Effectiveness of a glossary of security expressions in error predictability and translation performance of movie translators

Abstract

Hundreds of thousands of strategic movies and TV series are being produced every year and almost all of them get translated into so many different languages. The present paper is an attempt to examine the role of a particular type of glossary on the translation performance of movie translators. In this study, efforts have been made to develop the first cinematic glossary of security terms for movie translators. This bilingual glossary is compiled based on the errors Iranian movie translators have committed while translating this genre of movies. The main body of this glossary was obtained from the translated screen plays of 30 popular action movies in English. In the second phase of the project, 30 translators were assigned with a translation task comprised of movie extracts. The translators had to do the translation task without having the proposed glossary in the pretest stage and in the posttest stage, with an interval of one month, the same translation task was given to the same translators with the glossary. Data was analyzed in the SPSS Software and the results of a t-test showed that the difference between participants` pretest and posttest scores was statistically significant indicating that the proposed glossary was effective in the translation performance of the participants. Findings further showed that the proposed glossary had the potentials to predict the possible errors of movie translators. Key words: Terminology, cinematic glossary, movie translators.