subtitles While language competence is a strict requirement to translators

in mainstream field, it is not seriously taken in fansubbing Still, professional practitioners give compliments on its deep understanding of culture and genres

2.3.3 Effects of fansubbing on professional translation

Responding to this amateur translation activity, professional translators and scholars show both positive and negative opinions

In negative tone, some worries that fansubbing’s poor performance would harm wider translation profession (Ferrer Simó, cited in Pérez González, 2006) In some cases, fansubbing indeed affects mainstream translation, but not totally in a bad way That effect occurs when previous fansub versions define official ones in some ways like creating names for characters or places which is familiar to audiences’ ears and recognized by audiences (Ferrer, cited in Orrego Carmona, 2011)

In positive tone, many of scholars think that professional translators should learn fansubbers’ “daring” spirit, that is to say, they should sometimes challenge their audiences’ comprehension In Dwyer’s words, fansubbing offers valuable lessons on preserving authenticity (p.219) Its tendency of foreignization allows audiences to have a fuller sensory viewing experience (Pérez González, 2006) Thus, it would be great if professional translators put some efforts into getting familiar to particular source cultures and genres, then forget about translation principles they were taught Adding to deep knowledge of cultures and genres, the incredible translation speed of fansubbing is desirable to professional translation This made Orrego Carmona pop out an idea of forming a translation group which inherits strong points of both amateur and professional translation In his dissertation, he discussed about a group of

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translation including fansubbers and trained translators The former subgroup is in charge of producing draft subtitles which is then revised by the latter subgroup By this way, subtitles of better quality will be produced faster while cultural flavors still reserved

To the researcher, fansubbing is simply a group of audiences’ reaction to the low productivity of professional translation, reflecting a need of more translators in subtitling In addition, it contributes more versions for a series or genre, meaning more choices for viewers In short, fansubbing makes AVT more dynamic and evolutionary

2.4 Subtitles in screen language

2.4.1 Screen language

Unlike text source, language is only one of components constructing an audiovisual source “A film text is made up of different layers of meaning [which] is constructed on the interconnecting levels of the word, image, scene, film text, film series, genre, etc.” (Baumagarten, 2003) Lavaur and Barstow (2011) also exclaimed that viewers’ film comprehension is a link between a film dialogue and viewers’ life experiences; therefore, language in screen is not merely what characters speak but also contextual information like images, and songs (p.456) This extra-linguistic information significantly helps viewers to understand background context, relationship among characters, as well as characters’ inner thoughts and feelings without any word like in a textual material

In terms of linguistic aspect, Baumagarten (2003) pointed out five attributes of the nature of language in film

First, “on-screen action mimics off-screen interpersonal constellations and social interaction”, that is to say, film is the mirror of life

Second, “sound technology ensures that communicative behavior, such as a character’s mumbling or muttering something under his or her breath, is perfectly audible to the audience, even when it would be incomprehensible in an identical real life situation”

Third, “the elements of a film that viewers most readily appropriate are the words, phrases and the manner of speaking of the characters on-screen"

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Fourth, “language in film is primarily face-to-face communication, and despite

a variety of filmic genres, in general, it also imitates everyday conversation, because films are commonly directed to linguistically non-specialized audiences” This is why

he identified films as “a snapshot of language in use at a particular point in time, and linguistic analyses of original language versions and their translations can reveal cross-cultural differences and preferences in linguistic norms and conventions”

Finally, “language in film is not spontaneous speech It is ‘constructed’, in the sense that all the linguistic features in the film dialogue can be assumed to be there for

a purpose, because sound mixing and editing could always erase any unwanted linguistic elements”

Newmark (1988) shared his opinion of language in film, too

A translator of drama in particular must translate into the modern target if he wants his characters to 'live', bearing in mind that the modern language covers

a span of, say, 70 years, and that if one character speaks in a bookish and fashioned way in the original, written 500 years ago, he must speak an equally bookish and old-fashioned way in the translation, but as he would today, therefore with a corresponding time gap-differences of register, social class, education, temperament in particular must be preserved between one character and another (cited in Trang, 2006, p.19)

old-In summary, language in film is spoken language in a certain socio-cultural context Hence, film translators should be careful when making their language choice, and ready to adapt to a new language environment if necessary

2.4.2 Subtitles in screen language

When linguistic information becomes a setback to viewers’ film cognitive process, the appearance of subtitles is like an assistant (Lavaur & Barstow, 2011, p.457) Subtitles may be in either similar (intralingual) or different (interlingual) languages compared to languages spoken in videos In interlingual situation, subtitles obviously play a vital part in the film understanding of watchers including those accessing videos for specialized purposes like culture research In intralingual situation, subtitles are beneficial greatly for hearing-impaired watchers, language learners and partly for watchers of the same languages because they probably provide extra information to deepen watchers’ understanding

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However, subtitles may have some negative effects on watchers at the same time First, they might distract audiences’ attention from what was going on the screen because it takes time for watchers to read subtitle lines on screen, which is sometimes beyond watchers’ ability to take in both all information contained in a scene and its synchronized subtitle line in a limited time This commonly happens in interlingual situation in which watchers pay more attention to understand what characters are saying, especially when characters are talkative and fast speakers To reduce this reading reaction, experts in subtitling put forward a set of rules to control the amount

of space for subtitle lines on screen Shortly, professional subtitles are required to not excess two lines and 40 characters in total each time they appear on screen It is true that these rules lighten watchers’ pressure of reading subtitles, but they force subtitlers

to condense verbal information, thereby facing risk of cutting down information (Lavaur & Barstow, 2011, p.457) This act, therefore, would be against watchers’ wish

to obtain the in-depth understanding of source videos

Being aware of this two-side impact of subtitles, Thuy (2007) gave her description of a good subtitle In her paper, she stated that good subtitles must be simple, clear, adequate, and remain subordinate to the rest of the visual and oral stimuli

2.5 The so-called intimate speech level in Korean language

Actually, the phrase “intimate speech level” in the title of this research has not been defined by academians Only “speech levels” is mentioned on Wikipedia as a linguistic pattern used to show respects to a speaker’s or writer’s audience and reflect the formality or informality of the situation “Intimate speech level” here refers to linguistic components indicating the closeness of relationship among conversational participants, a speaker’s attitude to his/her audience, and the formality of a conversation Frankly, she was unsure what of source material would be changed under the influence of English subtitle version at first Later, from her supervisor’s and friends’ suggestions, she started paying more attention on Vietnamese fansubbers’

usage of social deixis, a pragmatic term referring to “pointing” function via linguistic

components which determines the social status and relationship between a speaker and

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addressee Then, she found that characters’ names were reserved on subtitle lines while their names were not called This difference between the subtitle lines and the sound of a video seems inappropriate, especially when the speaker is younger or inferior than the addressee The researcher thinks that there are likely other changes to

be observed because Korean language is featured by its rich system of honorific forms (Brown, 2010) As an education practitioner in language, Brown asserted that honorific forms play a crucial part in Korean people’s “every single utterance” (p.35)

Because this study targets at possible changes in terms of conservational closeness among characters in a Korean reality show, it is necessary to have a look at Korean language For the researcher has little command of Korean language, she will try to gasp basic knowledge of this language, especially parts relevant to the aim of her study

Lucien Brown (2010) divided Korean honorifics into three groups: hearer honorifics, referent honorifics and forms of address The first honorific component named hearer honorifics (also known speech levels) is expressed in sentence-final predicate endings so as to index the relationship between a speaker and audience regarding to age and closeness It is divided into six styles as in the following table

Figure 2: Korean speech styles (Brown, 2010, p.37)

Plain and intimate styles are non-honorific styles which are used among

intimates of same age-rank and by age-rank superiors to subordinates and children

The next two styles which are getting extinct in modern Korean are authoritative ones that are used by older speakers towards younger listener Finally, polite and

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deferential styles are honorific styles used reciprocally between non-intimates and

non-reciprocally by age–rank subordinates to superiors

Next, referent honorifics index the relationship between a speaker and a grammatical referent who may be either the hearer or a third party of a higher position

This type is shown in two ways A way is to add a so-called honorific marker –si- to the predicate of an utterance For instance, gada becomes gasida (to go) The other way is to use lexical substitutes of honorific forms, for example, japsusida for moekda (eat), or jinji for bap (food)

Lastly, forms of address index people’s social relationship In Korean language,

people add suffix –ssi to a non-intimate’s name and –a/-ya to an intimate’ name To call someone in their families, they use titles like hyung or nuna (younger brother to older brother or sister respectively) Job titles like sonsaengnim (teacher) are also

frequently applied to show the speaker’s respect

Another linguistic pattern addressing the formality of a conversation is pronoun

In an informal and familiar context, the first person pronouns are na, uri (equivalent to

I, we), the second person pronouns are neo, neohui (equivalent to you with single and plural meaning) To say in a polite way, Korean speakers use jeo for I and tangsin for

you

To make it easy for the data collection and analysis, below is a simple table for Korean honorifics

Hearer honorifics -ta, -e, -ney -so, -eyo, -supnita

Referent honorifics -si-, bap, moekda,… jinji, japsusida

Addressing honorifics -a/ya, nuna, hyung…

na, uri, neo, neohui

-ssi, nunim, hyungnim… jeo, tangsin

Table 2: Summary of Korean honorifics

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CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This chapter introduces applied data collection and analysis methods in the study Recommended by former researchers, objective and purely descriptive method will be applied Qualitative instruments like small translation tests and interview will

be used

3.1 Selection of subjects

3.1.1 Description of subjects

The Korean TV reality show “Roommate”

Sample videos are taken from a Korean TV reality show titled “Roommate” which is produced and aired by a Korean broadcasting corporation (SBS) since the late of 2014 11 Korean celebrities took part in its season one which lasted twenty episodes The season 2 announced to be of the equal number of episodes is on aired at the present Each episode lasts approximately for 80 minute There are 12 characters

on the show in season 2; five of them are members of season 1 They are all celebrities coming from different entertainment fields Five of them are singers, five actors, and the two left comedians They also vary in ages, from 20 to 45 Becoming roommates

in the show, characters are asked to live together under a roof and make their own plan for what they want to do in each episode They are also allowed to invite their families and friends to their shared home, and most of the guests are celebrities, too Cameras record their real words, expressions and actions, even their awkward habits

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Figure 3: Roommate’s promotion image

Because of this reality feature, language in the show is daily spoken language which, in subteam translators’ opinion, does not put much linguistic pressure on them Yet, subtitlers have to use humorous tone to convey the funny trait of the show Another special linguistic attribute of this Korean show is words added on screen to illustrate characters’ and the narrator’s sayings or to create entertainment impacts However, it should be notice that this study focuses only in conversational language

Subteam14

Formed in February, 2014, Subteam14 is a newcomer in amateur subtitling activity and its members are of variety in personal backgrounds, characteristics, and language proficiency Some of them even study and live aboard While watching films

on phim14.net, they saw an announcement for film translators then registered through

an online form The only three requirements for them to join the team are (i) passion for the activity, (ii) ability of using fluently at least one foreign language beside Vietnamese, and (iii) network connection (see the team application form at Appendix

2) At the present, it has more than 50 members and this number continuously increases when the website has recently provided Vietnamese subtitles for also Chinese movies

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Raw videos are taken from some different online sources like dramacool.com

or dailymotion.com and English subtitles are mainly from subscence.com Normally,

raw videos are available just few hours after they are officially aired on TV channels; English subtitles are released a day later This waiting time makes up for timing stage which is considered time-consuming most Administrators often paste the link of raw videos on the subteam’s group Facebook and ask subtitlers how many of them can translate one day prior to their self-set subtitling schedule When English subtitles are available, they are divided into subtitle fragments whose number is equal to the number of subtitlers who have confirmed their participation already With a fragment

of ten minute, subtitlers are required to accomplish their translation in about one hour then post it back on the Facebook group for revision, typesetting, encoding, and

finally uploading on the website phim14.net The total time spent for finishing an

episode is from three to twelve hours, depending on the episode’s genre and duration, the length of English subtitle, the number of subtitlers translating for the episode, or personal reasons Team members’ names are shown at the end of each completed episode, and members received coffee money after a series ends (see Appendix 3) This economic reward is quite different from what is told by Orrego Carmona (2011)

In his dissertation, fansubbers themselves raise fund for the website’s operation and their work is utterly non-profit in terms of economics

Almost all of subteam translators are university students who have free time and are interested in Korean audiovisual products Their membership time fluctuates from six to twelve months The number of series they have subtitled is four at minimum and over thirty at maximum The genre they mostly work on is dramas

On language obstacle in drama translation, they said that it depended on the series’ content and context If a series is about daily life at the contemporary time, they can translate with ease, sometimes even over-translate (compared to English subtitles) to make their versions ear-biting Otherwise, they would have to struggle with unfamiliar vocabulary and expressions in a series of past time or specialized knowledge like medicine or crime In those situations, it takes more time for subtitlers

to search relevant information, look up new words and sharing their problems or

Reviewer

Because in this study appears a third language, posing more constrains beyond the researcher’s capabilities, a hand from a reviewer who have a firm grounding of Korean language was required The invited reviewer is a senior student from Foreign Trade University, Hanoi Getting the official TOPIK certificate with the score of 190 (equivalent to IELTS 7.5), the reviewer can communicate in Korean well That one helps designing honorific test used in the study and evaluating subtitling products obtained from participants

3.1.2 Sample selection

Subtitle translators

The participation of team subtitlers is pivotal to the outcome of the study To examine the possible effects of English subtitle on their translation, three subtitlers of different Korean proficiency are selected One has a relatively good understanding of Korean language and culture, another one has a little understanding, and the other has

no understanding These three participants, of course, have to be good at English Their language proficiency is determined based on their achieved academic results and the subteam leader and editors’ comments on the quality of subtitlers’ products

English proficiency

Korean proficiency

Korean

about Korean

Table 1 Participant profiles

Audiovisual and English subtitle materials

Sample videos are extracted from the season 2 of the show, which helps raise the quality of Vietnamese translation version Because the team members are all amateur translators who do not have any regular training on translation, selecting episodes from season 2 ensures that translators have a certain period of time getting familiar with the show and subtitling activity in the team From those twenty episodes, the researcher attemped to choose short passages containing cultural patterns, particularly relation status among dialogue participants in accordance with English subtitle and the help of her friends who master Korean language With this focus, she decided to choose extracts from the first episode Though it is about the breaking-the-ice time of new faces in season 2; there are some old ones of the first season Hence, there will be difference in intimate speech level used among old characters and between the old and the new

3.2 Research instruments

There are three instruments utilized for this study

The first is an honorifics test containing three types of Korean honorifics reviewed in literature review (see Appendix 5)

The second is two video extracts and English subtitles for subtitling stage The

raw video is obtained from the website tvdasiboja.com, and English subtitle from

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subscence.com The first extract is 5 minute long (from 36’ to 40’), and the second 10

minute (from 24’ to 33’)

The final instrument is individual interview with participants

3.3 Procedure of data collection

First, selected translators were contacted individually for personal information relating to their language command, subtitling experiences, and pre-perception of the intermediate language in translation action

The next move was honorifics test The test was designed by the researcher and revised by the researcher’s friends This test was sent to the three subtitlers in order to see how much they knew about Korean honorifics and inform them key points they need to pay more attention in next stage They were required to do the test comfortably with their Korean proficiency

As soon as the test was finished, subtitling stage was implemented Selected video materials were sent to subtitlers online via email or host webs To assess the role

of English subtitle version, the participants were first required to watch 5-minute clip and translate them without English subtitle in 30 minute Then, English subtitles were provided to them for the second translation time After that, the longer English script was sent to them for the final translation in 1 hour Their translation versions were

collected and coded PiITj or PiDT in which P stands for Participant, i for participant

number (i={1, 2, 3}) IT for indirect translation Korean-English-Vietnamese, DT for direct translation Korean-Vietnamese, and j for clip number (j={1, 2})

After the translation results were out, a further interview was conducted to shed light on their translation process and to see subtitlers’ thoughts about translating through an intermediate language

3.4 Procedure of data analysis

The two translation versions of chosen 5-minute by each participant were compared to first examine to what extent extra-linguistic factors in video assisted amateur translators’ work In another word, the rate they could translate without English subtitles likely pinpoints the role of the intermediate language in fansubbing phenomenon More specifically, intimate level in their translation was focused on and

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compared to Korean honorifics used in the video in order to indicate what types of honorifics are mostly and easily maintained and what types are hardly shown when a translator has no command of Korean language Also, three participants’ indirect translations of the chosen 10-minute clip were compared

The articipants’ words in interview round were analyzed to see whether fansubbers share common ideas about the position of English subtitle in their translation It is expected that their sharing would reveal non-professional Vietnamese subtitlers’ translation process as well as their own-generated solutions for possible

difficulties departing from the appearance of a third language

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CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

This chapter aims to present outcomes obtained from subtitling experiments and interviews then analyze them in relation with theories surveyed in literature review section to answer research questions

4.1 General view on subtitling Korean TV reality shows in Vietnamese subtitler community

Though this is not in research questions, it is probably necessary to have an overview on subitlting phenomenon in Vietnam To compare with theories on fansubbing in literature, the non-professional translation phenomenon in the case study shares something in common

First, all of three participants agreed that subtitling was interesting because of the two main benefits which were friend-making and language enhancement Participant 1 also added financial reward which was “enough to pay my parents’ monthly phone bill” as a motivation for her work In fact, no one mentioned about their particular interest in Korean culture, it can be still seen that they enjoy watching Korean videos For instance, Participant 1, who admitted knowing nothing about Korean language, said that she found it entertaining while doing subtitling and her knowledge of Korean culture is obtained from watching Korean videos Clearly, subtitlers here are attracted by the source culture at a certain extent though that attraction is not so strong that they become “guardians of the text” (Cubison, 2005) This may be due to their lack of knowledge about Korean culture and language and the fact that the series they work on is not official shown on television Therefore, they cannot and do not have any opposing opinions against professional translation Frankly speaking, Subteam14’s operation simply aims to meet Hallyu’s fans’ need with latest dramas and television shows

Second, Subteam14 works on collaborative principle, online networking, web assistance as stated by Dwyer (2014, p.228) Taking a look at Appendix 2, a member asked others which year a character on the show was born to have appropriate addressing Participant 3 also said that she would have a word to others who misunderstood the original video if she could spot any error based on her knowledge

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of Korean culture In addition, Participant 1 mentioned Google translate as a helpful tool she frequently used whenever linguistic difficulties arose This kind of information exchange and technology utility somehow supports Dwyer’s (2014) and O’Haggan’s (2008) statement that cooperative nature of fansubbing facilitates fansub groups’ knowledge deepening and translation strengthening

Last but not least, the low quality products by this translation practice, the main concern of many researchers and experts, is likely due to three main reasons

The first one is subtitlers’ poor language proficiency Though translating from English subtitles, not every member in the subteam has a good command of English According to P3’s sharing, some members mistranslate English lines because of keeping in mind that each word has only one meaning while an English word actually may have various meanings depending on the co-text and context in which it appears Let the polysemy nature of language alone, subtitlers usually have to cope with a larger range of glossary and expressions out of their expectation as requirements regarding to language competency for joining the team are really loosen Language obstacle is quite understandable to translation practitioners in general; however, linguistic gap seems to be a bigger one for non-professional subtitlers to overcome Whereas, P2 seems quite optimistic saying that English is not the major hindrance to their translation

Language proficiency is partly important, what really matters is how to translate naturally like daily spoken language (P2, interviewed on 17/03/2015) This awareness difference significantly affects their translation which can be seen clearly through following translation extracts from IT1:

English line 43 You made it with instant rice?

Vietnamese line P2 Các em đã cho cơm vào luôn sao?

P3 Mà mấy đứa làm bằng cơm ăn liền đấy hả?

English line 56 Let's get closer Wow!\NGuk Joo can fit in here

Vietnamese line P2 Hãy thân thiện hơn chút nào Wow!\NGuk Joo có thể hợp với đây

P3 Chúng ta xích lại gần nào!\NỒ! Guk Joo ngồi vừa luôn này!

English line 58 I think you're going to lose\Nif you were to get in fight

Vietnamese line P2 Em nghĩ mọi người sẽ thân thiết hơn\N nếu mọi người trong cuộc chiến

P3 Em nghĩ nếu anh là đánh nhau \Nvới cô ấy thì anh thua chắc đấy ạ

Apparently, P3 produces more correct translation regarding to meaning while P2 is quite careless in understanding English subtitle and screen context because of