Testing the retranslation hypothesis for audiovisual translation: the films of Volker Schlöndorff subtitled into English

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article uses the Descriptive Translation Studies framework to examine the English subtitles for two German films directed by Volker Schlöndorff: Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum [The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum], directed in 1975, and Die Blechtrommel [The Tin Drum], from 1979, with a view to testing the earliest formulation of the retranslation hypothesis. Using the concept of translational norms as one of its main heuristic tools, this research examines an audiovisual corpus consisting of five different sets of DVD subtitles from the two films: three from Die Blechtrommel, dating from 1995, 2002 and 2010, and two from Katharina Blum, dated 2003 and 2009, thus spanning the era from the advent of digitisation and the beginning of DVD to the rise of TV and film streaming services. The data is analysed to investigate the orientation, in terms of source culture or target culture, of the translation strategies that have been activated by the subtitlers when encountering culture-specific references, and then to pinpoint any diachronic trends that come to the fore. The analysis concludes that the retranslation hypothesis does not apply in this corpus; possible reasons for this finding are discussed.