Proceedings - Translation Concepts

MuTra 2005 – Challenges of Multidimensional Translation : Conference Proceedings
Henrik Gottlieb
6.1 The stuff that texts are made of: Semiotics in translations
In Tab. 8, various emblematic types of translation – all of them stamping their mark on the
language communities in which they are common and favored, are compared. As parameters
for this comparison I have used the five defining features of subtitling (listed in section 5.2.1).
The second column lists – for each type – the translational category in which it belongs,
as stipulated in the taxonomy in tables 1 and 2.
The ‘ambiguous’ notation for voice-over in the third column indicates that this type of
revoicing is sometimes made on the spot.
The void signs (Ø) in the third column from the right illustrate that the designation
‘synchronous’ is neither relevant to drama nor to literary translations. Both are presented to
the public without any temporal links to the original works.
Finally, polysemiotic types in which one semiotic channel carries less than 5% of the
semantic load (cf. Tab. 4) are considered to operate without that channel.
6.2 What translations do to people: Audience benefits of selected types
Where Tab. 8 used pluses and minuses to indicate whether a certain requirement was fulfilled
or not, Tab. 9 uses zeros and stars (asterisks, to be exact), as we are no longer dealing with
binary oppositions, but rather with degrees on a cline between two extremes.
The zero sign (0) indicates total lack of the quality relevant to the particular column,
while four stars represents the optimum. As a case in point, on affordability – a quite central
parameter in the translation business – dubbing is rated a two-star enterprise, while its two
rivals are handed four stars each. With dubbing ten times more costly than both subtitling and
voice-over, one might find two stars a bit too kind; the reason, of course, is that domestic
productions (whether remakes or original programs) are even more expensive: hence the
single star in that cell.
As in the previous table, the void sign (Ø) indicates irrelevance. In this table it only
appears once (in the foreign-culture mediation column) as an illustration of the futility in
trying to estimate how ‘foreign’ a domestic program is likely to be. Naturally, some TV
genres tend to be almost claustrofobically local, while other programs (documentaries, for
instance) may contain more ‘exotic’ content than found in certain imports.
With these introductory remarks, I hope the tables will tell their tale of likenesses and
differences, of assets and deficits of the selected specimens of the vast reservoir of
translations that surround us.
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