Film Translation
While watching a foreign movie with dubbing or multilingual subtitles, do you ever wonder why the film is so successful, even though it wasn’t made in your native language? The answer may be quite simple – it is translated, and translation has certain advantages and disadvantages which can influence an audience’s reaction. This is what we are going to talk about today – film translation.
Film has always been a powerful tool and a ubiquitous source of ideas in every culture. Entertainment and business are inseparably bound in this industry. Movies are not just a national property; on the contrary, they go far beyond national borders and attract global attention and recognition, resulting in a huge economic impact for the film industry on the international market. The international market, in turn, cannot be imagined without a team of translators whose primary goal is to establish communication between cultures.
During the silent film era, intertitles would be placed throughout the movie to provide the viewer with dialogue. These intertitles were easily replaced by identical titles translated into the target language. However silent films gave way to speaking movies, and film companies faced a huge problem making their movies understood in different countries. American film companies found a solution: they produced multi-language versions of the same film. Actors who could demonstrate proficiency in several languages were in great demand. However, this practice turned out to be absolutely unprofitable, and very soon it was abandoned and replaced with the modes that are being practised nowadays. These modes include dubbing, subtitling, voice-over, narration, and commentary.
Dubbing is the process of adding new dialogue in a different language onto the soundtrack of the picture that has already been shot, replacing the original dialogue. With subtitling, the original soundtrack and dialogue is preserved, and the viewer reads the translated dialogue on the screen. Voice-over, narration, and commentary provide viewers with an additional or substitute native-language voice either to give a simultaneous translation of the original text or to give some explanatory commentary on the plot. Now films do not have to stay within one culture’s borders and transmit text is one isolated language. Mass media and global communications have made intercultural communication through film an integral part of the world. In other words, film translation implies a whole spectrum of linguistic and cultural information and is connected to what the film offers its viewers and what the audience expects to get from it.
Fans of imported foreign films and TV shows have long been arguing over which is better: dubbing or subtitling. The basic difference between dubbing and subtitling is the concept of ‘domestication’ vs. ‘foreignisation’. Many contemporary translation theorists believe in the more modern approach of domestication, which involves eliminating any traces of the source language in favour of the target language, thus diminishing the author function in the source text. Foreignisation on the other hand focuses on retaining information from the source language and even breaking certain conventions in the target language to preserve the original meaning. In this context dubbing is considered to be a form of domestication and subtitling is viewed as a type of foreignisation.
Dubbing is a powerful target culture-oriented tool which makes the source text fit the standards held by the target culture as much as possible. This type of translation introduces a ‘decultured’ film which does not distract people’s attention from the image and is therefore suitable for people or children who do not have particularly fast or good reading skills. Moreover, it doesn’t involve much reduction of the original dialogue as compared to subtitling, decreases the sense of ‘otherness’, helps the audience accept foreign films as a part of their own culture, and contributes to a more relaxing viewing.
Dubbing is a powerful target culture-oriented tool which makes the source text fit the standards held by the target culture as much as possible. This type of translation introduces a ‘decultured’ film which does not distract people’s attention from the image and is therefore suitable for people or children who do not have particularly fast or good reading skills. Moreover, it doesn’t involve much reduction of the original dialogue as compared to subtitling, decreases the sense of ‘otherness’, helps the audience accept foreign films as a part of their own culture, and contributes to a more relaxing viewing.
The case for subtitling is completely different as this form of translation is generally regarded as a cheaper and faster modality of audiovisual translation which, however, loses as much as half of the original dialogue due to the spatial constraints. Nevertheless, subtitling preserves the original soundtrack, emphasizes the crucial role of the source culture, and stresses the film’s foreign identity. The merit of subtitling is its ability to arouse interest in a foreign culture and promote the use of a foreign language as an everyday function. Subtitling leaves a sense of ‘otherness’ unchanged.
It is important to find a happy medium and try to make the translation comprehensible for the target audience and, nevertheless, keep its original message. One of the best examples of how translators can affect a first impression is movie title translation. For example, viewers may think they are going to watch a teenage comedy, but what they see instead is a serious psychological drama. This happened in Russia where the movie title ‘Leaves of Grass’, an allusion to a poetry collection of Walt Whitman, was translated as ‘Weed’. This is just one out of hundreds of examples of how crucial it is to properly translate a movie, starting with its title.
Film translation is a very powerful and sometimes hazardous tool. For a film that is released nationally in a particular country to be a success abroad, it must overcome major linguistic and cultural obstacles to unite people and eliminate misunderstanding. There is no universal way of translating films because all the methods described above depend on various factors, including history and translation traditions of different countries. What translators have to do is to transfer ideas and values of one culture to another and make it appear authentic. Choose the way you think is best – and don’t get lost in translation!
At LingoStar, we have specialists all over the world able to translate in over 100 languages quickly and effectively, including subtitling, dubbing and voice-over for your film, TV or video projects. Call us today at 604-629-8420 or send us an email at info@lingo-star.com for more information!
Furthermore, check out our blog post on how to handle multilingual subtitles in YouTube >>
