Chinese subtitles of English-language feature films in Taiwan: A systematic investigation of solution-types

Abstract

Subtitling differs from the traditional idea of translation – from a written source text to a written target text. The transference is from a source text which consists of verbal information and non-verbal information from audio and visual channels, to a written target text which is constrained by the limited time and space on the screen. Subtitling involves not only transfer across languages but also a change of mode, from the spoken mode to the written mode and sometimes from the mode of moving images or sound effect to the written mode. Given the multimodal nature of film text, subtitling are expected to utilise different filmic signs and produce subtitles that fit into the montage of the film, taking into consideration the technical constraints and target viewers‟ processing effort. With the prevalence of translated audiovisual products, subtitling has drawn a considerable amount of scholarly attention. However, most of the research in this field focuses on the European scene and the language pairs studied are closely related. Given the lack of research into Chinese subtitles and the fact that the Chinese language and culture are very different from the English language and culture, the present study has aimed to investigate the way verbal elements in English-language feature films are translated into Mandarin subtitles in Taiwan. It looks at subtitling in general, subtitling extralinguistic cultural references and subtitling humour. Being descriptive in nature, it describes current translation practice by comparing the source text segment with its corresponding target text one and explores different types of solutions applied. By quantifying the frequency of each solution-type, some trends of subtitling are also generalised. The results show that subtitles of English-language feature films in Taiwan are source- text-oriented, as most of the source-text segments are closely rendered to the target text by source-language-oriented solutions, in which the source-text item undergoes minimum changes. Target-language-oriented solutions are seldom applied and extreme target-language-oriented ones are rarely found. The high percentage of source-language-oriented solutions indicates that Taiwanese subtitlers are reluctant to alter the source text; subtitling, as the preferred method of film translation in Taiwan, is seen as a means to bring the exotic experience to target viewers. It also suggests that most of the source-text elements can be transferred directly as the need to employ content-changing solutions is low. This study also compares its findings with those of other studies which are based on similar methods but focus on Scandinavian subtitling. Contrary to what might be expected, since the linguistic and cultural relatedness and the target audience‟s proficiency in the source language are different in these studies, the results are very similar. The trend towards source orientation in subtitling is observed in recent years across different languages, and it is largely due to globalisation, the influence of US popular culture and information boom that break cultural and linguistic boundaries. It appears that cultural influence is a more important factor than cultural affinity in determining a subtitles choice of solutions.