Compliments in fansubs and in professional subtitles: The case of Lost

Abstract

This contribution aims to explore the occurrences of compliments and their translations in professional subtitles and fansubs, i.e. subtitles produced by non-professional translators. As an amateur phenomenon, fansubbing does not have to comply with the norms that govern professional subtitling and generally exhibits greater accuracy in rendering idiolectal traits, character identity and intertexual references. For this reason, a comparison between the translation of compliments in professional and non-professional subtitles seemed quite promising, as evidence from previous studies suggests that socio-pragmatic meaning often tends to be jeopardized in interlinguistic subtitles. Their different aims and requisites make it possible for fansubs to grant much more attention to these aspects of language, compliments included, as useful indicators of the social forces at play. This paper offers the results of a linguistic comparison between these two types of subtitles for the American TV series Lost (2004-2010), a popular TV series around the world. The subject matter and the rapid rhythm of the series make the presence of ritual talk quite reduced and abrupt, but the analysis of the rendering of compliments in the DVD subtitles and in the fansubs produced by the two largest Italian fansubber communities, i.e. Itasa (http://www.italiansubs.net) and Subsfactory (http://www.subsfactory.it/) surprisingly shows no major discrepancies. Compliments in fansubs and in professional subtitles: The case of Lost