Politics, politicians, political terms and subtitling: House of Cards

Abstract

The present article provides samples of four Romanian subtitles of the highly popular TV series, House of Cards. As the series fits the description of “politicotainment” (Riegert 2007), we check how adequately the subtitlers render certain political terms that might represent challenges due to the lack of established equivalents or different political systems. After a brief introduction which offers the necessary background knowledge to the series, we present various definitions of politics and politicians, starting from Machiavelli’s famous description of politicians in The Prince. We then present four categories involving politics, namely political functions, bodies and organisations, political events, and finally documents. The conclusion argues that due to globalisation and the spread of entertainment, successful TV series may reach millions of viewers; thus, there is no place for translation errors in subtitles on a professional level. Although our database contains more than 800 entries collected from only two episodes, we do not wish to draw far-reaching conclusions as the entire series contains 73 episodes and, however famous, it is only of many political series. Nevertheless, the four categories contain around 130 political terms, of which we discuss more than 30 in detail. The research is based on several English and Romanian explanatory dictionaries, as well as a dozen bilingual dictionaries containing political terms. Thus, we offer a glimpse into the various discrepancies between two official subtitles (provided by the DVD release and the Netflix subtitles) and two amateur fansubs freely available online. Although binge watching triggers binge translation, subtitlers should never lose sight of quality, well-reflected in the subtitles carried out during the ever-shrinking allotted time.