Lingue inglese II

TEXTUAL

Must distinguish between contexts.

Context of culture: cultural background behind the text and its significance

Notion of culture: Then we have a visible high culture and an invisible culture.

The high culture (behaviours n customs) like Arabic, Chinese, African

They take many things for granted because they think it’s spread knowledge.

Low culture west culture gives a lot of Informations to the text even not that

important, and it’s basically personal so this is why we translators today are

considered cultural mediators.

WRITTEN LANGUAGE SPOKEN LANGUAGE

Halliday distinguish the spoken n written language.

Written: is a product as we can think before texting, we can elaborate and build the

whole text how we want to transfer the concept to the reader, it’s very elaborate and

it is about a thing that we had to learn, we were not born knowing how to write, it’s

also scientific n academic

Spoken language is a process which really determines your communicative

competence as you do not have time to speak.

A process which instantly determines the social relationship of the two parts, then

there is body language also, the 2 figures are face to face,

and you can speak in a different way using different elements and terms as long as

you are there you are surrounded by the same environment and so you can use vague

terms but clears cause off you are meaning this thing.

According to Halliday there are 2 types of language variation.

The register: relative to the used

Dialect: relative to the user

Dialect

Between a dialect and the official language linguistically there are no differences, just

a dialect has just imposed on another one and it became the official language.

Today dialect is a restricted form of language used in a smaller part of territory which

can determine your origin.

Base of pragmatics

Speech act theory

Locutionary act -> a basic act of expression.

- Illocutionary act -> it refers to the function that the speech act is supposed to

perform.

- Perlocutionary act -> it refers to the effect the act is supposed to have.

The locutionary act can represent different functions.

In the speech act we find

Representatives: says an idea (hypothesis, description, claims, statements)

Commisives: the speaker also has to act (threats, swear, promises)

Directives: when the receiver is affected by what is said and has to respond (orders,

requests. challenges, Invitations)

Declaratives: tang what you say is also done practically and has an effect (blessings,

weddings, baptisms, sentencing)

Espressives: shows the speaker feelings.

Verdictives: evaluation through a judgement

PRINCIPLE OF COOPERATION

Another important aspect of pragmatics refers to the “Principle of Cooperation” and is

made by 4 maxims.

QUALITY: to say true things which concerns the topic

 QUANTITY: to say many things some not even relevant and not important which

 make the text longer

RELEVANCE: to say things which belongs to the topics and not things far from

 the main topic of conversation

MANNER: to express in an orderly way n not being weird



Translating poetry

Translation of poetry has always been an important debated topic.

Is it possible or impossible to translate it?

In 19th a Spanish philosopher claimed it was impossible mainly cause of the

differences between SL n TL and even between the source culture n target culture,

apparently something misses.

André Lefevere described seven types of translation into English based on strategies

or methodologies.

. Phonemic translation: to reproduce SL sounds in the TL, works well for onomatopoeia.

. Literal translation: word 4-word translation

. Metrical translation: way too forced tries to reproduce SL metre into TL, adapting the

structure of the SL.

(Like Italian sonnet 2 quatrains and 2 tercets) you try to use the same scheme but

ending up creating unusual patterns.

You should use English sonnet.

. Poetry into prose: the most different one as it changes the structure of the language

and consequently the meaning of poetry.

. Rhymed translation: phonetically appropriate but semantically inappropriate

. Blank verse translation attempts to transfer the most equivalent meaning from the

SL into the TL

. Interpretation: basically, depending on the poet’s interpretation

TRANSLATION OF SONGS

Songs are an important part of our tradition and nowadays of our culture, it’s spread

all over the globe especially today where we have no borders with globalization.

True say to translate music or songs it is so complicated n to do that you need to be

very competent of songs n music, indeed who translates songs is also a musician.

Peter Low formulated the pentathlon principle, like in the sport you have to satisfy 5

criteria.

1 singability: know when n what syllable to stress.

2 sense: you can change the lyrics, keeping the meaning by using metaphors,

synonyms etc.…

3 naturalness: you translate the song as if it was a new song n not a target text taken

by a ST.

4 rhyme: you can work with the rhymes, so reproducing them equally.

5 rhythm: utilizing the same rhythm n metric.

Here we see that also in music you must balance n sacrifice something for suttin else,

it’s all about compromise.

Interpretating songs as a product we have three categories.

1 translation: you say the things in the other language.

2 adaptation: adapting the song to the target text.

3 replacement texts: changing the lyrics with no semantics equality but same tunes

and they fit.

Translation strategies 4 the songs

1 metaphrase: Word 4 word

2 paraphrase: the meaning the concept.

3 omissions:

4 addition:

5 displacement: you move the lyrics in other positions.

You should consider each song n by the way the tt should be immediately

comprehensible.

TRANSLATION OF LITERARY N FILM

TITLES

A literary title is associated with the text and it has to kinda resume the text.

A title can be reader oriented or content oriented, so explaining the reader what the

texts says to to audience or resuming what’s about.

The translation of a title cannot be always literal, as it depends on the title, if it

something concrete, something about the content could even be, but if it is something

metaphorical or a quote, then it is difficult to translate > SUBSTITUTION STRATEGY

Title translation strategies

1 faithful (literal)

2 partial transfer (some variations like omissions or addictions due to stylistic reasons)

3 zero translation (like a name title: Bobby Tarantino)

4 zero translation plus explanation (SL title but with an addiction to be

comprehensible)

5 recreation or adaptation (work on the original title to adapt it: dead poets > l’attimo

fuggente

AVT AUDIOVISUAL TRANSLATION

We are referring to those products, text where we find different types of

communications codes, such as language, images, and sounds. Movies, animations, tv

series, videogames.

These texts are extremely complicated cause we have simultaneously audio, visuals

and SL the other codes together, so the trick is the fact of translating all them

elements together.

We find semiotics with verbal n nonverbal correlation.

ATV modes can be divided in

1 dubbing: It means to translate the dialogues of a product from the SL to TL,

It is very important to know that when u are dubbing interlingually you have to

reproduce the same effects of the ST, the difficult side of this job refers to

synchronization.

Lips, movements, attitude, tone, expression have to be reproduced.

We have even intralingual dubbing so like an English film with a strong English accent

which has to be translated into American cause of linguistical features which are not

easy to go over for the target audience.

2 subtitling: the dialogues but written, have to be synchronized, to remain visible

enough to be read by the viewer. We can find intralingual subtitles, useful for

practicing language or when the communication it’s culturally, dialectally strict for the

viewer.

We can also find interlingual subtitles ofc when we don’t know the SL and might be no

dubbed version for our language, in this case the subtitles should try to be more

faithful as possible to the SL dialogue.

3 voiceover: simultaneously the ST and the TT are flowing, just the SL is very low n the

TL is the one we have to hear.

4 narration: similar to voice over but it is prepared.

5 free commentary: used like a kind of paraphrase, to make a text more informal or

easy to understand for the ones listening.

6 interpreting: mostly live translation > translating David Luiz interview after UCL final

2012

7 live subtitling: no time to prepare subtitles, automatic.

8 audio description: an intersemiotic translation with accessibility for people

9 subtitles for deaf or hard of hearing: reporting visually or written the sounds.

10 surtitling for theatres or opera: on a screen the sang words are translated.

11 fansubbing: born in the 80’s with animes it’s an unofficial subtitling made by fans,

with no rules or similar, made by fans, by the time it became so popular solution and

today we can find fansubbing on series or movies. In the last few years, after 2000’s

boom it was a little bit hided cause it’s not 100% legal.

REMAKES > Adaptation or recreation of the product for the target audience

The origin of AVT are intertitles, used in silent films are texts printed on cardboard

which kinda represent the true action of what is written. By the time intertitles

disappeared and so today we have multilingual dubbing and subtitling, dubbing really

spread mostly for economic interests.

SUBTITLING: It preserves the authenticity, it’s a faster process and cheaper ofc, useful

to learn the language

Anyway, it distracts audience from the images as it requires attention and does not

allow more ppl to speak their parts.

We find some aspects which appears in a verbal dialogue but not in the written form, it

must be synchronized, clear and comprehensible.

DUBBING: The attention of the audience is focused on the images, so it’s more natural

to understand n to follow the product, mostly for children n ppl who do not have the

possibility to read.

It’s an expensive solution n the show loses in originality n foreignness.

The aim of dubbing is to not let the audience feeling that it is a dubbed product.

We do not have a voice actor for each actor, so we can find the same voice adapted

for more people, the difficult side it’s the fact of synchro as it does not have to seem

weird or out time, everything needs to be on the same line, synchro is the key, lip

synchro, body synchro, tone synchro, really has to be on the same line, it is expensive,

difficult, as sometimes it is needed to find solutions over things which are not

translatable, cause of cultural, sociological, linguistical elements

SUBTITLING PROCESS

We find 6