Chapter 4 Methodology
4.2 Subtitling Strategies for Vulgarism
The first step is to identify which functions that your text type should belong to, however, Newmark also notes that materials are not subject to just functions.
On the stylistic scales suggested by Newmark (1988:14), swear words are categorized as taboo, the lowest of the nine scales. It is evident translation of such nature is delivered through the communicative translation theory.
Newmark’s view on translating vulgarism can be manifested by what he coins
“equivalent effect” (1988:48). Since the lacking of exact equivalence and the
ineffectuality of literal translation of most swear words, some argue that swearing is untranslatable. While it sounds true that no swear word is completely equivalent to its closest counterpart in another language, it doesn’t necessarily mean that swearing is untranslatable. Newmark argues that that ‘everything without exception is translatable’ even though ‘there’s no such thing as a perfect, ideal or ‘correct’
translation’ (1988: 6).
A text of this nature represents a major challenge to the translator, who has to adapt the original English soundtrack to make sense to a foreign language public.
When the use of swearing or any other form of bad language is so frequent that it becomes a stylistic marker of the text, the equivalence of style becomes as important as the semantic equivalence. In an idealistic sense, based on Newmark’s ‘equivalent principle’, it is hoped that the stylistic register of the source text, its degree of informality and the frequency of swearing be retained in the target text in order to evoke the same level of emotional response on the audience of the translation as the original text produces on its audience (1988:48).
4.2 Subtitling Strategies for Vulgarism
The peculiarities of audiovisual texts, such as the time and space constraint play a dominant role in shaping the practice of subtitling. Although the studies in the
field of audiovisual translation are limited, some scholars have proposed principles and strategies to render English speech to Chinese.
As elaborated in chapter 3, vulgarism is culture-specific and cannot be translated literally. When translating culture-specific terms, Tianjin Normal University English professor Li Yun-xing offers five common strategies in the aspect (2001: 39).
The five models are introduced in the following table and the examples are chosen from the movie ‘Superbad’ to illustrate the concepts.
Figure 4.3 Li’s model on translating culture-specific words
Five Models Explanation
(1) The Go-ahead Model : (直入式)
literal translation or transliteration of SL
Example: Eat shit, bum.
去吃屎,爛人
Analysis: Same meaning in same register (2) The Block Model :
(阻斷式)
direct omission of SL
Example: It's called fucking strategy.
這叫做策略
Analysis: The profane word is omitted in TT (3) The Annotation
Model : (詮釋式)
to provide a related (similar) context
Example What the fuck are you doing?
你在搞什麼飛機?
Analysis: Using TL expression to deliver a similar level of
emotion in an idiomatic way without the profane word in ST
(4) The Integration Model : (融合式)
to integrate SL expression with TL form
Example: You're full of shit.
你滿口屁話
Analysis: The TT is of same register but with a different subject more idiomatic to SL audience
(5) The Adaptation Model : (歸化式)
to replace SL culture-specific words with TL ones
Example: How'd he get into Dartmouth? I don't get it.
He's got shit for brains.
他怎麼會被達特茅斯錄取的?
我不懂,他腦袋裝滿爛糊
Analysis: It is also the ‘domestication’ approach. In the example, TT is less vulgar than ST but the meaning retains.
Li’s model is a hypothesis that swearwords are viewed as ‘culture-specific.’
Since the extra-linguistic message, including visual, audio, natural sound, soundtrack, tone and many other elements in audiovisual texts provide audience enough cues to engage with the movie, its existence makes crossing the cultural gap easier. Given so, Li argues that translators should adopt the ‘Go-Ahead’ model when translating culture-specific words because audience can understand the translation with the presence of other elements. Under such conditions, omission of vulgarism seems to be acceptable because one way or another, the emotional loss in subtitling translation is compensated by the polysemiotic nature of a motion picture, either visual or audio elements.
Although Li’s strategies are an overall suggestion for translating culture-specific words, not particularly for swearwords, Hong Kong translation scholar Chapmen Chen’s observation on how swearwords are rendered in Hong Kong VCDs coincides with Li’s view to some extent. Chen presents his observation focusing on the four ways of how English swearwords are processed in Hong Kong’s VCD subtitles. He argues that English swearwords are usually rendered in four phenomena that are 1) Un-translation, 2) Over-formal Translation, 3) Rendition into Putunghua, and 4) Use of Euphemism (Chen 2004:136, 141). Chen’s observation will be compared with Li’s strategies in the later part.
Li’s suggestion on the rendition of culture-specific words serves as a basic framework for the following analysis. In an attempt to assess the quality of subtitle translation in the American movie ‘8 mile’ 7, which contains strong profanity in the dialogue, Kristiina Taivalkoski-Shilov from the University of Helsinki presents her recounting in a journal article on subtitling for ‘8 mile’ in three languages, in which she analyzes the text-type specific translation in the R-rated movie. The five
text-type-specific translation problems, as she notes, are rhyme, wordplay, sociolects, obscene language and culture-specific references. In the analysis she uses four ‘shift’
categories, i.e. no shift, omission, addition and change, to evaluate how the
text-type-specific translation problems are dealt in the target text (2008: 261). Both Chen and Taivalkoski-Shilov acknowledge the difficulties in translating swearwords in subtitles and provide their observation on the results of how these words are translated. Since their observations on norms of translating profane words overlap, only different in names, I would like to make a comparison table of their views. To provide a clear comparison, the names that differ in their respective proposals but
7 ‘8 mile’ is a 2002 American hip-hop drama film, starring rap singer Eminem. The film is a fictionalized account of Eminem's poor growing up in Detroit and early career in rap, with dialogues full of strong profanity.
share the same meaning will be placed on the same row in the column.
Taivalkoski-Shilov acknowledges that the lack of ‘complete correspondence of connotations, even in the field of rap and youth culture ‘(2008: 256). So that change is a necessary approach to render text-type problems. While Chen advocates the use of Cantonese to render English swearwords in Hong Kong subtitling, noting the four phenomena in the common practice of subtitling English swearwords in Hong Kong, Taivalkoski-Shilov sees the phenomena as essential shifts.
Figure 4.4 Comparison Table of Li, Chen, and Taivalkoski-Shilov’s view on the strategies and common results of translating vulgarism
Li Chen Taivalkoski-Shilov
The Go-ahead Model — No-shift
The Block Model Un-translation Omission
The Annotation Model — Addition
The Integration Model — Over-formal Use of Euphemism The Adaptation Model
Render into Putunhua
Change
If Li’s suggested translation models are ideal, Chen and Taivalkoski-Shilov offer their observation on reality. In the figure it is obvious that the integration model can be seen as ‘Change’ in Taivalkoski-Shilov’s studies. After combining their views and leaving out the overlapped categories, I decide to use Taivaloski-Shilov’s
evaluation standard to categorize the phenomena of how the swearwords are rendered, namely No-Shift, Omission, Addition, and Change, for her version is easier to
understand. Any translation strategies other than ‘No-Shift’, ‘Omission’ and
‘Addition’ will be included in ‘Change’ categories. I have highlighted the blocks on
the right column.
Because the movie’s DVD version of translation does not contain any rendition into Hoklo dialect, the most spoken dialect in Taiwan, I exclude the rendition into Putunhua from my analysis criteria since Taiwan does speak and write Putunhua.
However, for other instances that do not belong to any of the four categories, they will be mentioned separately in the sixth category of ‘others.’ Based on the selected
criteria, the analysis in the following chapter will attempt to investigate how swearwords in different functions in the movie are translated in which way and whether the renditions into Chinese carry the same emotional power on the par with the ‘equivalent effect’ proposed by Newmark.