Abe Mark Nornes

For an Abusive Subtitling

Film Quarterly, Un. of California Press, Vol. 52, No. 3 (Spring, 1999), pp. 17-34.

Abe Mark Nornes

Who is he? Chair of the Department of Screen Arts & Culture and

Professor in Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Michigan, 1996 - to present.

Some books:

-A Research Guide to Japanese Cinema Studies.

-Cinema Babel: Translating Global Cinema.

-Forest of Pressure: Ogawa Shinsuke and Postwar Japanese Documentary Film

-Japanese Documentary Film: From the Meiji Era to Hiroshima

First…No one has ever

come away from a

foreign film admiring

the translation.

All of us have, at one time or another, left a movie theater wanting to kill the translator. Our motive: the movie's murder by "incompetent" subtitle. (1.30)

Subtitles: What for?

1) Enable viewers to understand a movie even if they do not know its original language.

2) Facilitate the export of audiovisual products to other countries (Tomaszkiewicz in Mijas);

3) Serve as linguistic approximations of meaning (Curti).

Basic Knowledge

Nothing is simple when it comes to subtitles.

Ten codes to consider: linguistic, paralinguistic, musical mode and special effects, sound arrangement, iconographic, photographic, planning, mobility, graphic, syntactic (Chaume in Incalcaterra).

Technique

The number of spaces available for text

depends on the format of the film (16mm,

35mm), the lens (1:33, 1:85, Cinema Scope),

etc…

More techniqueFour key elements to analyze frames (Taylor in

Incalcaterra): Visual image, Kinesic action, Soundtrack, Subtitle.

- Visual image includes camera position (CP), horizontal/vertical

perspective (HP/VP),

visual focus (VF),

distance of shot (D),

visually salient items (VS),

visual collocation (VC),

colours (CR)…

Translator/SubtitlerTranslation as a digestible package that easily supplants

any ideological baggage carried by the original film. Freedom to diverge from the original text unavailable to

the typical translator (Lewis).The translator usually forgets that subtitling is not only

about dialogues but there are other important factors, such as dialects, cultural elements, register, which frequently undergo reduction, may be equally important for the comprehension of the film (Mijas).

Subtitles: StrategyIntimate part of film itself; not just a transposition;

creating something new. Debate: representational accuracy, fidelity, and

authenticity (Curti).Nornes and Cicero’s two strategies of translation:

-Sense-for-sense: line’s basic meaning translated into another language.

-Word-for-word: Importance of the materiality of language as opposed to some essential meaning found behind the letter.

What if they match? (Ivano)

Subtitles: (some) Technique

(Mijas)Omission (3.05-3.55): Sometimes unavoidable because

of space constraints or because the target language does not have an equivalent term (Mijas).

Explicitation: Translating what the author meant. Source text more accessible.

- I called 911 - I called for an ambulance- You smell like Listerine - You smell like antiseptic

mouthwash- It was right before Labour Day - It was right the end

of August

Subtitles: Technique 2Transposition: Cultural concept from one culture

replaced by a cultural concept from another.

- Smells like Wendy’s - Smells like McDonald’s

Conspiring Conforming the original to the rules, regulations, idioms

of the target language and its culture. Subtitlers conspire to hide acts of violence through codified rules and a tradition of suppression.

Trinh T. Minh-ha reduces

the foreign tongue to

nothing more than a

cultural disadvantage

where dubbing is

perceived as a strategy

of empowerment.

Corruption

All subtitles are corrupt because differences between languages can not be overcome.

The act of translation violently appropriates the source text.

Dubbing as an exchange of one voice for another which produces a new text free of the constraints because there is no debt to an original (Ascheid in Nornes).

Subtitlers have developed a method of translation that conspires to hide its work from its own reader-spectators. [And] in this sense we may think of them as corrupt.

Corrupt Vs AbusiveCorrupt subtitlers disavow the violence of the subtitle

while abusive translators revel in it.

Research: Something New

Subtitling has been virtually ignored (Nornes). Incalcaterra - Un. of Galway - Pilot course in

2006–2007 - Seven students.The aim of this short course was not, obviously,

to train professional subtitlers, but to improve translation skills in advanced language learners (Incalcaterra).

The relevance of subtitling to the acquisition of translation skills is justified by the notion that it creates a stage, a pause for reflection (Incalcaterra).  

[…] how the finest translators can be nurtured […] from the twin forces of rationalization and domestication.

(Nornes, Cinema Babel: Translating Global Cinema, 230)

Works Cited Curti, Giorgio “Beating words to life: subtitles assemblage(s) capes,

expression.” Geo Journal 74.3 (2009): 201-208.

McLoughlin, Laura Incalcaterra. "Subtitles in Translators' Training: A

Model of Analysis." Romance Studies 27.3 (2009): 174-185.

Mijas, Hanna “A New Approach to Translating Culture in Subtitling.”

Respectus Philologicus15.20 (2009): 53-61.

Nornes, Abe Mark. “For an Abusive Subtitling.” Film Quarterly,

Univ. of California Press, Vol. 52, No. 3 (Spring, 1999), pp. 17-34.