Globalization, Subtitling and Its Importance - Essay Example

ISSUES IN SUBTITLING Introduction Globalization is on the rise. In an era of high awareness and equal opportunities there is hardly any give for anyproduct to be biased towards a specific target market. This case is more so for movies, which are primarily created for entertainment purposes. Saying that a movie made in Hollywood should contain only English language is neither appropriate nor very wise for film producers. They are not only creating a bad image for themselves in the international market, but more importantly, losing on huge revenue because even in the most underdeveloped countries, the trend towards watching movies is on the rise. This is where film translation fills the gap. Types of film translation There are only two major forms of film translation methods available: Dubbing Dubbing is basically recording new audio over the original audio to make the content of the film more understandable and domestic to the target audience. This method gained popularity because the audience does not have to read any titles on the screen and math it to what's going on in the movie simultaneously. This makes it ideal for translating a whole movie into a completely new language with a more satisfied audience. Subtitling This is rather different from dubbing. It basically provides a translation in the form of a caption at the bottom of the movie screen of the spoken source language. This has its own advantages in the sense that the content of each dialogue is synchronized and it is therefore least altered compared to the source dialogue. This gives the audience some form of learning of the foreign language which is the source language. This paper specifically deals with subtitling and its related issues. It does not mean that other forms of translation are not worthy of studying, but for clarity and time constraints these topics will be covered. Subtitling and its importance Source language countries like the United States and the United Kingdom there is fairly less demand for subtitles. Where the importance is greatly felt is in countries where movies made by these countries are exported to, like France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Greece, Slovenia, Croatia, Portugal and others. These countries find subtitles helpful because they know some English and the presence of subtitles helps them in understanding the film better. If we look at the other side of the world we have countries like India which does not know how to speak a whole sentence in English or even spell their own name so they prefer having dubbed films. Issues in Subtitling As good an idea that subtitling may sound right now, it actually poses quite a few problems to the translators. Culture based issues American movies presently dominate the western world. Eastern and Arabic countries prefer to watch movies which are closer to their own lifestyles and daily scenarios. It hasn't helped by the fact either that America is always picking on these underdeveloped countries which has created an anti American belief in the natives of these countries. This is why translators who translate English movies in the native languages of these countries need to be very cautious of not including very pro American words which might offend these people who come from very different cultures. Inexperienced audiences English is increasing in popularity all over the world. This is one reason why globalization is also sometimes jokingly referred to as Americanisation. However, the fact remains that even in countries like Pakistan, education in English language is on the rise and students in private institutions find it easier to study courses in English rather than in Urdu, which is their national language. This however, causes a problem. Whenever these type of audiences watch a movie, they tend to make their own translations and disregard the actual sub titles as the right translations. This creates a difference in the understanding of the movie especially if it's a complex plot. It might leave the audience completely baffled and at a complete loss to understand the movie altogether. Obstruction Audiences which are fluent in the source language tend to find it distracting to have sub titles on the screen because they are placed in a highly visible place and it becomes hard to not read them and results in them deriving lesser satisfaction than they normally would. Shortcuts One of the worst issues sub titling is facing are translators taking shortcuts to translate the dialogues. In their efforts to cut short dialogues to deliver only the core concepts of the script, they damage the original script. This means that they night successfully manage to get their message across, but some of the original flavor of how the dialogue was said and the tone with which it was said is lost. This makes the movies at times boring and very monotonous for the target audience. Consider the translators creating subtitles for a gangster movie. They would usually cut out almost every swear word and irrelevant slang used as part of their character. But, these small alterations add up at the end of the movie to make a drastic change as the audience does not feel that they were actually watching a gangster movie as their perceived gangsters had surprisingly good English grammar and manners. Onomatopoeic expressions These are verbal emotional expressions which are usually understandable to any audience from any culture such as anger being showed in subtitles as "GRRR!!" This has created some problems as including such childish translations makes audiences feel they are being mocked for not knowing the source language. They feel that they are being made fun of by the producers and translators. Even so the translators continue adding these subtitles and are turning a blind eye to the issue. Conclusion Subtitles are one of those inventions which are designed to make movies more understandable so a wider audience can be pleased. Like every invention and idea, it has its flaws, but they are not enough to count this out as one of the best brainwaves in cinema. Works Cited Atom Egoyan, Ian Balfour (2004) Subtitles: On The Foreignness Of Film. MIT Press Tamar Liebes (2003) American Dreams, Hebrew Subtitles: Globalization from the Receiving End. Hampton Press Frederic Chaume. Film Studies and Translation Studies: Two Disciplines at Stake in Audiovisual Translation. Retrieved March 30, 2008, from website http://www.erudit.org/revue/meta/2004/v49/n1/009016ar.pdf Agnieszka Szarkowska (2005) The Power of Film Translation, retrieved March 30, 2008 from website http://www.accurapid.com/journal/32film.htm Read More