Minne reaaliat kadonneet? Suomenkieliset tekstitykset venäläisessä TV-sarjassa

Authors

• Mikhail Mikhailov Tampereen yliopisto

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.61200/mikael.129633

Keywords:

audio-visual translation, culture-bound elements, domestication, foreignization, multimodality, omission, subtitling

Abstract

Culture-bound elements (CBEs) were one of the very first challenges of translation to be recognized. Some scholars have tried to study the use of CBEs in audio-visual translation with approaches employed in research into literary translation. AV translation, however, is very different from literary translation. In most cases the translator's solutions are dictated by lack of space and/or time. The aim of this research was to investigate the ways in which CBEs function in different environments and to evaluate their importance. A literary text, its translation, and a subtitled version of its film adaptation were compared. More than 1,600 occurrences of CBEs were found in the source text, while less than 200 in the subtitles. The loss of CBEs during subtitling is often a result of omission or domestication. These are obviously the preferred strategies in AV translation. Nevertheless, not all "lost" CBEs are actually lost. Most of the "lost" items do occur at the visual and/or audio levels, i.e. the carriage (troika), the inn (postojalyj dvor) and the peasant (muzhik) do not actually disappear. Thus, in many cases the audience can see or hear many of those culture-specific items which are introduced verbally in the original text.