The document discusses audiovisual translation (AVT), highlighting its significance in adapting various media formats for international audiences, including films, TV shows, and video games. It explores the challenges faced in translating cultural references and the relationship between language and culture, indicating that strategies such as subtitling, dubbing, and voice-over need to be adapted to meet audience expectations and cultural nuances. Additionally, it emphasizes the evolving nature of translation techniques influenced by media accessibility and shifting audience demographics.

1. Olga Łabendowicz, MA
Audiovisual
Translation
#1

2. Audiovisual translation (AVT) is the term used to refer
to the transfer from one language to another of the verbalverbal
components contained in audiovisual works and productscomponents contained in audiovisual works and products.
Feature films, television programs, theatrical plays, musicals, opera,
Web pages, and video games are just some examples of the vast
array of audiovisual products available and that require translation.
Delia Chiaro (2012)
Definition

3. 
Subtitling

Dubbing

Voice-over

Surtitling

Interpreting

Audio-description

Localization
Modes/Types

4. What's going on?What's going on?
Why is it difficult?
Practice time
What challenges we face while
translating AV materials?

5. “all of us have, at one time or another,
left a movie theater
wanting to kill the translatorkill the translator”
Why is it difficult?
Nornes (1999: 17)

6. 
One of the greatest challenges for a movie after its domestic release is reaching anreaching an
international audience and being successful abroadinternational audience and being successful abroad.
In this process of internationalisation, linguistic difference is one of the major obstacleslinguistic difference is one of the major obstacles,
and translation for the cinema (mainly in the form of subtitling and dubbing) has thus
taken on major economic and social importance.

Language and culture are deeply intertwinedLanguage and culture are deeply intertwined, and translators obviously do not translate
individual words deprived of context, but whole texts which are culturally embedded and
based on a community of references predictably shared by most members of the source
culture – thus creating 'moments of resistance' for translation.'moments of resistance' for translation.

Since it brings cultures into contact with one another, translation for the cinema in
particular, and the audiovisual world in general, raises considerable cross-cultural issues.
Disregarding them may lead to a translated programme which is
unintelligible for the target viewers.

The issues involved in the cultural transfer of films are manifoldThe issues involved in the cultural transfer of films are manifold, ranging from
the very choice of movies to be distributed abroad to the marketing strategies
employed and the techniques used to translate culture-specific material.
Difficulty: Language & Culture
New Challenges in Audiovisual Translation byy R. M. Bollettieri, E. Di Giovanni & L. Rossato

7. 
Audiences beyond screens are becoming increasinglyincreasingly
heterogeneous, but also progressively more specialized andheterogeneous, but also progressively more specialized and
demandingdemanding.

translation modes are no longer monolithic: modalities are
merged, techniques and practices are constantly updated, re-
shaped and reconfigured.

Today, increasing attention is given to media accessibility and themedia accessibility and the
making of audiovisual products making of audiovisual products for allfor all, with the result that all has
irreversibly challenged the very notion of majority and minority.
Difficulty: Audience Expectations,
Preferences & Consequences

8. What challenges we face while
translating AV materials?
Genre & AVT
mode in PL
1) Animated productions and aimed at children are usually
dubbed
2) Productions aimed at the cinemas are usually subtitled
3) Productions for TV are usually voiced-over
TECHNICALCONSTRAINTS...TECHNICALCONSTRAINTS...

9. What challenges we face while
translating AV materials?
Mode of
AVT=strategy?
1) Dubbing usually requires domestication (animated
productions)
2) Subtitles usually go for direct transfer (fansubbing?)
3) Voice-over eradicates culture (both SC & TC)
TECHNICALCONSTRAINTS...TECHNICALCONSTRAINTS...

10. What challenges we face while
translating AV materials?
Culture
“no language (in the full sense of the word) can exist unless it is
steeped in the context of culture”
Lotman & Uspensky (1978: 212)
“translation is […] an act of communication across cultures”
House (2009:11)
“only the foreign text can be original, an authentic copy, true to
the author's personality or intention, whereas the translation isthe translation is
derivative, fake, potentially a false copyderivative, fake, potentially a false copy”
Venuti (1995:7)

11. Based on Vlahov & Florin (1980), Birgit Nedergaard-Larsen (2006). In: Łabendowicz, O. (2012)
Translating Culture – Translating Cultural Aspects in Audiovisual Translation as Exemplified by the
Polish Version of an Animated Film Madagascar, BA Thesis, University of Lodz.
Culture

12. What challenges we face while
translating AV materials?
Cultural references
The translation of cultural specifics in particular constitutes one of
the most challenging areas of intercultural transfer, to the extent
that cultural references are traditionally regarded in the literature
as being 'untranslatableuntranslatable' (Catford, 1965; Cornu, 1983; Arson, 1988),
therefore touching on the very limits of translation.
Particularly interesting is the issue of the impact that translationimpact that translation
strategies may have on audiences' perceptionsstrategies may have on audiences' perceptions of the source
culture.
http://www.jostrans.org/issue06/art_ramiere.php

13. Based on Astrid Ertelt-Vieth (2003), Dashidorzihieva(2005) and Liu,Kang and Zeng. In: Łabendowicz, O. (2014) Translating Untranslatability: Cultural Lacunas
in Audiovisual Translation as Exemplified by the Polish Translation of an American Comedy Series How I Met Your Mother., MA Thesis, University of Lodz.
Cultural lacunas

14. „[...] audiovisual translators try to select the best strategy
for each individual translation problem[...].
In view of the immediacy of film and the technical
constraints of audiovisual language transfer, this may
imply giving priority to communicative translation overpriority to communicative translation over
cultural considerationscultural considerations.
That is, translators may aim for a translation which istranslation which is
immediately accessibleimmediately accessible by the target viewers, therefore
omitting or neutralisingomitting or neutralising, if necessary, cultural referencescultural references
which would otherwise be difficult for the target
audience to understand”.
Nathalie Ramière
What to do?

15. AVT Procedures

16. Based on Parmeshwar Baral (2003), Tetiana Anokhina (2013), Jianquing Wu (2008). In: Łabendowicz, O. (2014) Translating Untranslatability:
Cultural Lacunas in Audiovisual Translation as Exemplified by the Polish Translation of an American Comedy Series How I Met Your Mother, MA
Thesis, University of Lodz.
Lacunas: Not much choice...

18. DIY #1DIY #1Strategy+procedure
1) Which strategy is it? [domestication
(D) vs foreignization (F)]
2) Which procedure is it? [direct transfer
(DT) /omission (O)/compensation
(C)/shift: equivalent (EQ) or explanation
(EX)]
1) You're on the Jersey side of this cess pool !
A ty masz przechlapane, mieszkasz w jakimś Bronxie normalnie !
2) She should be watching The Little Mermaid and drinking Yoohoo.
Powinna oglądać Małą Syrenkę.
3) Elbert "Ickey" Woods, the Bengals were fool to cut you down a 91. Your 1525 rushing
yards and your 27 touchdowns will not be forgotten. So, coach Dave Shula, screw you and
your crappy steakhouse!
Ickey, nie powinni cię wyrzucać z drużyny.
4) Canada, can we ? Cheap meds !
Szwajcaria, możemy ? Te kliniki !
5) I heard Tom Wolfe is speaking at Lincoln Center.
W radio mówili, że Clinton ma jakiś odczyt w Narodowym.
1) D/F+EQ; 2) D/F+DT&O; 3) F+DT&O; 4)D+EQ; 5)
F/D+EQx2

19. DIY #2DIY #2Dubbing
Trzeba było kupić chipsy i soczek.
I pamiętajcie, że pasy mogą wam
uratować życie.
A potem kartki na mięso i klęska stonki
ziemniaczanej.
Włączając Gwiazdkę, Wielkanoc,
Halloween i 1. Maja.
To są olbrzymy. Straszne olbrzymy ze
straszliwego Wąchocka!
Szczególnie każdego pięknego dnia w
wielkim mieście.
What happened here*?
*remember about the skopos
We should've brought chips and
dip!
And tip your cabbie because he's
broke.
And next thing you know is flowers
in your hair and everybody's
hugging everybody.
Including Christmas, Hanukkah,
Halloween and Kwanzaa.
They are aliens. Savage aliens from
the savage future!
It's another fabulous morning in
the Big Apple.

20. DIY #3DIY #3Voice-over
[S02E02 1:01]
- You just walk right in and grab
yourself some Whoppers.
- Is Whoppers the best one?
- Mounds.
- Milkduds!
- Gobstoppers?
(…)
- Double Bublle!
[S01E22 16:24]
Dibs!
[S02E17 12:38]
Hitchhiking Waldo.
Tanslate

21. DIY #3DIY #3Voice-over
[S02E02 1:01]
- You just walk right in and grab
yourself some Whoppers.
- Is Whoppers the best one?
- Mounds.
- Milkduds!
- Gobstoppers?
(…)
- Double Bublle!
[S01E22 16:24]
Dibs!
[S02E17 12:38]
Hitchhiking Waldo.
- Każdy wchodzi do sklepu i
bierze to, na co ma ochotę.
- Na przykład czekoladki.
- Jakie?
- Nadziewane!
xxxx
(...)
Ptasie mleczko!
xxx
Dziwnego autostopowicza.
Tanslate

22. DIY #DIY #Subtitles
– So, are you a B-52s girl? (Gilmore
Girls; you see the name on a t-shirt)
– I'm also sorry to report that we are
currently out of the brown shugar
cinnamon pop tarts. (Gilmore Girls;
you see the box)
– We now return to: Master Chef:
Extreme Snack Edition. (The Simpsons
you see the title)
– The next thing you know it's
flowers in your hair and everybody is
hugging everybody. (Madagascar)
– Lubi pani B-52?
– Dodam, że nie ma
bułeczek[/ciasteczek] cynamonowych.
– Wracamy do Ekstremalnych
Przekąsek Szefa Kuchni.
– Zanim się obejrzysz masz kwiaty we
włosach.
I wszyscy się ściskają.
Tanslate

23. “The aim of a translation is to bring back a
cultural other
as the same, the recognizable, even thethe same, the recognizable, even the
familiarfamiliar”.
Lawrence Venuti
& remember

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