Cultural Aspects In Romanian Subtitlingdoc

=== CULTURAL ASPECTS IN ROMANIAN SUBTITLING ===

UNIVERSITATEA TRANSILVANIA

FACULTATEA DE LITERE

SPECIALIZAREA: ROMÂNĂ- ENGLEZĂ

LUCRARE DE LICENȚĂ

2016

CULTURAL ASPECTS IN ROMANIAN SUBTITLING

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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

1. THEORIES AND CONCEPTS ABOUT TRANSLATION

1.1. THE HISTORY OF TRANSLATION

1.2. TYPES OF TRANSLATION

1.3. TRANSLATIONAL EQUIVALENCE

1.4.TRANSLATION STRATEGIES

1.5.CULTURAL ASPECTS OF TRANSLATION

2. AUDIOVISUAL TRANSLATION

2.1.THE HISTORY OF AUDIOVISUAL TRANSLATION

2.2.THE DEVELOPMENT OF AUDIOVISUAL TRANSLATION

2.3.SUBTITLES FOR THE CINEMA, TELEVISION AND DVD

2.4. ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF AUDIOVISUAL TRANSLATION

2.4.1.ADVANTAGES OF AUDIOVISUAL TRANSLATION

2.4.2.DISADVANTAGES IN AUDIOVISUAL TRANSLATION

2.5.AUDIOVISUAL TRANSLATION THEORY

3. CASE STUDY: PRACTICAL APPROACH, SUBTITLING IN AFERIM! MOVIE

CONCLUSIONS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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INTRODUCTION

Translated films, through regular distribution reach a larger audience than any other form of translation and several researches has been done on the subject of translated films. This is a statement made by Hans Vöge a quarter of a century ago. Recently, especially since the beginning of the 1990's, when the notion of a well-defined job of a subtitler emerged, research into the screen translation field is promoted, courses on subtitling are offered in more and more universities worldwide and symposiums are held on the subject of screen translation. Yet, it is a subject that remains raw; a lot is to be said and various aspects of subtitling, and screen translation in general, are still to be researched.

Although in the field of translation there is an abundance of publications on the subject of translation theory in general, as well as on each different branch of translation in particular, there is no comprehensive theoretical framework for screen translation. Publications in subtitling and dubbing are usually in the form of guidelines from already practising subtitlers or adaptors, trying to shed light on the main every day issues and practical parameters involved in their profession, in order to help their younger colleagues. Another common type of publication is technical articles on the advances in the area of screen translation or articles concerning theoretical discussions on the argument between subtitling and dubbing, about which practice is the better one.

There are only very few publications that actually deal with the question of what exactly goes on in the screen translation process itself, classify the problems one encounters or propose/describe strategies towards their solution. Even in those cases, the translation strategies proposed, as for example Gottlieb's categorisation, do not always produce a clear definition of under which circumstances each strategy should be employed. Furthermore, translation strategies focus on the rendition of the textual-linguistic form rather than that of textual meaning. The analysis of the issues posed by subtitling serves as a reminder for the reader that subtitling is not concerned with the translation of the source text alone, but of the film as a whole.

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Reduction is the primary principle of subtitling, lies at the very heart of all subtitling work and is the first task people are taught when trained to subtitle. Its occurrences have been described by subtitlers and subtitling scholars on several occasions to date, however, mainly from a linguistic point of view. Easily omitted items, for example, figure in most subtitling handbooks. Reduction owes its significance to the space or time constraints of subtitling.

Neither has any research been conducted so far with a view to comparing and contrasting subtitling styles at an international level. People talk of different national styles of subtitling: the Dutch style of timing subtitles to the onset of speech for example, or the French style of timing them to shot changes. We will see how different screen translation methods are being used on different occasions, but there is usually one that supersedes all and has become established in each country. A first step in solving differences in subtitling styles is to compare the reduction levels in subtitling in different countries. The practical relevance of such findings can only be understood in the light of the latest technological advance in the entertainment industry, DVD, with the subsequent impact it has had on the screen translation industry, as it has been the reason for the recent centralisation the market is witnessing.

Subtitling being a relatively new field of research, with limited available literature, combined with the lack of specialised knowledge on the author's behalf when this research was initially undertaken, necessitated the use of various research techniques. The theoretical part of the research consists of the study of translation theory with a view to providing a subtitling model for the linguistic analysis of the raw material gathered. Attendance at conferences and symposiums was necessary to keep abreast with developments in the field, but free-form interviews and informal chats with practitioners of the craft, as well as company directors, were felt to be the only way for me to gain a better understanding of the practice of subtitling.

The lexical techniques of translation were not discovered and described by modern linguists. Describing the lexical techniques applied in the case of subtitling is to establish a theoretical framework for subtitling theory, which will then be applied to the analysis of the raw data gathered.

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A detailed description of the subtitling process itself is also necessary in order to understand the similarities and differences of subtitling to any other branch of translation in general, so as to single out the issues that play an important part in the subtitling process and that need to be taken into account when analysing subtitle files.

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1.THEORIES AND CONCEPTS ABOUT TRANSLATION

The main purpose of this chapter is to introduce the reader to major concepts and models of translation studies. The research undertaken in this field is extensive, the material selected is necessarily representative and illustrative of the major trends. For reasons of space and consistency of approach, the focus is on written translation rather than oral translation, such as interpreting or interpretation, although the overlaps make a clear distinction impossible.

The English term translation, first attested in around 1340, derives either from Old French translation or more directly from the Latin translatio (‘transporting’), itself coming from the participle of the verb transferre (‘to carry over’). In the field of languages, translation today has several meanings, such as the general subject field or phenomenon, the text that has been translated and the process of producing the translation, otherwise known as translating.

The concept of translation between two different written languages involves the changing of an original written text (the source text or ST ) in the original verbal language (the source language or SL ) into a written text (the target text or TT ) in a different verbal language (the target language or TL ).

Translation theory aims at determining, categorizing, and ultimately utilizing general principles of the translation process in relation to its major issues.1 Translation theories can be divided into three main categories:

1. Translation theories based on Source-oriented approaches

2. Linguistic translation theories

3. Recent translation theories

1 Bassnett & McGuire , Translation Studies, Methuen, London and New York, 1985

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From the 2nd Century B. C. until the last century, all theoretical frameworks developed under Source-oriented approaches were concerned with what a translator must or must not do. The principle focus was on the closeness to the source text as regards both meaning and form. In other words, the translator needed to reproduce the text, in all its aspects, as a target text.

For example, Etienne Dolet of France (1509-46) devised one of the first theories of translation. He established five essential principles for translators which can be classified under Source- oriented theories2:

The translator must fully understand the sense and meaning of the original author, although he is at liberty to clarify obscurities.

The translator should have a perfect knowledge of both SL and TL.

The translator should avoid word-for-word renderings.

The translator should use forms of speech in common use.

The translator should choose and order words appropriately to produce the correct tone.

George Chapman, the famous translator of Homer, restated these principles into the following: avoid word- for- word rendering; attempt to reach the ‘spirit’ of the original and avoid over loose translations, by basing the translation on a sound scholarly investigation of other versions and glosses.3

Two centuries later, Alexander Frazer Tytler published The Principles of Translation, a systematic study of the translation process in English and stated the following principles4:

The translation should give a complete transcript of the idea of the original work.

2 Bassnett & McGuire , Translation Studies, Methuen, London and New York, 1985: 54

3 Ibid, p. 55

4 Ibid, p. 63

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The style and manner of writing should be the same character with that of the original.

The translation should have all the ease of the original composition.

According to Matthew Arnold translator must focus on SL text primarily and must serve that text with complete commitment.5 The TL reader must be brought to the SL text through the means of translation.

H.W. Longfellow is even more committed to the ST and the author. He argues: „The business of a translator is to report what the author says, not to explain what he means; that is the work of the commentator. What an author says and how he says it, that is the problem of the translator.”6

St. Jerome’s suggestions about how to render translation can be considered another example of Source-oriented theories:

St. Jerome already stated that Bible translations must respect the exact form of the source text because God’s word must not be tampered with whereas in secular texts the translator should strive to render the meaning of the source text.7

Conversely, linguistic translation theories have a history dated from the 1900s which has lasted for approximately half a century. At that time, translation was absorbed into the discipline of linguistics. That means that it was conceived as a branch of linguistics, and not as an independent science. These theories became headed as linguistic studies rather than as translation studies.

During that time, translation theory was regarded as a part of linguistic communication based on “Information Theory”. This theory defines language as a ‘code.’ During communication, speakers or writers encode what they want to say and the listeners or readers, who share the same code, would decode it. Therefore, translation is a special case of communication because sender and receiver do not share the same code; the translator recodes the message from the sender into the receiver code. The main issue of translation is to sustain the original message despite that there is generally no correspondence between the signs of the two different code systems.

5 Bassnett & McGuire , Translation Studies, Methuen, London and New York, 1985: 69.

6 Ibid, p.70.

7 Ibid, p.80.

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These theories were also basically source-oriented, normative, synchronic and focused on process as in the previous period.

In the last three decades of the 20th century Translation Studies started to become an autonomous science. James Holmes, an American poet and translator coined the term Translation Studies for this new scientific approach. He believes that the main intention of Translation Studies is the development of a full and comprehensive translation theory.8

At that time, the most influential theories were the “Skopos Theory,” the “Relevance Theory,” and the Target-Oriented Approach. The proponent of the Skopos Theory was Hans Vermer, who views the translation process and the teaching of it as a substantial revision of the linguistic attitude. This considers translation as a communicative process in which purpose has been given the major emphasis. The “Relevance Theory” provided by Sperber and Wilson argues that there is no need for a distinct general theory of translation because translation can be naturally accounted for under the general aspect of human communication.9

However, these two theories mentioned that stem from linguistic paradigms do not concern literary translations. To determine the functions and describe literary equivalents is difficult because the meaning of these texts stem not only from their denotative meaning, but especially from their connotative meaning.

Douglas Robinson in his book, Western Translation Theory from Herodotus to

Nietzsche, states:

We are currently in the middle of a translation studies boom: all around the world new programs are springing up, some aimed at the professional training of translators and interpreters, others at the academic study of translation and interpreting, most at both.10

8 E. Gentzler, Contemporary Translation Studies, Routledge,New York, 1993.

9 A. Gutt, A theoretical Account of Translation without a Translation Theory, St. Jerome, Manchester, UK, 1993

10 D. Robinson , Western Translation Theory from Herodotus to Nietzsche, St. Jerome, Manchester, UK, 1997.

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James Holmes’ famous book, The Name and Nature of Translation Studies, is considered as a major step in the scholarly study of translation.11 This book provides a theoretical system that both recognises and unifies many aspects of translation studies. It predicts an entire future dicipline and effectively encourage work aimed at establishing that discipline. This book was a major stepward because it attacked the unclear but ‘self assured’ categories that used to judge translations for so long a time. Holmes grouped scientifically and arranged his topics hierarchically. ‘Applied’ was opposed to ‘Pure’, the latter devided into ‘Theoretical’ and ‘Descriptive’, then ‘Descriptive’ was broken down in turn into ‘Product Oriented’, ‘Process Oriented’ and ‘Function Oriented’.

Translation Studies

Translation Studies is classified into Descriptive Translation Studies and Theoretical Translation Studies. The aim of Descriptive Translation Studies is ‘to describe the observable facts of translating and translation(s) as they manifest themselves in the world of our experience’, where for translating we mean the process that underlies the creation of the final product of translation. The objective of the Theory of Translation Studies is ‘to establish general principles by means of which these phenomena can be explained and predicted’.

There are three main types of research within Descriptive Translation Studies: product-oriented, process-oriented and function-oriented. The focus of product-oriented descriptive translation studies is the description of individual translations. Process-oriented descriptive translation studies aims at revealing the thought processes that take place in the mind of the translator while she or he is translating. Function-oriented descriptive translation studies include research which describes the function or impact that a translation or a collection of translations has had in the socio- cultural situation of the target language.

Theoretical Translation Studies often uses the empirical findings produced by Descriptive Translation Studies. It elaborates principles, theories and models to explain and predict what the process of translation is, given certain conditions such as a particular pair of languages or a particular pair of texts.

Theoretical Translation Studies hold both a General Translation Theory and Partial Translation Theories. Holmes established the final aim of the discipline as the elaboration

11 J. Holmes, The Name and Nature of Translation Studies, Rodopi, Amsterdam, 1972: 67–80.

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of a general theory capable of explaining and predicting all phenomena regarding translating and translation. However, as he recognized, most theories that had been elaborated until that time were models limited to one or more aspects of translation. The formulation of a general theory is a long-term goal for the discipline as a whole.

Holmes distinguishes six different types of Partial Translation Theory: medium restricted (theories of human versus computer assisted translation or written versus oral translation), area-restricted (theories relating to specific language communities), rank-restricted (theories dealing with language as a rank or level system), text-type restricted (theories relating to particular text categories such as poems, technical manuals), timerestricted (theories dealing with contemporary texts or those from an older period), and problem restricted(for example theories concerning the translation of puns, titles, idioms, proper names, metaphors).

Applied Translation Studies

Applied Translation Studies, the second main branch of the discipline, is concerned with the following issues, such as the translator training; the preparation of translation tools, such as dictionaries, grammars, term banks; translation criticism which concerns itself with the development of criteria for the evaluation of the quality or effectiveness of the translation product; the establishment of translation policy (which involves giving advice on the role of the translator in a given socio-cultural context, deciding on the economic position of the translator, or deciding on which texts need to be translated, or deciding on the role that translation should play in the teaching of foreign languages.

Translation Studies was extremely Source-Oriented in the 1970s. Translators were primarily concerned with the source text and with the safeguard of its legal rights. Target constraints became supplementary unless they fell within the range of linguistics.

Gideon Toury, a translation scholar and theoretician, planed the Target Oriented Approach based on Polysystem Theory.12 This approach is an exclusive and comprehensive theory of translation that is also a reaction to normative, synchronic and Source-System Oriented theoretical frameworks. In his book, In Search of a Theory of Translation, he says that he wants to put together a general theory applicable to all translational phenomena.

12 G. Toury, In Search of a Theory of Translation, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, 1980 : 7.

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The Target Oriented Approach criticizes major principles of Source- Oriented Theories, and replaces them with new ones. First of all, traditional Source Oriented Theories define two levels in Translation Studies: theory and process. The Target Oriented Approach criticizes this and claims that theories developed by Source-Oriented Theories do not suit translation realities because they are abstract, prescriptive norms that do not stem from actual translation processes:

… it appears not only as naive, but also as misleading and infertile for translation studies to start from the assumption that translation is nothing but an attempt to reconstruct the original, or certain parts or aspect thereof, or the preservation of certain predetermined features of the original, which are (or are to be) unconditionally considered the invariant under transformation, in another sign-system, as it is usually defined from the source’s point of view.13

After about two decades, target text attracted lots of attention among scholars. Toury's idea that a translation is a text that is accepted in the target culture as being a translation was revolutionary. The notion carries several important implications. First, as Toury argues that translations are facts of the culture which hosts them, with the assumption that whatever their function and identity, these are constituted within that same culture and reflect its own constellation. A translation is a translation in the target culture, not the source culture.

By focusing on the role of target factors in a translation, whether retrospectively or prospectively, one will discover that he or she is opting for the target-oriented approach, even though, in the course of application one will return to the source text. It is a matter of orientation.

Descriptive Translation Studies was added to the skeleton of Translation Studies, a branch that is necessary for every empirical discipline: „No empirical science can make a claim for completeness and (relative) autonomy unless it has developed a descriptive branch.”14 Descriptive branch of the discipline was developed to replace isolated freestanding studies.

13 G. Toury, In Search of a Theory of Translation, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, 1980 : 17.

14 G. Toury, The manipulation of Literature, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, 1985: 16.

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Toury believes that the three branches of “theoretical,” “descriptive,” and “applied” Translation Studies interact with each other. These three branches deal with possible, existing, and required relationships. Toury, asserts that Descriptive Translation Studies is at the heart of the discipline. It has a distinctive internal organization; it interacts with translation theory and has a unidirectional relationship with applied extensions.

He considers for Descriptive Translation Studies a major role in the development of the whole discipline as an independent field of study: „(…) one of the aims of Translation Studies should definitely be to bring the results of descriptive-explanatory studies executed within DTS to bear on the theoretical branch.”15

Applied Translation Studies, on the other hand, in accordance with the results of Descriptive Translation Studies and accordingly with the theoretical branch is a prescriptive branch:

They (Applied Translation Studies) are not intended to account either for possibilities and likelihoods or for facts of actual behavior, but rather set norms in a more or less conscious way. In brief, to tell others what they should have done/ or should be doing, if they accept these norms and submit to them.16

According to Toury, translations primarily occupy a position in the social and literary systems of the target culture, and this position verifies the translation strategies that are used.

15 G. Toury, Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, John Benjamins, 1995: 19.

16 Ibid, p. 25.

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1.1.THE HISTORY OF TRANSLATION

Translation can be defined as the result of a linguistic- textual operation in which a text in one language is contextualized in another language. As a linguistic- textual operation, translation is the subject influenced by a variety of extra- linguistic factors and conditions. It is this interaction between linguistic- textual and extra- linguistic, contextual factors that makes translation such a complex phenomenon. There are several factors in translation, such as :

the characteristics and the constraints of the languages that are involved in translation;

the linguistic world that is divided in source and target languages;

the source text with its stylistic features that belong to the target of usage ;

the stylistic norms of the target cultural community;

the language norms internalized by the translator;

intertextuality governing the totality of the text in the target culture;

traditions, principles, histories and ideologies of translation holding in the target lingua-cultural community;

the translational given to the translator by the person(s) or institution commissioning the translation;

the translator’s workplace conditions;

the translator’s knowledge, expertise, ethical stance and attitudinal profiles as well as her subjective theory of translation;

the translation receptors’ knowledge, expertise, ethical stance and attitudinal profiles of the translator as well as their subjective theories of translation.

While translation is at its core a linguistic- textual operation, a multitude of other conditioning and constraining factors on its processes, performance and on translation quality.

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However, it is impossible for any practicable model of translation quality assessment to take into account all of these factors, much less so in an essentially text-based model. Despite the multiple conditioning of translation and the resulting complexity, one may still, as a common core, retain the minimal definition of translation as a replacement of an original text in one language with a text in another language. When using the term replacement, one may assume, rather negatively, that any translated text is in principle second-best, such as a substitute for the real thing. Viewed this way, translation is by definition a secondary act of communication. Normally, a communicative event happens only once. In translation, this communicative event is reduplicated for persons or groups otherwise prevented from appreciating the original communicative event. More positively, however, translation can be seen as enabling – often for the first time – original access to a different world of knowledge, to different traditions and ideas that would otherwise have been locked away behind a language barrier. From this perspective, translation has often been described as a builder of bridges, an extender of horizons, providing recipients with an important service and enabling them to move beyond the borders of the world staked out by their own language. It is through translation that lingua-cultural barriers can be overcome. So translation is one of the most important mediators between societies and cultures. But despite all these assets, it remains a fact that translation only gives readers access to a message which already exists. This inherently derived nature of translation also means that, in translation, there is always both an orientation backwards to the existing previous message of the original text and an orientation forwards towards how texts in a corresponding genre are composed in the target language. This type of relationship is a basic characteristic of translation which should not be forgotten.

In a broader term, the process of translation commenced with the birth of the first human being when he started to communicate with his partners to express his thoughts into words. That can be called the initial and the first step in the history of translation. Later on, with the evolvement of human cultures and civilizations, it began to shape up according to the need of the human societies. Different cultures began to preserve their memories in the form of epigraphs on walls or animal skins which we are trying to decode today in our languages as a result of evolution.

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The translation was not considered as a creative work, art or science but a mere copy. Translators differed in the comprehended they gave to the term such as faithfulness, accuracy or translation. Consequently, the progression of translation theory was slow to form over the ages. As Amos has stated, the inconvenience of succesiveness in criticism is responsible for the slowness in which translators achieved the power to put into words, their purposes and methods. In the modern era the variety of theories and sub-theories’ for one reason is the fact that

the process of translating can be viewed from so many different perspectives: stylistics, author’s intent, diversity of languages differences of corresponding cultures, problems of interpersonal communication, changes in literary fashion, distinct kinds of content, and the circumstances in which translations are to be used, read in the tranquil setting of one’s own room, acted on the theatre stage, or blared from a loudspeaker to a restless mob.17

The lack of adequacy in theoretical treatment is because it depends upon “a number of disciplines: linguistics, cultural, anthropology, psychology, communication theory, and neurophysiology.”18 As it is impossible to trace back the complete history of translation, it can be divided into four historical eras in order to grasp a development of the theory: translation in Ancient Period, translation in Middle Period, translation in Renaissance Period and translation in Modern Period.

17 E. Nida, Theories of Translation, Brill, California, 1969: 85.

18 Ibid, p. 89.

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Translation in Ancient Period

Ancient period or antiquity begins in 4th millennium B.C. and ends by the fifth century A.D. There are distinctions between Antiquity in Asia and Antiquity in Europe, regarding their social organization. Therefore, the uniqueness of various cultures is taken into consideration on the discussions of the multiple translation approaches. Looking for the traces of translation, they are found in inscriptions in two languages in the Egyptian Old Kingdom, in the 3th millennium B.C.

In fifth century B.C., Arabic speaking Jews were engaged in trading and traveling in the Eastern Mediterranean region. Since the Arabic language had many dialects so these traders were unable to understand the classical Hebrew of scriptures. As a result, Nehemiah, a Jew leader, got classical scriptural as Hebrew translated into the Arabic language as Jews weren’t able to understand Classical Hebrew. Alexandria (Egypt), the intellectual and commercial center of Mediterranean region, was populated by Greek speaking Jewish community in the third century B.C. The Old Testament was translated from Hebrew into Greek and was named Septuagint (seventy) as seventy scholars translated it. After that period, Greek classics were translated into Latin, for instance, Livius Andronicus who had translated Homer’s Odyssey into Latin verse and other scholars like Naevius and Ennius translated Greek plays into Latin. Since that time, Roman began to take over many elements of Greek Culture by translation. Rosetta Stone’s translations from Egyptian languages into Greek are well known examples of that time.

Cicero’s translations of Plato’s work and other Greek works as well as Horace’s contribution into Latin are considered the landmark in the history of translation. They agreed on sense for sense translation. Cicero states that if he render word for word, the result will sound strange and if he compelled anything in the order of wording, the function of a translator will disappear. In this remark the thought of Cicero favors sense for approach and notifies against the prudent imitation of the source model. So it can be said that Cicero’s sense for sense approach laid the primary rule that translation has to be understandable.

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Translation of literature played a very significant role in the development of the history and civilization of human beings. Hence, if it were not for translation, the world would have been living in darkness; through translation Greeks acquired knowledge from Hebrew language, and Romans from Greeks and Arabs; English from all of the above mentioned sources respectively. The knowledge in the Arabic language was all over Asia, Africa and all those remote areas where Arab traders or Western explorers went to navigate new worlds. Thus, the translation of Greek literature can be considered a turning point in the Renaissance period of Europe. In epic poetry Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey; in drama Aeschylus’s and Sophocles’ trilogies, Euripides’ Medea; Aristophanes’ Lysistrata and many others were not only read and enacted but they are still read and taught all over the world. Romans perceived translation as a way of enriching their culture, so they paid special attention to imitation. Hence, they have been criticized for a lack of creativity and originality in translation which is not fair in that case. This can be considered one of the problems of translation in the Antiquity period. Translation was employed as a way to realize the political and religious purposes of the leading classes, that were represented by Kings. Two orientations towards translation, such as sense for sense and word for word, existed in the antiquity or in other words the primary approaches of translation.

Translation in Middle Period

Middle Era represents the time between 5th century and the 15th century A.D.in Europe. Middle Ages continue untill the advent of European Colonialism, the eighteenth century in the Oriental and African countries. With Christianity, translation has a new role of spreading the word of God. To translate the divine words was an issue because of dogmatic and political concerns. St. Jerome delares that he follows sense for sense approach when translating the New Testament in AD 384. Since the purpose of the divine text is to provide understanding and guidance, it seems logical to follow sense for sense approach. There is a possibility of change of meaning and the context; for these reasons, students emphasize on the word for word translation approach.

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The first translation of the complete Bible into English was the Wycliffe Bible’s which was realized from 1380 until 1384; Wycliffe believes anyone should have contact with God and as a result, Bible should be translated into language that anyone can understand. Purvey believes translator should translate after sentence, not only after words. Martin Luther says that the grammar should not be considered the meaning and subject matter, as the grammar should not rule over the meaning. Criticism on sense for sense was widespread because it underestimated the power of the church authorities, while literal translation was connected with the Bible and other religious and philosophical works, non- literal translation is used as a weapon against the Church.

“In the Western Europe this word- for- word versus sense- for- sense debate continued in one form or another until the twentieth century. The centrality of Bible to translation also explains the enduring theoretical questions about accuracy and fidelity to fixed source.”19 In the eighth and ninth century A.D., a large number of translations from Greek into Arabic gave rise to Arabic learning. The students from Syria, a part of the Roman Empire, during 64 B.C.-636 A.D, arrived to Baghdad to translate Greek works of Hippocrates, between 460 and 360 B.C., philosophers Plato (427-327 B.C.) and Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) into Arabic in the eighth and ninth century A.D. Baghdad was a center of translations of Greek classics into Arabic in the twentieth century A.D. The dominance of religion is prominent in the Translation of Middle Period. In this era, both the trends of Antiquity period can be seen in action, yet emphasis is again on the sense for sense approach.

Translation in Renaissance Period

The era of Renaissance encompasses the Western Cultural Movement’s history from approximately 1500 to the beginning of the 1700 by bridging between Middle Ages and Modern era. This period in time marked the rebirth of humanism, and the revival of cultural achievements for their own sake in all forms of art such as educational reforms, intellectual searches and political and social agitations. The word Renaissance is defined as a rebirth or a reconstruction. During the period of the Renaissance there were many translations from Greek origin.

19 J. Munday, The Routledge Companion to Translation Studies, Routhledge, USA, 2009: 3.

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Renaissance inspired numerous translations of scientific and religious texts in England and all over the world. Translation was used for multiple purposes: as an aristocratic interest and patronage; legitimized writings as they gave access to Latin culture; reproduced the systems of content that support the Latin academic tradition. Moreover, the revolutionary era of Renaissance can be attributed to the study of translation. Translation of Greek and Roman classical oratories and plays were the starting point in the history of translation as it transformed the Europe and the Arab World into the new worlds. It broadened the minds of authors as well as the common people. Translation in Renaissance oriented the necessary law material of imagination, has an important meaning on the intellectual life of the translator had appeared as a revolutionary activist. As a result, translators are more active and sense for sense approach is used.

It was translation that enlightened the world. But, it was done on an individual level; may be their suppression compelled them to revolt against the religious persecutions so as a result it appeared to be a collective effort in the end. The process of replacement of one set of linguistic resources and values for another is as old as human being himself, yet the first person who systematically laid the principles of rendering is a French Humanist, Etienne Dolet, who in 1540, under the title of La maniere de bien traduire d’une langue en aultre, (How to do Translation well from one Language into Another) set the basic rules of translation studies.20

the translator must understand the sense and meaning of the original author, although he is at liberty to clarify obscurities.

the translator should have a perfect knowledge of both SL and TL.

the translator should avoid word-for-word rendering.

the translator should use forms of speech in common use.

the translator should choose and order words appropriately to produce the correct tone.

20 E. Dolet, La maniere de bien traduire d’une langue en aultre, Obsidiane, Paris, 1990.

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The set of rules devised by Dolet are the principal road map for future translators because more or less the same paradigms were set by the rest of the translators with a slight emphasis on one of the above mentioned rules. Usually, the initial purpose of rendering is to transform the sense of the text into another language rather than the rhetorical and linguistics features or the structure of the SL, for it has been acknowledged that not two or more languages in the world have perfect equivalence for each other. Therefore, having a gist or a sense of the original text into a TL was important in the literature of the Renaissance.

The sixteenth century witnessed a well known movement called Protestantism or Reformation against the domination of church authorities over all other social classes by/of the kings and princes against the pope. This movement spread all over Europe and influenced the thinking of the people. Therefore, the church interdicted the people to read Bible in their native language. Martin Luther (1483- 1546) was the German theologian, author and reformation leader. He translated Bible into German and used it as an ideological tool of the Protestant Movement against the Roman clergy.

George Chapman (1559-1634), an English poet, dramatist, and a great translator of Homer, had also emphasized on catching on the spirit of the original text rather than word for word translation. He repeated Dolet’s views about the principles, that translator brings a “transmigration” of the original text, which he approaches on the technical level, as an ability to the author and audience.

In the period of Renaissance there were three most important names in the history of translation :

John Denham (1615-69) perceives translator and writer as equals, but activating in different context. The translator’s duty to the source language text is to perceives the essential of the work and to reproduce the work in target language.

Abraham Cowley (1618-67) sustains that the purpose of his translation is to let the reader know about the original author manner of speaking. Hence, it can be concluded that Cowley believes in free translation.

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John Dryden (1631-1700), has set three groups of translation :

metaphase, or turning an author word by word from one language into another;

paraphrase, or translation with latitude, the Ciceronian sense for sense view of translation;

imitation, the translator can abandon the text of the original.

The precepts set by Dryden are also a reiteration of Dolet’s principles. In these precepts, like Dolet, Dryden also accentuates on the sense for sense rendering. Poets like Alexander Pope (1688-1744) adopted the same line of approach as that of Dryden.

Consequently, it can be perceived that the Renaissance period was prevailed by the sense for sense translation like the previous periods for multiples purposes.

Translation in Modern Times (The Linguistic Perspective)

Even though a lot of translation was done, yet translation theory could not get the acknowledgement and status that it deserved in the eighteenth century due to a lack of criticism on it. Otherwise, it would have been considered a prestigious task as a reward of the evaluation and revolution created by it in the lives of people. In the eighteenth century another related and significant work was done by Alexander Tytler’s Essay on the Principles of Translation. Tytler emphasized on the exact idea, style and manner of writing and the case of original work.”21

Dr. Johnson (1709-84), “comments that if elegance is gained, surely it is desirable, provided nothing is taken away. The right of the individual to be addressed in his own terms, on his own grounds, is an important element in the eighteenth century translation and is linked to the changing concept of originality.”22

21 A. Tytler’s, Essay on the Principles of Translation, Printed for T. Cadell & W. Davies, London, 1797.

22 S. Johnson, Dictionary of the English Language, Consortium, London, 1755.

22

Similarly, Goethe (1749-1832), argues that every literature must pass through three phases of translation23:

Acquaint us with foreign countries on our own terms;

Translator absorbs the sense of a foreign work but produces it in his own terms;

Purposes at identity between the source language text and the target language text; in order to achieve this there should be a new “manner” that relates the original with a new structure.

Tytler’s principles of translation appear to be the first systematic attempt, after Dryden, at the theory of translation. Tytler has laid down three rules for translation:

The translator should give a complete transcript of the ideas of the original work.

The style and manner of the work should be of the same character with that of the original.

The translation should have all the ease of the original composition.

Romanticism describes two concepts of translation: translation as a type of thought and translation as in terms of a mechanical function of a text or an author. The necessity to convey the original in time and place was a recurrent concern of Victorian translators. As a result, there was an archaic translation which only attracted the minority of an educated group. Edward Fitzgerald (1803- 63) brings a version of the source language text into the target language’s culture as an entity which lower the status of the dource language text. He translated Rubayyat of Omar Khayyam from Persian into English. Matthew Arnold (1822- 1888), who was an essayist, poet and literary critic, wrote the essay On Translating Homer and he argued that a translation should produce the same effect as the original.24

23 J. W. Goethe, Die leiden des jungen Werthers, Leipzig, 1774.

24 M. Arnold, On Translating Homer, University of Michigan Press, Michigan, 1861.

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Thus, the main current of translation typology in the Age of Industrialized capitalism and colonial expansion can be classified as follows:

Translation as a scholar’s activity;

Translation as a way to encourage the reader to return to source language’s original:

The literal translation.

Translation as a way to help readers become the equal or better reader of the original, in source language text

Translation as a way of the translator to offer his choice to the target language reader

Translation as a way where the translator upgrade the status of the source language text

An interesting aspect of translation studies in the twentieth century projects that certain kinds of translation researches have been patronized and sponsored by certain interest groups such as religious, political, social, and economical to pursue translation as a social action. For example in China, Canada, America, Russia and many other countries use translation as a tool to convey their point of view by translating the literature that explains their ideologies and view points.

Religiously there are many institutions such as UNESCO that have been set around the world for the translation of divine books like Bible and the Holy Quran. According to Lawrence Venuti, the twentieth century translation theory reveals an expanded range of fields and approaches reflecting the differentiation of modern culture: not only varieties of linguistics, literary criticism, philosophical speculations and cultural theory, but experimental studies and anthropological fieldwork as well as translator training and translation practice. Any account of theoretical concepts and trends must acknowledge the disciplinary sights in which they emerged in order to understand and evaluate them. At the same time it is possible to locate recurrent themes if not broad areas of agreement. The first half of the twentieth century observes the perpetual traits of Victorian era in translation studies, but after that a spring of multiple approaches emerges.

24

James McFarlane’s article on Modes of Translation heightened the temperature of discussions on the problems of translation studies in the West and it has been considered the first publication from modern interdisciplinary view point. It will be easier for comprehension if the contemporary approaches are divided into linguistics and literary groups.

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1.2. TYPES OF TRANSLATION

The theory of translation provides the translator with the appropriate tools of analysis and synthesis, making him aware of what he is to look for in the original text, what type of information he must convey in TT and how he should act to achieve his goal. In the final analysis, however, his trade remains an art.

Contemporary translation activities of a translator are characterized by a great variety of types, forms and levels of his responsibility. Each type of translation has its own combination of factors influencing the translating process. The general theory of translation should be supplemented by a number of special translation theories identifying major types of translation activities and describing the predominant features of each type.

Different types of translation depend on the predominant communicative function of the source text or the form of speech involved in the translation process. As a result, we can distinguish between literary and informative translation and between written and oral translation (or interpretation).25

Literary translation uses literary texts, works of fiction and poetry whose main purpose is to make an emotional impression to the reader. Their communicative importance depends on their artistic value and the translator’s primary responsibility is to reproduce the value in translation.

Informative translation is to render into the target language non- literary texts, the main aim is to convey ideas and to inform the reader. If the source text has some length, its translation is listed as literary or informative only approximative. A literary text include some parts of informative description. Contrary, informative translation contain some elements with the function to realize an aesthetic effect.

25 M. Baker, Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, Routledge, London and New York, 1998.

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Literary translations is divided in the number of styles which needs for a specific arrangement and makes use of different artistic means to impress the reader. Each of the forms of literary works, such as prose, poetry or plays includes a number of styles and the translator specializes in one of them in conformity with his talents and experience. The specific tasks in the translation of each style are more literary than linguistic. The translator’ s challenge is to associate the equivalence and the high literary efficacy.

In technical translation the main purpose is to discover the situation depicted in the original. The prevalence of the referential function is a challenge to the translator who has a good understanding of the technical terms and of the theme in order to give an adequate depiction although this is not completely realized in the original. The technical translator is supposed to observe the stylistic demands of scientific and technical works to structure the text acceptable to the specialist. Several types of texts are identified by their distinctive features and by their different functional characteristics in both languages. English newspaper reports are different from their counterparts on account of the use of elements and paraphrases.

Separately from technical and newspaper works there is the translation of diplomatic papers as type of informative translation. These texts are included in particular category due to the specific demands to the quality of their translations. These translations are approved as authentic official texts on an equality with the originals. They are important documents as the words should be chosen as a subject of principle. That makes the translator specific about the elements of the original which are reproduced in translation. The imitation of the original results in the translator more readily incorrect in literality than to risk leaving out insignificant elements of the original contents.

Journalistic texts that deals with social or political matters are excluded from other informative materials as they may elements frequently used in literary text, such as metaphors, similes and other stylistic devices which influence the translator’s strategy. More often, they are regarded as a kind of newspaper materials, such as periodicals.

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There are some groups of texts that are considered separately due to the specific problems their translation poses to the translator, for instance film scripts, comic strips and commercial advertisements. To dub a film the translator is limited in his choice of diverses by the necessity to fit the pronunciation of the translated words to the movement of the actor’s lips. Translating the captions in a comic strip, he translator will have to consider the numerous allusions to the regular readers of comics but less familiar to the foreign readers. In relation with commercial advertisements, their purpose is to win the prospective customers. The text of translation is related to different people than the original advertisement was and there are problems in realizing the same effect by introducing the necessary changes in the message.

In written translation the source text is in the same form as is the target text. In oral translation, the translator listens the oral introduction of the original message and translates it as an oral message in target language. As a consequence, in the first situation the interpreter can read the message and in the second situation, he hears the message.

There are another types of translation, such as when the translator realizes his translation by word of the original text. The written translation is realized of the original recorded on the CD or tape that can be listen several times, for the translator to understand the original content. These represent the modifications of the two types of translation and the line between written and oral translation is drawn due to their forms and sets of conditions in which the process takes place. The first translation is continuous and the second is momentary. In written translation the original text is read as the translator need. The translator can read his translation, compare it to the original, make the necessary corrections or start his work again, returning to the part of the original or get the information he needs from the subsequent messages. These are most favourable conditions and the best performance and the highest level of equivalence. For this reason, in theoretical discussions there are examples from written translations where the translating process can be observed in all its aspects.

The conditions of oral translation impose a number of restrictions on the translator’s performance. The interpreter receives a fragment of the original only for a short

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period of time, his translation is an act which no possibility of any return to the original or any subsequent corrections. This creates additional problems and the users have to be content with a lower level of equivalence.

There are two categories of oral translation, consecutive and simultaneous. In consecutive translation the translating starts after the original speech or some part of it has been completed. The interpreter’s strategy and the final results depend on the length of the segment to be translated. If the segment is just a sentence or two the interpreter closely follows the original speech. The interpreter is expected to translate a long speech which has lasted for scores of minutes or even longer, remembering a number of messages and keep them in mind until he begins his translation. To make this possible the interpreter has to take notes of the original messages, various systems of notation having been suggested for the purpose. The study of such notation is the integral part of the interpreter’s training as are special exercises to develop his memory.

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1.3. TRANSLATIONAL EQUIVALENCE

In 1970, the most important concept in translation studies was equivalence, that is applied in translation. As a result, translation is revealed as a process of communicating the source text by the relationship of identity with the source text. In 1963, George Mounin deny the concept of relativity that made translation not realizable and creates the concept of equivalence.

In this period, there were constant units in a text and several categories of language. There are some students who speculate about this concept, for instance Werner Koller and Eugene Nida.

Koller, in answering what this concept means, declares five types of equivalence27:

1. Denotative or equivalence of a text, that is also called content invariance.

2. Connotative or stylistic equivalence that depend on the resemblances of style.

3. Normative equivalence is related to text types

4. Pragmatic or communicative equivalence is oriented by the translator of the text or message.

5. Formal equivalence is related to the form of the text.

26 G. Mounin, (1963). Les problèmes théorique de la traduction, Gallimard, Paris, 1963: 38.

27 W. Koller, (1979a). Einführung in die übersetzungswissenschaft, Heidelberg-Wiesbaden, Quelle und Meyer, 1979a: 185.

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Nida declares that there are two types of equivalence, such as formal and dynamic equivalence. Formal equivalence „focuses attention on the message, in form and content and dynamic equivalence is based on the rule of equivalent effect.”28 Dynamic equivalence is defined as a translation concept according to which the translator searches to translate the original text in order to have the same impact on the audience.

During this period, there was a distinction between pragmatic equivalence, a translation which considers the reader language and formal equivalence, in which the linguistic and cultural aspects of the source text are transparent in translation.

In 1997, Newmark distinguished between "semantic and communicative translation and Juliane House between overt and covert translation.”29 An overt translation is a target text that do not have the significance to be original.30 However, a covert translation is a source text in the translating language culture. The source text is not related to the source text culture or audience, but both source and target text address their receivers directly. The function of a covert translation is to represent in the target text the function that the original has in its framework. House's distinction considers how much the source text is related to its culture for comprehensibility. If the significance of the source text is particular, an overt translation is needed to rely on further information, such as expansions, insertions or footnotes.

28 E. Nida & C. R. Taber, The Theory and Practice of Translation, Leiden, E. J. Bill, 1964: 159.

29 P. Newmark, A Textbook of Translation, Hempel Hempstead, Prentice Hall, 1998: 47.

30 J. House, A Model for Translation Quality Assessment, Tubingen: Gunten Narr., 1997: 66.

31

In 1965, Catford defines the concept of equivalence, as "departures from formal correspondence in the process of going from source language to translating language, departures that can occur at linguistic level as graphology, phonology, grammar and lexis.”31 He concludes that translation equivalence does not entirely match formal correspondence.

In the case of literary texts, functionalists denied the concept of equivalence and draw on the target language reader. Etmar Even- Zohar and Guidon Toury (1978) argue that literary translations are facts of the target system. A literary work is not studied in isolation but as part of a literary system, which is defined as a system of functions of the literary order which is in a relationship with other orders. Literature is part of the social, cultural and historical framework, and the notion is that of system, in which there is a dynamic mutation and for the primary position in the literary canon.

During this decade, with the expansion of translation research, to bring this field into a new academic discipline was the main purpose. At the time, Nida (1964) called his theories a science of translating, but the seminal paper, The Name and Nature of Translation Studies by James Holmes (1972) creates the way for the development of the field as a distinct discipline. He defines a name for the field, describes what translation studies represent and distinguished between research areas of theory and applied areas, like training and criticism.

31 J. Catford, (1965). A Linguistic Theory of Translation, Oxford University Press, London, 1965: 73.

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1.4. TRANSLATION STRATEGIES

Many strategies related to knowledge translation were reported in the literature, focusing on the implementation of existing and creation. Those studies represent the strategies used and their successes.

The evidence of knowledge implementation strategies came from studies on physicians, nursing or physician assistants. In addition, the knowledge targeted for implementation in these studies was not based entirely on research. Ultimately, the translation of research knowledge into practice involves the need for change to enable the use of the new research knowledge.

The authors realized that the use of particular strategies to implement research references are necessary to develop practice changes and that the efforts are generally successful. They indicated a necessity to conduct studies to evaluate interventions in a specific frame to clarify the facilities and to modify the efficacy of such interventions.

In 2004, Grimshaw concluded that there is an imperfect evidence base to support decisions about which guideline implementation strategies are likely to be efficient under different facilities.32 In addition, there is also a necessity to develop and validate a theoretical framework of professional and organizational behaviors to inform appropriate choices for implementation strategies and to estimate the efficacy of such strategies.

32 J. Grimshaw, R. Thomas, G. MacLennan, C. Fraser, C. Ramsey et al., Effectiveness and efficiency of guideline implementation strategies, Health Technology Assessment, 8, 2004.

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In 2003, Vingillis reported the use of knowledge translation strategies that integrated knowledge generation with knowledge diffusion and utilization.33 During the project’s period, the researchers developed the research proposal, to reply to frustration which local professionals expressed. The researchers built a series of familiar potential knowledge users, who established a policy so that interested groups request reunions with the team. Vingillis used a partnership culture model in which researchers and potential knowledge users develop a partnership of trust, respect and common ground as the fundamental step to knowledge utilization. The strategies that this group used included estimation research that related the university and services to the community, using a research approach and connectors to sustain users in identifying knowledge necessities and researchers in translating.

The evidence to support the efficiency of translation strategies is available in the form of original studies. In 1999, Thomas, Rousseau and Steen could not locate the studies in their searches to conduct an evaluation of efficiency and practice guidelines in professions.

33 E. Vingillis, K. Hartford, T. Schrecker, B. Mitchell, B. Lent & J. Bishop, Integrating knowledge generation with knowledge diffusion and utilization, Canadian Journal of Public Health, 94, 2003: 468–471.

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1.5. CULTURAL ASPECTS OF TRANSLATION

The translational capacity of culture is an important principle of culture’s specificity. Culture leads through translational activity, since culture includes new texts and innovations. After the expansion of the model of postcolonial and the related area of gender studies into translation studies, the line between culture studies and translation studies has not become clearer, there has appeared a visible complementarity. The comprehension of the cultural significance of a translation text has developed, especially regarding the importance of translations for the identity of the receiving culture. L. Venuti has called the identity forming power of translations, the ability of translations to participate, according to the necessity, in ensuring culture’s coherence and in activating cultural resistance or culture’s innovation processes.34

Culture theory, especially in the domain of cultural studies, has started to value the notion of identity through culture. Due to the activity of the globalization topic and the opposition of the global and the local, the agreement has been attained that no society which enact its specificity can escape the concern of cultural identity. The comprehension of the necessity of cultural identity for the understanding of political, social, economic and technological progress has been called the cultural turn: “The fact that cultural identity is the decisive factor in constructing the specificity of a certain society could be called the “cultural turn”. It means that contemporary political and social developments, but also economic and technological developments, whether they have a global or rather a local nature, can only be understood via the concept of cultural identity…”35

34 L. Venuti, The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference, Routledge, London, 1998: 68.

35 R. Segers, The cultural turn: The importance of the concept cultural identity, Leuven University Press, Leuven, 2000: 384– 385.

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There are disciplines engaged in the study of culture, such as methodologically research into culture and general theory of culture. As a concern, culture allows for many different definitions, but in translation studies the possibilities are limited. Translation studies attempt to solve the same issues that cultural theory have been dealing.

Culture has its own sign procedure or languages on the account of which the members of the culture communicate. A possibility to comprehend a culture is to learn the languages of the culture, the sign procedures operating within the culture. Another possibility is to approach the culture through events and texts that creates different sign procedures and have a general understood or theme that can be represented.

An ethnological depiction of culture or one deriving from cultural anthropology is polylogic, for it remediates the cultural languages that differentiate themselves, described in an autonomous way. Semiotics of culture begun to fill a certain distance to describe the complexes of the languages of culture. J. Lotman made distinctions between two different evolutions in his depiction of culture. One process in the depiction of culture is the specialization of languages, the autonomy in culture of photography or film is the result of technical developments. Another process is the integration of languages, that can be characterized by the depictions and culture’s tentative through criticism, theory, the media and merging of cultural languages, beginning from experimental cases, the tranzitions between literature- theatre- film.36

The transforming nature of a culture requires competence from the student engaged in cultural analysis, such as the ability to analyze phenomena and mixtures, as the autonomy best explains the state of a culture and its dynamics. In the discipline of semiotics of culture it comes naturally to say that culture is translation and also that translation is culture.

In the present context, the translation activity explains the mechanisms of culture and translation itself is a notion that is loaded methodologically. The fact that translation as a notion is loaded does not signify it is metaphorized.

36 M. Lotman, Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture, I. B. Tauris, London, 1990: 572.

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Translation and translating are similar notions with an active culture, which allow to approach the essence of cultural mechanisms and the analysis of translation, translating and culture are enriched.

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2.AUDIOVISUAL TRANSLATION

There are expectations concerning translations in the 21st century, arguing in favour of translations supported by technology. This technology, revolving around computers created many new jobs, even within the field of translation, having in mind multimedia translators.

Díaz- Cintas discusses the importance of audiovisual translations (AVT) in an article in 2005, stating that “The computer has been one of the advances to have greatly changed the world of translation in general.”37 He also mentions the large number of computer programs designed exclusively for subtitling work, but in order to deal with subtitling, we would like to take the ‘grand tour’ of skills a present- day translator needs to remain competitive on the market of translations.

A great number of books and articles have discussed the basic skills of a translator, although not being able to define a proper terminology for that. Thus, translators need specific competences, skills, knowledge or ability to be successful and the Directorate- General for Translation (DGT) for the European Commission focuses on three main skills when shaping the translator’s profile: language, thematic and translation skills, where skills refer to the definition of “highly trained or experienced, esp. in a particular accomplishment.”38

On the other hand, the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) established the European Standard for Translation Service, mentioning five competences: translating competence, including specialization and meeting customer’s requirements linguistic and textual competence, cultural competence, technical competence and research competence out of which the last one is present during the entire translation process.

37 J. D. Cintas, Audiovisual translation in the third millennium. In: Translation today: trends and perspectives,2005.

38 W. R. Trumble, A. Stevenson, The shorter Oxford English dictionary, vol. II. 5th edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

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2.1.THE HISTORY OF AUDIOVISUAL TRANSLATION

People have always been fascinated by the interrelation between images and words and this goes way back in human history. Even in the ancient Greek era, it was customary that engravings or paintings were accompanied by 'titles' in the form of 'captions' used to indicate the main topic of each work of art. In the field of painting, it is a common tradition among painters to give titles to their works, indicating the theme of their paintings -a very useful tradition in itself as the theme of a work of art, especially abstract art, is not always clear at first sight. Some painters have even created series of paintings that, if seen in the correct order, narrate a story; their captions are once more used as indicators of the action that is described in the paintings. One such painter and engraver, for example, is the Englishman William Hogarth (1697-1764) who became well known for his series of paintings, such as the one entitled "Marriage ä la Mode" (1745) describing the stock but timeless 'boy-meets-girl' motif and which is currently exhibited at the National Gallery in London.

The invention of photography in the 1820s by the Frenchman Joseph Nicephone Niepce, allowed people to record real-life images onto plates. The tradition of using captions for images continued with photographs and stories were told through this medium as well. Finally, in 1888 George Eastman invented the first Kodak camera and it was in 1889 when he "launched the first commercial celluloid roll film, 70mm wide, the raw material which was to make the movies possible."

In the The Hutchinson Softback Encyclopedia we find the following definition of motionpicture photography:

Motion- picture photography uses a camera that exposes a roll of film to a rapid succession of views that, when developed, are projected in equally rapid succession to provide a moving image.39

39 Hutchinson Softback Encyclopedia 1996: 681

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These moving images were initially used to describe everyday events, but later acquired complete plots, with a beginning, a middle and an end, and had a language of their own.

The development of moving images, which entails an entirely new language in itself and the use of words are also interrelated. A brief overview of the history of the cinema is thus considered relevant, in order to better understand the birth and subsequent growth of all screen translation methods. Early practices will be mentioned and explained until the appearance and use of screen translation methods as these are known today.

Cinema as a medium first appeared in the 1890s, but its invention cannot possibly be accounted for through one single source. The technology of motion pictures was the result of accumulated contributions from various countries, mainly from the United States, Germany, England and France. The first commercial showings of moving photographs were in 1894 and the first Kinetoscope parlour opened in New York on 14 April 1894.

The film industry expanded at the beginning of the twentieth century, around 1905. Films grew longer, as compared to the first films that often consisted of single shots, their stories were more complex and they were accompanied by live music and, in some cases, sound effects. Cinema was obviously influenced by theatre, but film is not theatre; it gradually developed a language of its own. Although early twentieth- century films achieved great popularity, their audiences often had problems understanding their narrative. Filmmakers experimented with various techniques, such as editing and camera framing in order to use film language creatively and make the action in a film more comprehensible. One of the main techniques adopted was the use of intertitles, which first appeared in 1903.

All the words appearing in a film are there to serve a particular purpose and they can be categorised accordingly. G. W. Cushman in his book How to Title Home Movies successfully distinguishes four types of titles in a motion picture:

the main title

the credit title

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3. the subtitle

4. the end title

The term subtitle was used in the silent film era to refer to written phrases shown against a black background and inserted between the appropriate scenes in the film, also known as 'intertitles'. This is the term that will be used from now on to avoid any confusion with subtitles as the latter are used in the sound film era. Intertitles can be further divided according to their use into:

– explanatory titles, which provided information about the 'how' and the 'why' something happened in the film,

– informative titles, which gave information about the 'where', the 'when' and the

'who',

– emphatic titles, which drew attention to a particular detail, and

– spoken titles, which provided the exact words spoken by the characters in the film

The first three types of intertitles were placed at the beginning of a scene, whereas the spoken titles, after experimentation, came to be placed right after a character had started speaking, to ease spectators' understanding of the scene.

When films of the early silent era were distributed in different countries, the problem of language transfer was negligible: the only title in the film that needed translation was the main title, as intertitles did not exist then. Even when intertitles came into existence, the problem was easily overcome. The original intertitles were translated into the language of the target audience; the translations were then drawn or printed on paper and filmed to take the place of the original intertitles in the film. These intertitles were not subject to restrictions of time or space. Each one was a separate frame in itself with no image added to it, so that it was possible

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to insert as much text and as many frames as necessary. It could also be left on screen for as long as it was desirable, so even the slowest viewers could easily follow it. The viewers read the intertitles in their own native language and imagined the dialogues of the characters in a film in their own language as well. Their only hint as to the origin of the film they were watching remained the film's setting.

The introduction of sound into film dates back to 1927, when the film The Jazz Singer was released by Warner Bros. The earlier use of accompanying music was now under the complete control of the producers. Filmmakers were originally afraid of the impact the advent of sound would have on the film's style or that there would be a shift from image to words as the main plot-carrying elements in a film. There were even directors, such as the German Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (1888-1931), who simply refused to make sound films. Soon, most filmmakers overcame their inhibitions and sound spread to all countries.

Still, another problem came to puzzle the filmmakers. Producing countries would no longer be able to export their products, because of the language barrier that had been created with the advent of sound. The "masking effect" of silence as to the national origins of films was now lost. Audiences were disillusioned as their favourite stars no longer 'spoke' in their own native language, but in another, often 'strange-sounding', language that they could not identify with. France's favourite comic star, 'Chariot', suddenly became an American and Greta Garbo had a Swedish accent. Film as an international art was in danger, since the "visual Esperanto" of silent films, with all the cross-cultural codes it carried, was now lost. A hostile attitude towards sound cinema was developed because of this foreign-language element it introduced and cinema was perceived as a colonialist technique.40

The first solutions proposed to this new problem included the screening of films with nom translation, which at first was successful, since sound was still a novelty and the "revue" musicals produced in Hollywood mainly consisted of musical numbers, that could easily be enjoyed without any knowledge of English. Translating the original dialogue and rerecording

40 E. Shochat & R. Stam, The Cinema After Babel: Language, Difference and Power, 1985: 46.

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all the music was costly and ineffective. Thompson and Bordwell mention several other early unsuccessful attempts: subtitles were added to the picture, but were initially rejected as a distraction; the dialogue was eliminated and intertitles were used as a substitution; even the use of a voice-over narrator to explain the action was proposed.

Finally, producers decided to produce 'multilingual films' to re-shoot a film in more versions, using foreign actors speaking the native language in each version. Naturally, actors with proficiency in more than one language were in great demand. Sometimes, especially in the case of comedians, the original actors were used, even though they could not speak the language; the latter recited their roles in the target language phonetically on a location near the camera, out of view. This is how the French version of Laurel and Hardy was shot To underline the seriousness with which this technique was approached, it is evidence enough to mention the efforts of two major American companies: in 1929, MGM started a programme of multilingual production, making French, German and Spanish versions of English films, and Paramount set up a studio in France, near Paris, in the same year to make multilingual productions in fourteen languages. After two years of experimentation with the method of multilingual productions, it was apparent that the profits made from the audiences for the versions produced could not justify the original expenses and the idea was abandoned4.

Finally, by 1931, mixing sound techniques were refined and so were the methods of lip synchronization. Subtitles were also more widely accepted and by 1932 these had become the two dominant methods of screen translation, still remaining in use in our days.41

41 K. Thompson & D. Bordwell , Film History: An Introduction, London: McGrow- Hill, Inc, 1994: 229.

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2.2.THE DEVELOPMENT OF AUDIOVISUAL TRANSLATION

All screen translation methods involve the translation of an SL text into the TL. However, to better apprehend the uniqueness and difference of these translation methods, and subtitling in particular, from translation as traditionally known, it is of great importance to understand first the technical constraints that underlie them. This section will be an analysis of the technical processes involved in subtitling.

It should be noted that the following analysis is not extensive and it is offered only as a rough guide to understanding the procedures. The various stages described are not always followed in the particular order in which they are presented and some may not be followed at all. In 1987, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) adopted a resolution to establish European standards on subtitling and dubbing. However, these standards are not always met, since the attention devoted to each procedure largely depends on the schedule and standards of each particular studio and also on the equipment available. Practices differ not only from country to country, but also even from studio to studio.

The information presented here has been compiled after visits to several subtitling studios mainly in Greece and also in the UK, interviews with the managers of these studios as well as the people involved in all the stages of production; also, after careful study of relevant literature (English, French and Italian) of screen translation practices in order to acquire a more global understanding of the subject, by comparing current practices in countries throughout the world.

Subtitles did not die with the advent of sound in the movies, as was originally thought. Instead they have grown and matured and they will always exist for as long as we need to "add words to the picture on the screen."42 In the 20"' century, with the invention of teletext and the latest developments in the subtitling for the deaf and the hard of hearing, it seems absurd to have ever thought that titles would cease to exist.

42 B. Happe, Adding Words to Picture on Film and TV VFI , 1979: 19.

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The subtitling process has roughly followed the same steps, especially as the work the subtitler has to do, throughout the 20th century. But there is more to subtitling than merely translation, as will be shown by the outline of the subtitling procedure described here. Luyken et al. (1991) have described the subtitling process in five distinct stages and this classification will also be followed here.

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2.3.SUBTITLES FOR THE CINEMA, TELEVISION AND DVD

Subtitles for cinema

Ivarsson, in his book Subtitling for the Media (1992), provides a very interesting and comprehensive review of subtitling methods.43 The first subtitles were used in the silent film era and were projected under the screen with the intertitles, using a device, the patent for which was registered in 1909 by M. N. Topp. This technique was soon abandoned, as the process was very taxing and with the coming of sound, more efficient techniques were developed. However, the thinking behind Topp's idea still finds applications today, as the process has been simplified because of the use of timecode. There are several methods in subtitles for the cinema, such as:

1.Optical Subtitling

This method involves photographing the titles and copying them onto the film copy. The film strip of the titles is the same length as the original with in and out frames to cue the subtitles in synchronisation with the voicetrack.

This method allows for well-defined and legible titles that can also be tinted to become more legible in problematic cases, such as over light backgrounds, such as the snow scenes.

The disadvantage is that, when the film negative is not available, it becomes necessary to photograph the whole film to obtain a negative, in which process focus deteriorates and the noise level increases considerably.

Mechanical Subtitling

The mechanical process was developed by a Norwegian inventor, Leif Eriksen, in 1930; it involves moistening the emulsion layer of the film to soften it and stamping the titles directly onto the film strip. Typesetting is done in the normal manner and titles are then printed

43 J. Ivarsson, Subtitling for the Media, Stockholm: TransEdit HB, 1992.

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on paper. A photographic process is used to produce the very small letterpress type plates for each subtitle. The need to moisten the emulsion layer for softening was dispensed with when, in 1935, a Hungarian inventor, 0. Turchänyi, developed a thermal process by heating the plates to a high temperature which caused the emulsion of the film to melt away. The process was difficult to control, with unpredictable results unpredictable and often poorly defined characters.

Laser Subtitling

Laser subtitling is the latest development in the field. This technology has been in use since 1988, when it was developed by Denis Auboyer in Paris. It is the cheapest method in use, despite the initial costly investment in equipment, and it requires a minimum of personnel. It is also the method that produces the best legibility, contrast and stability of image available.

A narrow laser beam controlled by a computer 'writes' the text on the film by vaporising the emulsion with no damage done to the acetate film underneath. The letters produced in this way are sharp with a neat black edge caused by the heat, which enhances the legibility of the subtitles against a white background. The titles are typeset by the computer itself and are timecoded and frame- counted in order to be cued in on the video display . The many advantages of this method account for it being in use, in varying degrees of quality, in many European countries, USA, China, Israel, as well as in other countries.

Subtitles for television

Subtitling for television differs from theatrical subtitling, in that subtitles made for the cinema cannot be used on television due to the narrower contrast range of the television screen. Therefore, different subtitling methods are required.

1. Optical Subtitles

In countries where the optical overlay was developed for the cinema a similar technique was developed for television. This method involves writing subtitles on paper, making

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one-frame stills of each title with a film camera, putting the resulting film negative in a scanner and either having the translator feed in the titles manually or using an automatic system to feed them in with the help of punched-out marks on the edge of the film. Subtitles are then mixed into the programme images and transmitted or taped as necessary.

Later, other typefaces were used and the titles were written out on punch cards which were inserted into a feed mechanism and either photographed onto a roll of film or displayed directly by means of a TV camera with image inversion. Manual as well as automatic cueing in of the subtitles by means of a frame counter is possible.

2. Electronic Subtitling

Today, the subtitler has his/her own subtitling equipment: a computer with dedicated word processing software for displaying the subtitles and a timecode reader; this is connected to a videotape recorder with a monitor. After the subtitler runs his videotape, he times the subtitles, writes them on the computer and cues them in appropriately. The timecode recorded on the tape ensures that the subtitles will appear in the correct place. After reading the text, he hands in the floppy disc with the subtitles, which is then inserted in the computer of the transmission unit. The timecode in the master tape runs the subtitles. Thus, the master tape remains intact for future use. It is essential that the timecode on the master tape and the one on the working cassette used for the preparation of the subtitles are identical.

A new master tape for use during transmission can also be made by copying the original and recording the subtitles on it. The problem in this case is that no alterations can be made once the subtitles are recorded onto the new master tape. The main disadvantage of this method is the extremely high initial cost for the equipment needed. Even in our 'electronic' age cueing the subtitles in and out is still often done manually in some countries.

Manual Subtitling

Cueing in and out the subtitles manually is the traditional method of television subtitling. It is either done 'live', while the programme is transmitted, or during recording. This method involves a highly skilled technician to do the cueing in and out of the subtitles, usually

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the subtitler himself, which, if s/he has the necessary technical knowledge, is also the best solution since s/he is familiar with the programme. This method is often used in news and current affairs programmes, when there is not enough time to spot the titles.

The main disadvantage of this method is obvious: there is a considerable time lag in the appearance of the subtitles on the screen, which is related to the time required for the technician to realise that a person on the screen has started speaking and that a new subtitle needs to be cued in. Experience and attention on the part of the technician certainly play a great part in the quality of the final subtitled programme.

Subtitles for DVD

Digital technology, with its advent at the end of the 20th century, revolutionised both broadcast and distribution, as new forms of consumer electronics made their appearance. The advent of DVD, in particular, is the product that was meant to have such an impact so as to revolutionise the entire subtitling process, from a technical as well as a translation point of view. It is the belief of this author that the effects of DVD on the subtitling process are so radical that they will completely change the face of subtitling in the 21th century.

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2.4. ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF AUDIOVISUAL TRANSLATION

2.4.1.ADVANTAGES OF AUDIOVISUAL TRANSLATION

The most obvious and also the most prominent advantage of subtitling is that the original soundtrack is retained intact and that the viewers have access to it. Replacement of the original soundtrack with another in the TL, as is the case in dubbing, equals with destroying part of the film, the advocates of subtitling argue; the result after subtitling a programme is more authentic than after dubbing it. This explains the common fact that "cinema buffs" are the ones that favour subtitling.

A direct consequence of retaining the original soundtrack is the fact that the original voicetrack is also retained intact. The original actors' voices are the most important part of the soundtrack, since they are an essential component of their performance; wiping them out mutilates the aesthetic value of the film and their replacement by dubbed voices may even completely destroy it, as dubbed voices have a "bland 'studio' sound and the original actors cannot be judged on their acting ability. To the proponents of subtitling and generally to people who are accustomed to this screen translation method, it may seem unimaginable and tasteless to watch a film with their favourite actors, but not to actually hear their voices. Yet, it is true that there are many people in the world today who have never heard the real voices of their favourite actors. A rather ridiculous consequence of this fact in France, for example, is the phenomenon of "frangoisation" of dubbed soap operas in France; this phenomenon refers to the fact that many French viewers do not even know that the actors of series such as "Dynasty" or "Dallas" are not French.44

This situation has more important implications than what is apparent at first glance: in the case of films for the cinema in particular, it often happens that clips of the original film or 'catch phrases', such as the well-known "I'll be back" uttered by Arnold Schwarzenegger in most of his movies, are used for advertisement purposes. 'Catch phrases' are utterances often repeated in a film that contribute to the coherence of a series and are also used for word plays

44 W. Langley, Nice Face – Shame About the Accent, Radio Times (UK) 257/3422 , 1989: 21.

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and puns. It is important that they are translated with standard phrasings, so that they can be identified. Nonetheless, they are often paraphrased with different wordings each time, which destroys their recurring effect. This may present great problems to the distributors in countries which use the dubbing method, since, even if 'catch phrases' have not been translated consistently in the subtitled TL version, its viewers can still hear the 'catch phrase' in the SL, which is completely lost in a dubbed version; thus, an advertisement of the particular movie using a 'catch phrase' from the movie as its main theme would be meaningless.

Another evident advantage of subtitling is related to the TL audience and, in particular, people who are deaf or hard of hearing. It goes without saying that people with hearing problems cannot gain as much enjoyment from a film or programme as hearing people can. They require special subtitling, in which it is not only "the Word" that is subtitled, but also "the Noise". But, since subtitling for the deaf and the hard of hearing is not always available, it is self-evident that these people would choose without hesitation a subtitled film to a dubbed one, if they are to understand even a small part of it. Since people with hearing problems constitute a larger part of each national community than one would suspect – in Great Britain alone, for example, there are around 7.5 million people with moderate to severe hearing impairment and one person in twenty in New Zealand, this proportion of each country's population that prefers subtitling to dubbing is not negligible and should not be underestimated in dubbing countries.

Moreover, subtitling has been said to improve not only the TL audience's foreign language learning skills, but also its reading abilities, especially when the audience consists of children, who watch and learn a lot from television today. An example that supports this argument is provided by a study of Dutch children; more specifically, Dutch children who watch a lot of television have been noted to have superior reading skills, owing to the high percentage of programmes that are broadcast with subtitles in the Netherlands, Breaking the Language Barrier.

Fodor, in his article entitled Linguistic and Psychological Problems of Film Synchronisation, which is devoted to analysing the problems of dubbing, refers to two other advantages of subtitling over dubbing. The first is that subtitles can be used to explain unusual

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situations, puns and notions to the TL audience. Explicit comment is impossible in dubbing, due to its nature, and implicit comment is constrained by the time factor. Several people tend to disagree with Fodor in this argument, since the time constraint in subtitling is much more severe than in dubbing and the extra space constraint in subtitling does not allow for footnotes. Naturally, a very short explanation may be provided in the subtitles together with the translation of the SL script, but in dubbing an equivalent TL expression or pun may also be used, especially since it is accepted that the dubbed script is not a literal translation of the SL, but more of an adaptation.

The second advantage Fodor finds in subtitling is that translation can be omitted for those fragments of the SL dialogue that are unnecessary, irrelevant or unclear; in dubbing, on the other hand, a translation is required for every instance that an actor is visibly speaking on the screen. This argument is partly true or, at least, this is a common solution employed by several subtitlers in the case of internationally understood utterances, such as 'Yes' and 'No', or of incomprehensible dialogue. Nevertheless, it cannot really be considered a legitimate approach, especially when it comes to entire phrases. The audience can understand when something has been uttered on the screen in the SL and it will notice the omission of its translation in the subtitles; they will feel frustrated and 'cheated' for having missed out on part of the film's dialogue. Ms Efi Kallifatidi, a prominent film subtitler in Greece, when interviewed, stressed the importance of always trying to provide a translation for everything heard on the screen, even when the subtitler him/herself is subtitling the film 'audio', i. e. with no script but with the soundtrack as his/her only resource, and s/he cannot understand the dialogue because of a very bad quality soundtrack or heavy SL accents and fast speech. She proposes that the solution a subtitler should resort to in this extreme case is not to omit the translation itself, but to provide subtitles that are relevant to the script's previous and subsequent verbal and visual context, so that the continuity of the film is not disrupted for the audience.

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2.4.2.DISADVANTAGES IN AUDIOVISUAL TRANSLATION

The first main disadvantage of subtitling is a direct result of the constraints of time and space in which subtitles must appear on the cinema or television screen. Since people speak much faster than they read, it is implied that not everything that is said is translated in the subtitles. Instead, a more succinct version is provided in the TL subtitles, or as the opponents of subtitling would put it, what is translated is no more than just "a fraction of what is spoken in fast dialogue."45 This is why many people do not consider subtitling translation, but a summary of what is said in the original film.

Nuances are thus inevitably lost, "unless the titler is an expert in condensation"46 and so is, some would argue, the dramatic interpretation of the text. The lack of dramatisation in the subtitles is one of the effects the shift from the spoken to the written word has on the viewers. Nida provides an explanation for this in his book Toward a Science of Translating:

Written communication often produces a less immediate effect upon the receptor, since he does not actively or vicariously participate in the formation of the message.47

Even the viewers who can understand the original language still lose part of the dramatic effect of the original, since they are 'forced' to read the subtitles, as the image is perceived faster than the sound. This often results in reading the subtitles before the respective chunk of dialogue has been heard in the SL; the dramatic moment is thus lost.

The second major disadvantage of subtitling has to do with the visual element of watching a film. Subtitles add substantially to the picture, destroying its original balance, ambiance and composition. The fact that viewers have to see, hear and read at the same time alters the whole rhythm of the film.

45 Garrett et all, Film Scripts New York: Meredith Corporation , 1971: 3

46 R. Myers, Reading the Screen, Spectrum 20, 1996: 12-13.

47 E. Nida, Toward A Science of Translating, Leiden: EJ Brill, 1964: 123.

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In this way subtitles always remain external to the film, at best acting like a cartoon caption, at worst cruelly defacing the picture. One must not forget here that speaking and listening are primary linguistic acts, whereas reading and writing are secondary ones, which makes literacy a precondition in order to benefit from subtitles.

Furthermore, subtitles monopolise the attention in a film. Viewers cannot resist reading subtitles, even if they are native speakers of the SL and subtitles can prove most annoying to them. It is a constant irritation for the viewers to have to refer back and forth from the subtitles to the picture; the actual time of watching the film is much reduced, depending on the number of the subtitles, especially in wordy films one may end up reading the film rather than watching it and the enjoyment supposedly imparted by a relaxed viewing of a film decreases considerably. Moreover, in wordy films subtitles can detract viewers' attention from the picture to the extent that they may become confused as to who is speaking.

Finally, subtitling causes a problematic situation that is characteristic of bilingual countries. In countries where two national languages are used, such as in Belgium where the two main languages are Flemish and French, the subtitles are not merely two lines of written text at the bottom on the screen; they are three and, in some cases, even four lines long, since translation has to be provided in two languages and not one. Thus, the screen space taken up by the subtitles is even greater than in traditional subtitling, with the result that viewers in these countries actually see less of the film. One might ask why dubbing is not used in bilingual countries or a combination of dubbing in the main language with subtitles provided in the other; Thierry Horguelin explains the choice of subtitling in the Netherlands by saying that on the one hand the intended audience is not large enough to accommodate the expense of dubbing and, on the other, viewers are used to subtitling and do not object to subtitled versions being made.

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2.5.AUDIOVISUAL TRANSLATION THEORY

If we are to examine screen translation and subtitling in particular, from a theoretical standpoint, it is important first to establish the relationship of screen translation to translation in general. As the literature available on screen translation is limited and has only started flourishing lately, one can only look at translation theory as formulated in the 20th century to establish a theoretical framework of screen translation. The notion of 'equivalence', the term that has occupied the interest of translation scholars' minds for centuries, will be the angle from which this examination will be conducted.

Theoretical discussions over the centuries about translation in general, or translations in particular, have always been closely associated or even identified with discussions about the possibility, the impossibility or even the degree of possible equivalence that exists between two texts: the Source Text (ST) and the Target Text (TT). Equivalence is, thus, the most widely known and argued about concept in translation theory. It can be established at different levels and there has never been a widely accepted definition, which has resulted in much controversy, as scholars have used the same term in their different approaches. Equivalence has also been associated -or even identified- with adequacy. Confusion still exists as to its very essence, but lately many western scholars tend to disregard it altogether and have proclaimed the whole issue of equivalence to be "dated", whereas others discuss the concept using other terms.

However, since all translation is concerned with the transfer from one linguistic code to another, the issue of equivalence, irrespective of the approach taken to the subject, lies at the very heart of the translation process and is a phenomenon worth examining. The development in Translation Studies over the past 40 or so years has resulted in the birth of various schools of thought that have approached the subject of equivalence from various different viewpoints. 'Equivalence' as a translation term owes its origin to the Russian formalist Roman Jakobson, who is considered to be its father; he was the first to use the enigmatic expression "equivalence in difference" and to ever refer to 'equivalence' as a concept.48

48 R. Jakobson, On Linguistic Aspects of Translation. In A. Chesterman (ed) (1989), Readings in Translation Theory Finland: Oy Finn Lectura Ab, 1959: 53-60.

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A contrastive analysis of translation theories in the 20th century as regards the issue of equivalence reveals the existence of many different theoretical frameworks that have been applied in order to provide a complete picture of this ambiguous and vague concept. However different and contrastive these theories are, they complement each other and shed light on various dimensions of the complex phenomenon of equivalence.

Screen Translation is a type of language transfer characterised by features that differentiate it from any other kind of translation while, at the same time, nudging closer to Interpretation. The fact that screen translation deals both with the oral and the written mode has led some theorists to describe it as a "hybrid between translation and interpretation."49 Thus, before trying to answer questions related to the issue of equivalence in screen translation, it would be helpful if we first try to delimit screen translation and place it within the so far known definitions of translation. This way we will avoid creating any problems by inventing yet another definition and adding to the terminological diversity of translation theory; we will also promote an initial comparison between screen translation and other translation modes, the immediate result of placing screen translation in an already existing framework. Screen translation has already been compared, besides interpretation, to other modes of language transfer, such as the translation of poetry, a comparison that, although based on some logic, is somewhat superficial. Nida was one of the first to declare that the restrictions present in screen translation are much more stringent compared to those in the translation of poetry or song lyrics. It is the most important to first place screen translation to its place in the translation paradigm.

One of the first to formulate a theory on translation based on linguistics was Catford. In his book A Linguistic Theory of Translation (1965), he distinguished and analysed many different types of translation in an attempt to account for all its facets.

49 G. L. Scandura, Film Translation: A Hybrid Between Translation and Interpretation. In C. Picken (ed) Translation, the Vital Link Proceedings of the XIII World Congress of FIT, Brighton, 1993 London, 1993: 446-450

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The most important distinction made by Catford in relation to screen translation is the distinction between total and restricted translation. "In total translation, SL and TL texts or items are translation equivalents when they are interchangeable in a given situation; the aim in total translation is to select equivalents with the same meaning and equivalents with the greatest possible overlap of situational range."50 Translation equivalence for Catford "occurs when an SL and a TL text or item is relatable to the same features of substance", where "substance" in total translation stands for "situation-substance", for "phonic-substance" in phonological translation and for "graphic-substance" in graphological translation.51 Therefore, in order for translation equivalence to be achieved, the two texts should relate to a "community of relevant substance".52

This enables us to posit the limits of translatability in restricted translation, which can be summed up in the phrase that translation between media or between different medium levels is impossible. On the basis of Catford's definition of equivalence, subtitling (one of the two main types of screen translation) is impossible, since the substantial features relevant to phonic and graphic substance are completely different, or in Catford's own words: " a phonological item is relatable to the same features as a graphological item."53

Furthermore, Catford also distinguishes between "transcoding" and translation; he describes transcoding as the switch from one medium, or code, to another. Subtitling is one of the clearer examples of transcoding, since a switch from the spoken to the written medium takes place in the subtitling process. Catford stresses the fact that transcoding is a different process from translation and that the two cannot possibly overlap, since he considers meaning to be a code or language related property.

Jakobson expanded Catford's limited concept of translation using a tripartite model to describe his more generalised notion. One of his categories consists of translation as commonly thought of and traditionally known from one language into another; Jakobson calls

50 J. C. Catford, A Linguistic Theory of Translation, Oxford: OUP, 1965: 49.

51 Ibidem, pg. 50.

52 Ibidem, pg 52.

53 Ibidem, pg.53.

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this category interlingual translation or translation proper and describes it as the translation type in which the verbal signs of a given language are interpreted by the verbal signs of another language.

However, Jakobson distinguishes more translation types and includes in his model procedures that are not normally considered translation. Thus, he considers rewording, such as the interpretation of verbal signs of a language by other verbal signs of the same language, as a valid translation procedure, which he classified as intralingual translation.

He also discusses translation between different codes under the heading of intersemiotic translation or transmutation. Subtitling could have been seen as a case of transmutation if it was intersemiotic; it is intrasemiotic translation, as the transfer still takes place within the boundaries of the same verbal code and does not alter the original, which remains in the final TL version. Furthermore, the two main types of subtitling, such as interlingual subtitling from one language to another and intralingual subtitling, for instance the subtitling for the deaf, share characteristics of the first two translation types of Jakobson's categorisation respectively. Subtitling is not a clear case of one of Jakobson's three categories, as it shares elements, thus justifying its existence as a translation mode, but still remains unclassified forming a category of its own.

In his book, Towards a Science of Translating (1964), Nida repeats Jakobson's division of translation into three different types to include screen translation. He distinguishes between intralinguistic, interlinguistic and intersemiotic translation.

Eugene Nida was one of the first translation theorists to make a case for screen translation and link it to the subject of dynamic equivalence. He pointed out that in the translator's effort to produce the maximum degree possible of dynamic equivalence in the translation of a text into the receptor' language, there are two main types of restrictions: linguistic and cultural. Cultural restrictions have to do, for instance, with the existence of dialects in the receptor language as well as with the fact that already existing translations of the text may exert pressure on another attempt to translate the text into the same receptor language.

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Cultural restrictions may be found in all types of translations, including screen translation. Under linguistic restrictions Nida classifies anything related to literary forms, such as poetry, proverbs as well as "the vehicle used as an accompanying instrument of transmission of the message"54 , as in the case of songs or motion pictures.

Nida recognises the importance of screen translation and the special constraints that characterise it and shares Caille's views (1960) regarding the point the latter raises about the impact of screen translation. However, when Nida talks about the translation of motion pictures, he mainly refers to dubbing; he rightly acknowledges the inherent and much more severe complications that are involved in dubbing as compared to subtitling, but he fails to recognise the ones involved in subtitling, which he denounces as "no great task".55

The impact of dubbing is an issue discussed by other people in addition to Nida and Caille. E. Cary, a fervent supporter of the supremacy of dubbing, has even used Catford's term total translation as a description. E. Cary considers dubbing the utmost example of total translation, which for him represents total fidelity.

Dubbing is the translation of an SL text into a TL text, that employs the mechanism of lip synchronisation as well as internal synchronisation, such as character synchrony according to Fodor, in order to be faithful to the ST articulation, gestures, body movements and identify the original characters in the film.

Subtitling is a polysemiotic translation activity, as it involves respect for both the aural and visual communication channels. The subtitler cannot disregard either of them, a fact easily verified by the number of ludicrous mistakes made by subtitlers who have had to deliver translations based on the script alone, without watching the actual film. Synchronisation is also an important factor in subtitling as it can reflect or destroy the tempo of the film and its dramatic progression. The job of a good subtitler is to take all the above parameters into consideration and try to reproduce the total message and impact of the original.

54 E. Nida, Toward A Science of Translating, Leiden, EJ Brill, 1964: 176.

55 Ibidem, pg. 178.

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Jakobson's categorisation represented the beginning of the expansion of the concept of translation. This approach has been adopted by Hatim & Mason, who, in their book Discourse and the Translator, refer to translation as the creation of 'a new act of communication out of a previously existing one' and emphasise its 'multifarious' nature as well as the fact that it takes place within a given social context. Based on this, they recognize that,

the way is open to a view of translating which is not restricted to a particular field – religious, literary, scientific – but which can include such diverse activities as film subtitling and dubbing, simultaneous interpreting, cartoon translating, abstracting and summarising.56

This stance has also been adopted by Steiner who has extended it even further to include all human communication in the definition of translation.

In this new expanded concept of translation, Henrik Gottlieb has attempted to set the limits of screen translation, in order to enable it to find its place in the translation spectrum. He has attempted to form a typology of translation -where the term 'translation' Is used in its more general sense to include all modes of language transferbased on the analysis and distinction of various translation types in terms of time and semiotic composition. Using time as his basis of classification, he characterizes a translation as:

synchronous, when the presentation of the original and that of the translation is simultaneous,

non-synchronous, when the original is not perceived by the TL audience,

delayed, when the production and the presentation of the original is simultaneous, but the presentation of the translation is delayed.

56 B. Hatim & I. Mason, Discourse and the Translator, Longman, London, 1990: 2.

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Screen translation is divided into two types: subtitling and revoicing, in which dubbing is also included. Whereas revoicing is a horizontal type of translation and its schematic representation coincides with that of interlingual interpreting, subtitling is a different type and can either be vertical or diagonal.

Vertical or intralingual subtitling is usually undertaken for hearing-impaired people or for foreign language learners, whereas the majority of subtitling cases involve diagonal or interlingual subtitling.

The nature of the ST is one that has been given limited attention by translation theorists, as it is usually something that is taken for granted. This is a question that Toury has addressed. According to him, the relation of the ST is a factor not to be underestimated, since the identification of the ST plays a very important role in the assessment of the end result of the translation procedure.

Toury illustrates this by referring to the example of subtitles. In the case of subtitles the question of the ST is more problematic than one might think. The issue of which text constitutes the ST to be used seems to be quite simple, the ST is the spoken version of the film. Subtitlers often have no recourse to the videotaped version of the film and have to base their work on the script used in the language that is used for the spoken version. Hervey and Higgins seem to think that the ST in subtitling is the oral text plus its transcript, which is more than often not the case in real life. The ST is a previous text that the original script drew from, or a translation of the previous text in the language used for the subtitles or any other language. Finally, the ST might even be a combination of some or all of the above alternatives.

Toury's views do not change the fact that subtitling, as it appears in the end product, is a case of crossover from the oral to the written mode, or that in standard subtitling procedures the subtitler is basing his work on the spoken version of the film, but may also have recourse to the written script.

Henrik Gottlieb, in his article Subtitling: Diagonal Translation (1994) analyzes the features that distinguish spoken from written texts. These features can be divided

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into two main categories, which correspond to two fundamental traits of spoken language: one encounters a lot of implicit language in speech, whereas everything is explicated in writing and different aesthetic norms are followed in speech. Especially in spontaneous speech, characteristics such as slips of the tongue, pauses, unfinished sentences, ungrammatical constructions, are frequent and difficult to reproduce in writing, due to the different aesthetic norms. Furthermore, dialectal, socio and idiolectal features that contribute to the formation of the character of fictitious or even real people are also very difficult to reproduce in writing and make sense at the same time.

However, the primary role of subtitles is to help the TL viewers understand as easily as possible the action that takes place in the original production. This element is sufficient, even if we do not take into account the difficulties posed by the temporal constraints of the medium, to render the reproduction of speech elements in subtitling almost impossible. The switch from the spoken to the written mode is necessary if the goal of the subtitling process, that the TL audience understands what goes on in order to be achieved.

Bearing this in mind, one wonders if anything can be done to reproduce the oral characteristics of film in its subtitles, as Hervey and Higgins suggest. It goes without saying that using a phonetic transcription to reproduce a regional or social dialect does Cases of texts that belong to one type; it is more frequent that a text shares the characteristics of several types, but only one of them is usually predominant. Thus, a political speech broadcast on television would be a vocative audio-medial text, but also expressive or informative and a talk show would be a primarily expressive audiomedial text, although it could be informative or vocative.

The only difference between a non-audio-medial text and an audio-medial one is the technical constraints found in the latter. From this observation follows that the only difference in the translation strategies employed for the translation of an audio-medial text would be determined by their different manner of transmission. One could oversimplify this statement and claim that when translating audio-medial texts the translation techniques of non-audio-medial texts are used by simply modifying them for the technical constraints involved.

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House's model for translation assessment is a pioneering piece of work. Her model stresses the importance of pragmatics in translation and enriches the linguistic approach with the introduction of functionalism. It is based on a typological analysis of the ST in order to establish its function, so that functional equivalence can be established in the TT. Establishing functional equivalence between ST and TT forms the basis for House's model. The more a translation is contextualised in terms of a specific language and culture, the greater the need for the translator to build functionally relevant situational features into the TT.

This is particularly evident in the case of screen translation, where cultural elements are not only evident in the dialogues but also in the picture. House's own procedure in this case is either to apply a second level function in the case of overt translations, such as translations in which it is impossible to maintain the same function in the TT or to apply a cultural filter in the case of covert translations, such as translations in which both the ST and the TT share the same function.

Screen translation has already been categorised on the basis of House's typology by both Peter Fawcett and Henrik Gottlieb. The former considers both types of screen translation, subtitling and dubbing, but this argument could be extended to include all other sub-categories of revoicing as cases of overt translation. In commenting on House' model, Fawcett states that "although the detailed working of the model seems somewhat murky, the distinction clearly applies to film translation in the sense that, in spite of all claims of attempted naturalisation, [… ] a dubbed or subtitled film is always an overt translation.57" Gottlieb, on the other hand, considers dubbing a clear case of covert translation:

Subtitling is an overt type of translation, retaining the original version, thus laying itself bare to criticism from everybody with the slightest knowledge of the source language. [… ] As opposed to subtitling, dubbing – the ever-present rival – offers a discrete, covert mode of

57 P. Fawcett, Translation Modes and Constraints, The Incorporated Linguist 22/4, 1983: 186.

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translation, replacing the entire dialog track, and sometimes even the accompanying music & effects-track, with a target-language version.58

Subtitling is indeed an overt mode of translation and little can be said to add to his argumentation. The ST is closely bound to the ST culture, a fact which is supplemented by both the visual and the acoustic elements in a given film which are clearly foreign, and the TT pretends to be nothing more than a translation of the ST. As regards dubbing, however, one cannot argue against either Fawcett's or Gottlieb's views. It is true that dubbing aims to be a covert translation, to give the impression of a second original functional equivalence as postulated by House. However, this aim is rarely achieved, as in most cases the source culture maintains a strong presence in the TT through the only communication channel that is not replaced, such as an image that justify Fawcett's categorization of dubbing as an overt translation.

The cultural elements present in the image in the case of audio-medial texts require further discussion. It is not merely the background of the image, such as architecture, buildings, signs through which links with the source culture are established; cultural elements are also obvious in the characters themselves: they are manifested through their appearance, gestures, body movements and facial expressions. Thus, one could easily conclude that the kind of dubbing that comes closer to the ideal of 'covert translation' is the dubbing of certain types of cartoons in which the image does not contain elements that can be described as pertaining to one particular culture, such as the science-fiction cartoons.

58 H. Gottlieb, Perspectives: Studies in Translatology, Denmark, Museum Tusculanum Press, 1994a: 102.

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3. CASE STUDY: PRACTICAL APPROACH, SUBTITLING IN AFERIM! MOVIE

The movie Aferim!, directed by Radu Jude, is a tentative to glance into the past, inside the attitudes of the 19th century, where all essential imperfections are included.

The action takes place in Eastern Europe, 1835, in Wallachia, which is found in the radical changes concerning the clothes of people and moderate changes inside their minds. Between 1828 and 1834, The Russian governor, Pavel Kiseleff, realized several reforms to the country, that are found in the Organic Regulations, a law that regularized the modern institutions.

Since 1806 until 1812, during the Russian- Turkish war, Wallachia goes through important changes, as the beginning of the 19th century. The Russian occupation contributes to widespread of the French fashion, in all areas: clothes, language, music, dancing and literature. The political elite activated in Constantinople, but Paris was the center of all inspiration. Travels to Paris became an obligation, as traveling to Istanbul represented a model of education. The students are sent to complete their studies in Vienna, Paris, Berlin and Geneva.

In the country, things are attached to the familiar and traditions, where the Church became the central place, regulated the life and maintaining Jews or gypsy related myths specific to the period. The Europe is dominated by the myth transformed into an economic reality for the Romanian Principalities. Jews spreaded all over the important centers of Wallachia, opening different businesses, such as commerce and managing saloons and shops; businesses that were under the management of the Church before and in order to keep competition away, invented stories about them.

Women manage the trend regarding the changes, adopted and adapted the French fashion, learned French, waltzed in the rhythm of Frantz Liszt’s music, but the society is not ready to permit them the visibility demanded. Adultery remains a female

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responsibility. In 1783, the penal code mentions the same fate for men and women guilty of adultery, to have their nose cut and sent to the monastery for two years. But only the adulterous women are sent to the monastery, their fortune and wedding gifts being confiscated, although male adultery is registered as an extra- marital relation.

The society from Romania is concerned with women’s reputation and it permits cheated husbands to punish the lover of their wife. Revenge also includes expose the naked wife’s lover in public places, whipp and castration, particularly when the lover pertains to a lower social category, such as the gypsies. Related to their leaders by slavery, there is no difference between the gypsies and animals on lord’s or church property. In that period, the term gypsy is identical with slavery, the word roma didn’t exist, it will be introduced in the 20th century.

To abolish slavery is a new idea, as slave masters have important functions in the political life. The Church preached freedom for the gypsies, in the name of humanity, through the voice of ecclesiastics in the 19th century, although freedom has not come. With the implication of intellectuals in the 1848 movement, the public opinion will be changed in order to free the gypsy slaves and after a decade, this process was translated into legal form and in 1856, “The Law for the Emancipation of All Gypsies in Wallachia” passed.

The characters are Costandin and his son and they are looking for a gypsy slave who has escape from his master, being suspected of an affair with the lord's wife. While Costandin makes comments on every situation, his son takes a more speculative view of the world. On their way they met people of different nationalities, such as : Turks, Russians, Jews, Romanians or Hungarians and each of them brought prejudices against the others.

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English subtitle of the Aferim! Movie

“And them as were still alive, where’d they go? Every which way, like ghosts, on the fields. By October, the town was deserted. All you heard was : „Step aside, it’s the undertakers!” They pilled them together, dead and plagued. They tried to gather them from every corner of town, but the dead stayed in the streets, until the undertakers came. Then they buried them in gardens. And the fearsome death kept on until January.” “Poor souls. Great woe for the Christians!” “There was also thieves dressed as undertakers.” “How so?” “With a red scarf around their necks. They went around thieving, taking money, silverware. People Ned them like death, for they picked up the ill, too, threw them into the wagon and hit them with a bat over the head. But worse still were the living abandoned with no cover on the frozen fields. All around you heard the screams of the miserable souls in the fields of Dudesti. Ah, Christ’s blood! And we, the living, though ourselves dead and wandered around, dazed.”

Look, Satan’s coming! “Aunt, wait!” “Good day to you, constable.” “As good as your soul! Are you scared?” “No.” “The clear sky fears not lightning. Who are you?” “A good soul.” “We’ll see about that. Whence are you coming?” “I’m of Geanache’s. Leana by name.” “I think I know you. Where are you going, you hag?” “Taking my old man to kiss the Virgin’s icon. He is dying and will leave me alone.” “What ails him?” “The fever.” “Go away! It could be the cholera! You’ll kill us.” “You didn’t ask.” “You should have told us yourself, stupid cow! I ought to give your fat ass a whipping. Did you cross the forrest?” “No. I was afraid.” “Are the Gypsy gold panners still in teh forrest?” “I don’t know.” “Where are you taking your man?” “I hope to find him a nun to give him some herbs.” “She’ll give him some bell juice, priest’s song and some spade oil. Filthy plague rat. We have business with the abbot.” “What business?” “A secret from boyar Candescu.”

“Father Superior!” “The poor prays more then the rich, because he has time. Lord be with us.” “Good day, bright lord.” “The constable is here for some enquiries. If you know anything, speak up.” “How many souls here?” “Thirty souls. Ten died.” “Who’s Carin’s

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sister?” “Me, bright lord.” “Where’s he off to, you crow?” “I don’t know. Haven’t seem him since I was sold to the monastery here.” “You don’t know?” “I don’t!” “Tell him!” “Stay out of it, that’s my craft. Crow, what’s your name?” “Pena.” “Want to taste this whip?” “Sure I don’t.” “Where is he, whore? Tell me or I’ll whip all you slaves to death.” “Where is he?” “We don’t know nothing, sir.” “I’ll give you a silver coin.” “We don’t know. The monks beats us all the time, but we don’t know.” “Say what?” “Said we don’t know!” “He went to the gold panners.” “How do you know?” “He told me when we were sowing. Said there’s more freedom there.” “Fine.” “Merciful lord, the coin!” “You’ll get the coin when I find him!” “Back to work, crows! Gypsies, can’t change them.” “Don’t we know it?” “Our own good brandy.” “Enjoy it!” “Worthy of the Wedding at Cana! Our thanks, Father.” “God be with you.” “How about a riddle?” “Let’s hear it!” “Lifeless out of life, life out of lifeless.” “Doomsday.” “No. You say, Ionita.” “The egg, for the hen lays it lifeless and when it hatches, it comes to life. The chicken.” “Go with the Lord.”

“I’m getting lame.” “Father, I’m cold.” “Maybe you cought that fever. Cholera morbus as the big doctors say. You’re such a waste of bread! How’s he going to be an officer? If you slap him, he’ll die of grief, ain’t that you?” “No, faint.” “Watch your mouth. Honour thy mother and father, as the Gospel says, for a father weights more then twelve children.” “Sure I honour you.” “Stab the enemy like a man! This is a sword from Ianina, show some respect! Not bad, the priest’s brandy! Cures any sickness, try some.” “Don’t want to.” “Drink like a man! You don’t taste good brandy, you down it. Crush those Russians!”

“Look at all those lazy crows. Where are you going? Get him, Ionita!” “Stop or I shoot!” “Carin, you bastard!” “I didn’t steal nothing, bright lord.” “Back off, crows!” “He didn-t do anything! Don’t kill him! Spare his life!” “Stay out, or I’ll kill you too! Is he from your camp?” “He’s our Caldasin.” “Why had you run?” “For fear, bright lord.” “Can you read?” “I can’t.” “Here. Don’t drop it.” “…to you, lawkeeper Costandin sin Gheorghe, this letter gives all power to catch the Gypsy slave Carfin Pandoleon: tall of stature, dark of face, who also speaks the Gypsy language. This Gypsy Ned from boyar Iordache Candescu and stole money from a box. Should you not bring said slave, we shall put you in chains and bring upon you great punishment. These we write.” “Enough.”

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“Nasty language these crows have.” “Yes.Fit for devils, not people.” “He only passed by here.” “Where’d he go, then?” “Towards Craiova, or to the next county.” “When did he leave?” “Before sunset, many days ago.” “If you lie to me, we’ll spill your guts.” “I ain’t lying, bright lord. Some bear- naming Gypsies passed by, then your man. My boys gave him some food and off he went.” “If you’ve been crowing out lies, we’ll come back with the posse and kill you like sparrows.” “Bright lord, here’s some gold, so you won’t leave angry.” “Damn you and your gold!”

“Ionita, this is how you scare the crows, if you’re a man! A good butcher doesn’t fear thousands and thousands of sheeps!” “Bad luck! A priest in skirts. Ten years of misfortune. Away, Satan!” “Why do we do that?” “Because devils huck around priests.”

“What happened, honourable, Father?” “This curse wheel, broke off.” “Shall we help, like good Samaritans?” “God bless you, the snakes would have swallowed me alive. God is glad to see two poor souls helping each other. You have an axe there and all you need. What are you doing here?” “A runaway Gypsy slave who stole the boyars money.” “Damn crow! I didn’t see anyone. So he ran away?” “Yes, Father. The crows have no shame anymore. It’ll be end of us when the ass gets at the head and the cunt is in command.” “True, Father!” “I just hope he doesn’t run to the Turks.” “What could he do there?” “He could become a mercenary in Nicopolis. If he does, we’ve lost him. Here, Father!” “God bless Thy servants, amen! Have some holy water.” “To wash us of our many sins.” “Good for you.” “As the Ecclesiastes says: Whatsoever thy hand Gndeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave, where thou goest.” “Well said, my sons! Christ did not rise in vain. I’ll spent the night at Manjoala’s inn. I never travel in the dark for fear of outlaws.” “As for us, first business, then pleasure, we’ll search until the Seven Sisters rise. Isn’t there a holyday coming, Father?” “So it is, forgive me Lord! I hanged You with thread and not with a gold chain, like the bishops.” “But isn’t it faith that matter most?” “Faith, but also deeds!” “Another question, if we may!” “Sure.” “You’re more enlightened, you have praxis.” “Sure.” “Gypsies, is they people or Satan’s spawn? Some say they ain’t human.” “Human like us. Aren’t they

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Christians? I myself baptised two slave cubs recently.” “Monastery slaves?” “Right. Crows are descendants of Ham, son of Noah, cursed by his father to be black. They came here from Egypt. They are Egyptians.” “Is that so?” “Yes.” “What do we call crows to mock them?” “Black crows.” “There are no white crows. How else?” “Maggots.” “What else?” “Darkies. Pharaohs.” “Good, aferim! Pharaohs. Because they came here from Egypt, where they were also slaves, building palaces for the kings.” “When a wise man opens his mouth, open your ears!” “Gypsies are humans. Jews ain’t, they’re beasts.” “If you say so.” “Now you tell me, why are Jews not human?” “Because Jews drinks the blood of Christian children. The priest told us so in church.” “And why do they?” “We don’t know.” “Have you heard of the Giant Jews?” “No.” “Shame on you! Before making mankind, God creted the Giant Jews. Mean, ugly giants. He saw His mistake and turn them into dust. He left just a few, then made Adam and Eve. The Giant Jews multiplied, but grew ever smaller. They are our Jews nowadays.” “We don’t know that.”

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CONCLUSIONS

This thesis is an introduction to screen translation and subtitling in particular. Such an introduction was considered necessary because of the degree to which screen translation depends on moving images themselves. From the moment it came into existence, cinema brought about the creation of a completely new language, which involves three aspects, namely image, sound and words. The problem of translation is how to cope with this threefold creative relationship without losing the viewer at the same time.

The paper is dedicated to a thorough analysis of the history of screen translation methods, such as subtitling from the very beginning of their existence, which coincides with the birth of cinema as a medium, their subsequent growth and development, up to the final stage in which they are today. The whole process of subtitling in particular has been broken down into stages and examined in detail, from the moment a job is assigned by the distributor/client to a subtitling vendor up until the moment the film is screened or broadcast. The advantages and disadvantages of subtitling have also been analysed, as they are important from a subtitler's point of view, in order to stress the advantages and constraints of this translation genre that differentiate it from any other and adapt the translation strategies used in it accordingly. The subtitling process can be summarised in a nutshell as a triple adaptation, as the categories of problems that need to be tackled by the subtitler/translator in the subtitling process are three: the transfer of text from one language (SL) to another (TL), leading to all traditional translation problems; the medium conversion from speech to writing, leading to language style problems; the reduction of the dialogue, leading to cohesion problems. The textual features of film were also analysed at the end of this chapter, in order to explain the notion of audiovisual text, as it is important to establish the identity and characteristics of the Source Text (ST), before we delve any deeper into the strategies used for its most appropriate transfer into the TL.

There is an analysis of the roots of screen translation theory and, in particular, subtitling theory, as these are found in the history of translation theory.

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A literature review of subtitling will also be made and the screen translation models that have been put forth so far will be examined with the view of finding and adapting the most appropriate one for the analysis of the data collected.

The screen translation is examined in the light of different translation theories, in order to investigate the possibility of applying in the process of subtitling approaches that were traditionally reserved for the investigation of traditional translation types. Through the discussion of translation problems that pertain to screen translation and, in particular, subtitling, the main differences of screen translation to other translation modes have also been analysed in detail and their bearing on the translation process noted. Finally, the analysis of screen translation models that completes this chapter together with the proposal of a model specifically designed on the basis of Gottlieb's and Lomheim's work for the needs of this thesis, will serve as the starting point for the analysis of subtitles of a number of films translated from English and the comparison of European subtitle.

After this detailed theoretical discussion, the screen translation has a general perspective of the outside professional world. In this respect it does not differ much from traditional written translation.

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