Babel - Volume 60, Issue 2, 2014

Voice-over as an audiovisual translation modality has traditionally been described for its rendering of the truth or its faithfulness. The manipulation and deviation from the original text through translation has already been the object of study in documentaries. This paper looks at the translation of TV news through voice-over. Technical and content infidelities are rendering the broadcast actualities into sexed up copies of the original, which for all intents and purposes are in sheer contravention of what translation is for as a faithful reproduction of the original and of objective and factual news reporting.The effects of the translator’s visibility in news voice-over is re-examined and the physical presence of the translator/voice talent is analyzed. This paper argues that the visibility of the translator in this instance pushes the boundaries of mediation beyond mere technicalities towards a sociopolitical sphere of reasoning and rationality by editorial policy makers.The paper also argues that synchronicity of voice-overs stemming from the rhetorical features of the voice-over styles of delivery and the idiosyncrasies of the voices creates dissonance and renders the original message with a degree of infelicities that undermine the long-celebrated standards of objectivity and neutrality. Consequently, this paper underscores the invisibility of the translator in this mode of translation mediation.

The increasing popularity of audiovisual translation in recent years has contributed to a better understanding of the audiovisual world. Nevertheless, some modalities such as voice-over have not received thorough attention. In Poland, where voice-over is the prevailing audiovisual, one voice talent reads out the entire dialogue list in a monotonous way. The translated version is subject to time and space restrictions, and both the original and the translated soundtracks are audible at the same time, making it interesting to analyze a key aspect of voice-over: the process of synchronization. Departing from a categorization which originated within the field of dubbing, and which was later extended and applied to the voice-over of non-fictional products by Franco, Matamala and Orero, this article aims to assess whether voice-over isochrony, literal synchrony, kinetic synchrony and action synchrony are maintained in the voice-over of fiction genres in Poland, and if so, what strategies are used to achieve this. The corpus is made up of four 15-minutes samples from movies belonging to four different genres: a comedy (Whatever Works, directed by Woody Allen 2009), a drama (Marvin’s Room, directed by Jerry Zaks 1996), an action movie (Spy Game, directed by Tony Scott 2001), and a musical (Nine, directed by Rob Marshall 2009). The study highlights the specificities of synchrony in fictional movies and opens the door for future research into this previously underestimated audiovisual transfer mode.

It is frequently said that humor does not travel well, and wordplay, which is inseparably connected to humor, poses particular problems for the translator as it is intrinsically linked to the source language and culture, and consequently is often described as untranslatable. The translator’s task is further complicated when instances of wordplay are encountered in audiovisual texts due to the constrained and semiotic nature of the medium. The aim of this paper is to examine the translation strategies applied to wordplay in the English subtitles of the French film Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis [Boon 2008]. To do this, instances of wordplay in the source text and the target text were classified according to the typology of wordplay as proposed by Delabastita (1996), and subsequently analyzed using the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH) (Attardo and Raskin 1991) in order to contrast the differences between source text and target text instances of wordplay. The findings show the trends in the application of translation strategies and demonstrate that GTVH, albeit with some modifications, is a useful analytical tool in the context of audiovisual translation in that it could show how the puns evolved in translation and therefore give a better understanding of wordplay to aid the choice of translation strategy. As long as a narrow view of equivalence is avoided, this study demonstrates that the translation of wordplay is possible even within the polysemiotic structures of audiovisual texts.

In Spain, as in the rest of the non-Anglophone Western world, English-language film titles have become texts (or paratexts) of great cultural importance. The titles of the films that one may encounter in Western cinema can be considered, on the one hand ephemeral, elusive, and inconsequential. However, on the other hand, despite their clear irrelevance, film titles are considered to be the genuine contemporary cultural texts, for their continued presence in the media and for their evocative nature: an important marketing tool. Moreover, the result of what happens when film titles are translated into other languages and cultures has always intrigued the audience: this is perhaps indicative of the vast universe of translation studies. The differences between languages are palpable, not only from a linguistic point of view but also from a pragmatic, historical or cultural standpoint.In this paper, we deal with the translation of Quentin Tarantino’s film titles into a number of European languages, including Spanish, Catalan, French and German. Quentin Tarantino’s films are controversial, self-reflexive and have acquired a significant recognition within popular culture. Most of the typologies employed so far have revolved around the notion of ‘fidelity” in the translation of film titles, and involving such strategies as literal translation, transposition, addition, etc.We wish to propose here another avenue for investigation: that of film-title translation as a complex (and globalised) rewriting phenomenon that benefits the commercial and ideological interests of the film industry.

Cultural referents not only designate specific realities of a given culture which do not always exist in another but they are also semantic elements which trigger social representations. By conveying values and points of view about different social groups, cultural referents become linguistic instruments to build stereotypes. These thought patterns are shared by the members of a social or cultural community and act as a filter of reality. The aim of this paper is to study the role of cultural referents in the construction of social stereotypes, focusing on the socio-cognitive universe they evoke. To this end, we have analyzed the translations techniques applied in the Spanish, Catalan and English versions of a novel which has been very successful on the French literary scene: Muriel Barbery’s L’Élégance du hérisson (2006). As show the results of this textual comparison, the explanations, descriptions and additional information observed in target texts do not trigger the same associations as cultural referents do in the source text. Translational approaches are too limited when it comes to achieve linguistic adequacy to different world visions. Therefore, translation must be conceived as an encounter between two cultural systems, in which the translator must build bridges, not so much between two linguistic systems as between the social perceptions and values of two different cultural communities.

In this article we first focus on some of the most important classification systems of linguistic corpora and discuss both the strengths and weaknesses. We pay close attention to the work of Sara Laviosa (1997), Joan Torruella y Joaquim Llisterri (1999), Gloria Corpas Pastor (2001) and Sylviane Granger (2003), not forgetting the contributions by Mona Baker (1995), Stig Johansson (1998 and 2003), Rosa Rabadán y Purificación Fernández Nistal (2002), Maeve Olohan (2004) and Paul Baker (2006). However, despite great advantage of all previous work, our study identified gaps for which we would respectfully suggest some solutions. Finally, we present our classification system in which we attempt to reflect clearly the hierarchical relationships that exist between different types of corpora. The ultimate goal is to offer a wide, comprehensive and flexible classification, which can be easily adapted to the needs of each research work and meet the requirements of linguistic corpora analysis, particularly in the field of Applied Linguistics and Translation Studies.