Concepts of domestication and foreignization
Culture gives rise to language, and so culture and translation are closely connected. Each society has its values, culture, and ideology. The translation conveys the meanings as well as the ideological and cultural values, norms, beliefs from the original culture to the target culture. Meanings in both original and target languages are extremely impacted by their context of culture, majorly in business translation. A statement in the source language may appear easy to translate; however, it may contain cultural subtleties that, if it’s not accounted for, an opposite meaning than the one intended may be derived. This means that translation that lacks a deep cultural context may be so dangerous. There is an existence of a lot of practices in source culture but do not exist in the target culture. Belief systems that are held deeply vary from one culture to another, and such entities have words or phrases whereby the meanings are distinct to that one language and cannot be duplicated to other target languages. Such unique cultural features can only be translated by an individual who is steeped in both cultures of the original and target language. There is one kind of translation that is so common nowadays, and it attracts lots of audiences of different ages, which is known as Audiovisual translation. A translator’s role in the translation of cultural aspects in Audiovisual form becomes more complicated since it causes conflict due to the difference in values of the original and target culture. This discussion will be about the impact culture has on translation in the Audiovisual field.
Audiovisual translation is defined as the transfer of language from the original language to the target language, which is contained in products or items such as films, television programs, musicals, and websites. This type of translation is accompanied by a lot of difficulties when translating cultural contexts than the standard written text (Cintas & Anderman 2008). When watching a film, reading of words or listening to the dialogue is not the only thing that one focuses on, but also you experience various codes such as watching their expressions, gestures, and hearings from the background noises. Each of these modality has a contribution to the Audiovisual translation, and fundamental meaning is represented to the final comprehension. The receiver of the message is able to understand fully if only he/she recognizes all signals. Subtitling and dubbing are the common modes of Audiovisual translation that began afterword war 11, and they were the favorite mode of translation, and each nation chose the better mode depending on the diverse factors.
Understanding the reasons for the growth of Audiovisual translation calls for analyzing the concepts of domestication, localization and foreignization. Localization is the process that opposes the spread of globalization which adapts a specific kind of content such as websites and videogames to a particular region or country. Translation of films was done through the localization process in the past since globalization was not at its maximum. Audiovisual translation and localization are not so similar since the latter is more complicated as it is meant to meet cultural expectations and help individuals understand various features of original language and culture (Jiménez-Crespo 2013). It is not easy to localize sometimes since the translators have to make an effort in providing a proper solution in getting the methods that translate the references of the culture that is closely related to that source state. Another translation strategy is domestication whereby it happens when the text gets adapted to the target text culture and the audience gets to understand better.
The domesticated product should be fluent and transparent so that the appearance should not seem strange to the targeted audience who needs to acquire the information more naturally. Generally, domestication refers to executing a transparent style by eradicating all the components that sound peculiar to the target audience and substitute it with popular elements (Paloposki, 2011). The foreignization strategy is the translation whereby various significant traces of the source text are left out. The cultural component of a context is manifested in the text translated and it’s not adapted to the expected audience. So Audiovisual translation is not as complicated as the domestication and foreignization as the part of language is related closely to the images and so there is need of paying attention to the connection between the spoken part and images so as not to contrast results (Paloposki, 2011).
Modes of audiovisual translation
There are various types of AVT modalities which involve subtitling, dubbing and voice-over that are used in doing translations from one cultural group to another. Dubbing dominates over other variants of audiovisual translation and its used widely in Germany and Italy. However much its used widely, it’s not a simple process as attention has been paid a lot by the translator while transferring the written language on the source script showing in the screen, adjusting it to natural and be able to synchronize it to the images (Chaume 2012). It includes replacing the track of sound of the original speech with a record of sound that duplicates the source message to the targeted language. It’s a type of audiovisual translation that represents an audio content that replaces the original audio content and it can also be termed as covert translation. Actually, dubbing forms an illusion that the people acting on films are communicating with a similar language as the spectator and this makes this process of translation include various elements like intonation, phonetics and rhythm. The dubbing process is not as easy as it sounds. Usually, a television series or film is chosen and then a decision is made to dub it so that the movie can be watched by different people from different cultures in the world. the dubbing actors are chosen depending on age, gender and other factors.
Dubbing director as well as the screen adaptor are chosen by the dubbing company. before beginning with the dubbing process, the original language duplicate material is given to various translators who will be responsible for translating the script. The translation is done word-for-word and then later the translation is made to adapt to time sync and then arranged to align with the lip sync. The director has to make sure that all synchronization factors are respected so that the whole thing may seem natural. Later the voice actors rehearse memorizing the timing of those lines and each of them records their parts independently. This shows how dubbing is time-consuming, labor-intensive and an expensive mode of translation (Chaume 2012). Another allegation is usually on lip-synching whereby there is authenticity loss since the original voice is normally substituted by someone else’s voice. Also. Dubbing denies the target audience the capability to be in contact with foreign cultures and languages since it normally involves domestication. Dubbing has been practised in Germany for a while now and about 80% of their television programs and foreign language films broadcasted and screened in Germany are dubbed. The importance of dubbing is that the audience is always able to watch a film without having to follow up on translation texts that appear on the screen that interrupt the reception that occurs in subtitling. Also, dubbing is a form of translation that is professionalized and it’s more of viewer-oriented.
The other mode of audiovisual translation which is the oldest is subtitling and it is common majorly in English-speaking nations. It is also referred to as overt translation. Subtitling entails of a brief and precise text that appears mostly on the lower side of the screen when the characters are talking. This enables people from different languages and cultures to understand what is being said in a film (Cintas, & Remael 2014). Subtitling connects with surtitling although the primary difference is that surtitling is whereby the texts appear at the top of a screen and this is mostly noticed in theatres as the translation or the transcribing of the lyrics are done so that the people who cannot understand what is being said they can read. Creation of subtitles requires translators to come up with something that goes along with the spoken language and images. however, subtitles have various constraints as one of them is combining between watching images and reading texts at a particular speed.
The period on which subtitles remain on the screen mainly is determined by the dialogues’ speed and the readers’ estimated speed. And sometimes mistakes can arise due to the contrast of visual and audio content done by the translator. Subtitles can be a form of distraction since the spectator will be in a position where he/she is attempting to read, listen and watch images at a go and this can be so disorienting. This aspect can really affect slow readers as their attention is shifted from the visual content. Another constraint is the spatial issue whereby there is always a lack of enough space on the screen and so the unnecessary information of what is said is always erased. So as to fulfill the desires and expectations of spectators in allowing subjectivity and unity, most distributors in many nations have avoided the use of subtitles and they have preferred dubbing technique in audiovisual translation. The advantage of subtitling is that there is always a possibility that the voices of the real actors would be heard (Cintas, & Remael 2014). This is an excellent opportunity that allows the audience to have contact with the voice of an actor as he/she is performing, an aspect that is denied in dubbing since the dubber may not be perfect. The voices of the actors essential as well if the cadences and accents are the primary features of the movie. Besides, subtitling is not expensive compared to dubbing. Also, the usefulness and importance of subtitling are proven by the large interlingual subtitling presence for alien languages in fantasy movies.
Voice-over is another mode of audio translation which is said to be in the dubbing category. Voice-over consists of reproducing the original communication with its translation read by an off-screen voice. Normally, the original soundtrack volume is decreased but still heard from the background and the voice –over is usually heard after two seconds of the start of the original speech. It is a strategy majorly used in documentaries and interviews. Several countries have chosen to use voice-over in translating many of the foreign films. This type of audiovisual translation encounters some challenges since there are some inadequacies such as naturalness absence especially when one individual is the one doing the translation for all actors. In such a scenario, the one who does the talking doesn’t act but maintains a flat voice and remains natural and this results to boredom. All these forms of audiovisual translation have been impacted by the cultural differences that are present in the world. Culture plays a role in AVT and so it has broadly impacted this form of translation. It is complicated when culture is involved in audiovisual translation since humor is involved. Humor is linked with culture and so. Culture impact audiovisual translation as it has a role in humor translation. Translating humor from one culture to another in audiovisual translation faces various obstacles and it can be portrayed in both subtitling and dubbing.
conclusion
In conclusion, it is realized that it is never possible sometimes to bridge the gaps in languages especially when dealing with particular factors that relate to culture. The different cultures and values have continually influenced translation and it is sometimes impossible to come across the equivalents of the culture which is targeted. The aim of this essay was analyzing how culture has had an impact on some particular aspects of AVT. Audiovisual translation is always hidden from website to movies, from films to TV series, but it has a significant role that is often not considered. For people from a different culture be able to watch movies from actors of different cultures, the strategy of audiovisual translation is expressed in various modes which include subtitles and dubbing which represents the most popular and most used modes of translation. The decisions made on dubbing are mostly criticized since the choices of translation are not purely effective because of the constraints felt on lip synchronization and images. subtitling has more freedom in this issue however it doesn’t mean that it is free from constraints. There are other modes which have gained importance recently which include the voice-over and many others such as fan-subbing.