Documentary Translation Research Articles

Research on the English Translation Strategies for the Subtitle of the News Documentaries in the Context of "Chinese Culture Going Outside"

Documentary communication plays a significant role in strengthening international communication capacities. Documentaries are easily understood and recognized by people from diverse cultural backgrounds due to their credibility, appeal, and artistry. Under the background of Chinese culture "going outside", domestic documentaries bear the heavy responsibility of exporting excellent traditional culture and promoting the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. As a cultural and artistic provider, it displays a truly three-dimensional and comprehensive image of China, and is devoted to telling Chinese stories well and spreading Chinese voices. The documentary text has information that directly reflects the corresponding culture, which makes its subtitles an effective carrier of cultural transmission. This paper takes the news documentary "the CPC Way" as a case study, which analyzes the current situation of translating news documentary subtitles, discusses the challenges involved in documentary translation and proposes appropriate translation strategies. With the aim of encouraging more scholars to pay attention to the translation of documentary subtitles, in order to help Chinese culture "going outside".

”Olis sen voinut suoraankin kääntää”

In the Finnish authorised translator’s examination, translation tasks should be carried out in a documentary way, whereby the translation retains the features of the source culture and does not adopt the conventions of the target culture. At the same time, the translation should follow the norms of the target language and avoid expressions that are not typical of the target language. In my article, I examine what culture-boundness and translation of culture-bound expressions mean in the context of the authorised translator’s examination. I ask how examinees and assessors deal with culture-bound expressions. Based on my analysis of the examination translations and interviews, examinees seem to be aware of the principle of documentary translation but do not always associate it with culture-bound expressions. As for assessors, they evaluate culture-bound expressions in terms of how these can be translated either directly or in some other way. The results suggest that both culture and documentary translation need to be considered on a case-by-case basis, considering the specificities of language pairs. Therefore, the recommendations regulating the assessment of the examination translations should be taken with sound judgement.

On voice-over translation of documentaries in Iran: A synchronization perspective

ABSTRACT Voice-over is a mode of transfer in the audiovisual translation in which the original soundtrack is heard simultaneously in the background. The reason for the double-voice hearing is proof of the products’ authenticity and translators’ faithfulness to the target viewers. The technical factor of synchrony (adapting the length of the soundtrack, matching the original and target soundtracks, the soundtrack and visuals, and the soundtrack and body movements) raises the quality of voiced-over products. Voice-over is widely used in the translation of documentaries in many countries including Iran. The present study investigated documentary voice-over on Iran’s national television from an isochrony perspective seeking to examine to what extent the international isochrony standards are followed and where the Iranian voice-over profession stands. For this purpose, a documentary was selected and analyzed based on framework triangulated by the researchers. The results revealed that, in practice, voice-over narrators adhered strongly to synchronization techniques in most segments of the selected documentary. The study demonstrates that documentary voice-over translation techniques, particularly the synchronization principles, are frequently followed on Iran’s television, although with slight modifications they would even improve more.

A Functional Approach to Linguistic Problems in Islamic Subtitling

This study examines the linguistic challenges encountered in subtitling Islamic TV programs from Arabic to English. The formal and cultural discrepancies between the two languages cause some gaps in translation between them given their different lexical and grammatical systems. Linguistic features such as polysemy, semantic change, idioms as well as description of grammatical rules are common pitfalls that cause mistranslations in this area. These difficulties are further complicated by the space and time constraints which limit the amount of text shown on the screen and, thus, prevent the subtitler from clarifying ambiguous sections of the ST. Christian Nord’s functional translation-oriented text analysis model is employed to analyze a sample of four real-life examples taken from programs broadcast on Al-Arabiya Channel and Iqraa TV. Findings show that documentary translation is suitable for the problems of lexical complexity while instrumental translation can overcome the difficulties of translating idioms and description of Arabic grammar to English-speaking viewers. Besides, the strategies of omission, condensation and compensation seem to be a necessity together with creative adaptations to maximize the communicativeness of the subtitles.

Paremiology of Palestinian Month-Related Proverbs: Inimitability and Translatability

Proverbs are deemed to be the products or by-products of the culture, a predominant type of which is, what we may term, Month-Related Proverbs (MRPs). The present article examines sociolinguistic (MRPs) utilised by the doyen(ne) of Palestinians, consisting of a corpus of thirty MRPs which are drawn from ṣaḥīfat al-Quds (Al-Quds Daily Newspaper), Dictionary of Palestinian Proverbs (1999) by Lubani and A Dictionary of Modern Lebanese Proverbs, with conflated Arabic proverbs with English translation by Freyha (1995). The article shows the functions of MRPs are mainly (1) to take great pride in their cultural heritage that seemed to have passed from one generation to the next; (2) to recapitulate various aspects of peasant life— memories of a bygone age; (3) to warn against unfavourable weather conditions over a year. The article examines the translations in view of Nord’s (1991 and 1997) documentary translation and instrumental translation. The findings of the article show that documentary translation seems to be considered the most appropriate translation method opted for to inculcate the values of Palestinian culture in Target Language (TL) audience.

The Importance of Higher Education in the Success of the Translator: The Case of Iranian Educated and Uneducated Translators

The present study investigated the important role higher education plays in the success of the translator in his/her profession. To end this, the researcher prepared a translation test consisting of 12 short literary texts for data collection from both educated and uneducated translators who were equally divided into two groups. The 20 judges were invited to judge the level of communicative function of the translations made by both groups of translators on the basis of a five-point scale on a continuum from "Uncommunicative" to "Communicative" that was designed according to Nord’s (2018) functionalist approach. As the results indicated, the educated translators produced the highest communicative translations that put into Nord’s instrumental translation category. By contrast, the uneducated translators made the translations with the average level of communication that led their translation to be placed into documentary translation category. In conclusion, the educated translators, who held a master’s degree in Translation Studies, were more successful in producing communicative translations because of their profound knowledge of translation theories and mastery over translation strategies. This gives the indication of the utmost importance of higher education in the achievement of the translators in their career.

Cultural Pitfalls in Islamic Subtitling

This research explores the challenges of translating cultural references in Islamic TV programs from Arabic into English. Subtitling is a constrained type of translation due to the space and time limitations on the screen. Apart from this challenge, the subtitler has to deal with cultural pitfalls that cannot be separated from a stormy global background that includes political and ideological tensions between the Muslim World and the West. This study investigates these difficulties, attempts to suggest solutions to them and identify the basic qualifications of competent subtitlers of this kind of programs. The ultimate purpose is to help establish healthy communication between Muslim and Western countries through translation which is an act of cultural mediation. To achieve this, three real-life examples and their subtitles have been selected from Iqraa TV programs and analyzed using Christiane Nord’s functional model. Results show three types of cultural pitfalls typical of Islamic TV programs, i. e., Qur’anic allusions, Sunnah allusions and politicized issues. Instrumental translation has been found to be effective in overcoming these cultural pitfalls, while documentary translation proved to be ineffective due to the space limitations and its lack of clarity. Creativity, flexibility, and cultural sensitivity are indispensable for the subtitler to bridge the communication gaps between the source and target cultures.

Draamateoste tõlkimise teooria ja reaalsus Anton Tšehhovi näidendi „Kirsiaed“ mõnede tõlgete analüüsi näitel / Translation theory and reality: The case of multiple translations of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard into German

Draamateoste tõlkimise teooria ja reaalsus Anton Tšehhovi näidendi „Kirsiaed“ mõnede tõlgete analüüsi näitel / Translation theory and reality: The case of multiple translations of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard into German

Comparative Law for Legal Translation: Through Multiple Perspectives to Multidimensional Knowledge

With this paper, I suggest a multiperspectivist approach for assessing conceptual legal knowledge with relevance for the translation of legal terms in translation between two or more different legal systems. The basic quest is to present a set of categories and analytical approaches for legal translators to generate (collect) and classify knowledge necessary for their professional conceptual needs. In this paper, I will focus on the translational, juridical, and cognitive basics of such an approach. In order to cope with the broad range of possible translational purposes in different translational situations and choose relevantly between alternative formulations, translators need methods and strategies in order to construct the necessary conceptual knowledge. This presupposes a broad knowledge structured in ways that enable the translator to recognize relevant characteristics of legal systems and relevant differences between different legal systems. Concerning translational theory, the basis is the functional theory of translation as adapted to legal translation, based upon the idea of translation as choice between alternatives and distinguishing between documentary translation, at one end of a scale, and instrumental translation, at the other. This basis and the distinction presuppose relevant knowledge from comparative law. Hence, existing approaches and fundamental tenets concerning comparative law inside and outside of translation are presented. In order for knowledge to be presented in a manageable way with relevance to translators, I work with the approach of concept frames as basic unit of knowledge gathering and categorization. This way of presenting knowledge is embedded more generally in a knowledge communication approach, focusing on knowledge asymmetry. Within this general framework, the multiperspectivist approach combines insights from cultural studies (especially the study of law-as-culture), law as a disciplinary social system, and communicative interaction generating meanings in legal communication, also across national borders.

Eco-Translatology Perspective on the English Translation of Subtitles in the Documentary Eight Hundred Years of Chu State

Based on the concept of translational eco-environment, oriental ecological wisdom, and the Darwinian principle of natural selection, the concepts of eco-translatology and relevant theoretical ideas were proposed and explained by Professor Hu Gengshen from 2001 on. This interdisciplinary theory of translation studies and ecology considers translation as a translator's adaptation and selection activities, and its translation methods include the linguistic, cultural, and communication aspects. Eight Hundred Years of Chu State is a large-scale documentary about Chu culture. It systematically tells about the great history of the 800 years of Chu State, interpreting the brilliant and splendid civilization of Chu with its magnificent cultural relics, and revealing the laws worth pondering behind its ups and downs. Taking as examples the Chinese-English subtitle translations of the documentary Eight Hundred Years of Chu State, this paper aims to take the interdisciplinary theoretical perspective of eco-translatology to explore its implications for documentary translation from the linguistic, cultural, and communicative dimensions. Aiming also to improve the English translation of Chinese-made documentaries to a higher level, this paper hopes to promote the spread of Chinese traditional culture, especially Jingchu culture, and to enhance the world's understanding of China and its splendid culture.

Functionalism in Translation: A Case Study Investigation into Translation literature based on Nord's Documentary vs. Instrumental Dichotomy

The main objective of the current study was to analyze a Persian Translation of a short story from functionalism perspective and Documentary vs. Instrumental Dichotomy. To this end, the Persian translation of the book titled “The Little Prince” was analyzed and compared with its English version (indirect translation from French) to see if the Persian translation was more documentary or instrumental oriented in nature. The theoretical framework of the study was Nord’s dichotomy of instrumental vs. documentary translation. The book was analyzed at the sentence and above sentence level and covered the whole book. As the qualitative analysis showed, the translation of the book was instrumental oriented, and the book reads like an original in the target language.

Political TV documentary subtitling in China: a critical discourse analysis perspective

ABSTRACTThis study is premised on the hypothesis that subtitling for political documentaries is bound to be the subject of ideo-political manipulation. Given China’s changing socio-political landscape and evolving political representations, it is of interest to examine the forms of mediation enacted by institutions and other parameters at work to influence the subtitling practices of political documentaries. A critical discourse analysis of political documentary translation was thus carried out, not merely as an investigation of the textual features, but also as an integrated socio-cultural projection to account for the subtitling choices. Two TV political documentaries were selected for analysis in terms of the context of production and reception, censorship, subtitling norms and subtitling choices. The findings reveal that although the subtitles in political documentaries can be delivered in a pleasingly functional and mediated form, ideo-political factors still constitute the underlying forms of manipulation that operate in a less visible fashion in the new era of China’s governance.

TECHNOLOGY OF MEDICINES AND GALENICAL PREPARATIONS: THE CASE OF PRESCRIPTION FORMULASFROM “ANTIDOTARIUM” NICOLAI BY NICHOLAS OF SALERNO

Introduction. This study deals with the problem of similarity of the principles and approaches of drug technologies in the medieval manuscript “Antidotarium Nicolai” by Nicholas of Salerno with modern pharmaceutical technologies.The aim of study is a textual investigation of “Antidotarium Nicolai”, a detailed research of the content of the manuscript, recipes and technologies for making medicines.Materials and methods. In order to achieve this goal, eighty-five recipes of “Antidotarium Nicolai” have been identified, systematized and analyzed in a documentary translation from medieval French. An interdisciplinary study of the content of the manuscript was carried out with the help of factor analysis of the historical source and modern scientific literature.Results and discussion. Having described the content and aspects of the prescriptions of “Antidotarium Nicolai”, the authors note the similarity of the technologies of drugs and galenical preparations with modern pharmaceutical technology, in particular, with the technology of pharmacy production. In “Antidotarium Nicolai” it is stated that preparations based on herbal medicinal raw materials may be second-line therapy agents for completing treatment after the application of basic pharmacological preparations.Conclusion. The results of this work reveal the potential for the use of herbal medicines in the conditions of modern evidence-based medicine, in particular, in the organization of long-term treatment and secondary prevention of chronic diseases in patients who need to maintain their ability to work, and provide them with a sufficiently high level of quality of life. A detailed translation of the full text of the manuscript, the analysis of its content in accordance with the requirements of rational pharmacotherapy and phytotherapy, further favors to identify the prospects for the development of new drugs, multi-component in their chemical composition with a wide range of therapeutic effects.

Translating reality TV into Spanish: when fast-food TV challenges AVT conventions

ABSTRACTIn Spain, as in other countries, reality TV seems to be a pervasive phenomenon, materialised in a myriad of domestic and foreign productions. The latter require interlingual translation, which in most cases takes the form of voice-over translation. Despite the prevalence of reality TV and voice-over translation in Spanish television, both fields are still widely underexplored. This article sets out to bridge this research gap by presenting an exploratory study of the translation of reality TV in Spain. To this end, it will first document the prevalence of foreign reality TV in Spanish TV schedules, to then explore the similarities and differences in traditional voice-over translation (i.e. used for documentary translation) versus voice-over translation for reality TV. The focus is on the different types of synchrony observed in voice-over translation, yet the discussion highlights other relevant issues (e.g. approaches to the translation of semi-spontaneous speech) and illustrates how this genre is challenging audiovisual translation (AVT) conventions, as well as blurring the boundaries between AVT modes.

Assessing the quality of post-edited wildlife documentaries

ABSTRACTThis article presents the results of an experiment to assess the quality of post-edited wildlife documentary films to be voiced-over and off-screen dubbed, which was compared to the quality of human translation. The hypothesis of the article is that there are no significant differences between translated and post-edited texts in terms of quality. Twelve MA students translated and post-edited two excerpts of an English wildlife documentary into Spanish. Six professional translators then assessed both the translations and post-edited texts by: (1) grading the documents, (2) correcting them using a Multidimensional Quality Metrics-based error classification that takes into account documentary translation specificities, and (3) answering questionnaires on their impressions. The results confirm the hypothesis by indicating that the quality of post-edited and translated wildlife documentary films is significantly similar.

A syntactico-semantic approach to the translation of conditionals in two English versions of Sahih Muslim

Conditionals in English can traditionally be viewed according to two different perspectives. One is a simplistic approach based on certain ‘cases’; the other is centered on the truth value of the protasis and apodosis. This argument is based on the semantics of the conditional structures, regardless of the syntax involved. In a similar vein, the complexity of conditionals in Arabic stems from the fact that the syntax of the conditional structure does not necessarily point to the semantics involved. This affinity between the two language systems in terms of conditionality is examined within the context of two English translations of the Arabic religious text Sahih Muslim. The present study adopts an approach that focuses on both syntax and semantics to underline the interplay and/or dissociation of the two in practice. The study reveals that Siddiqui’s versions of translating ‘law’ (and its variant ‘law-la’) and ‘inn’ structures into English are mostly inaccurate, where the syntax-semantics interplay and/or dissociation is not duly observed in practice. Khattab’s versions, however, point to a tendency to start from the entrenched premise of literalism, which is stimulated by adopting the simplistic approach to English conditional structures, being akin to documentary translation where awkwardness is common practice.

Nord’s Documentary Versus Instrumental Translation: The Case of Hugo’s Demain, dès L’aube

<p>Documentary and instrumental strategies were widely employed in translation works. The paper examined the application of documentary and instrumental strategies to the French poem <em>Demain, dès L'aube</em> by Victor Hugo (1802-1885). The author compared numbers of translation works from the academic and public field for the usage of the strategies by Nord (2005). The result indicated that while documentary translation was depicted as an overt version or report of a text in another language. On the other hands, instrumental translation was depicted as a form of communication that was autonomous from the source text (ST) and which might be appraised on how effectively it passed across an author’s message (Chersterman, 2000). These distinctions were useful in the translation of the case text since they both indicated the understanding and consciousness of both cultural and linguistic accommodation during translation in order to pass across the original message intended by the author of the source text (Greenberg, 2003).</p>

Skopos and (Un)certainty: How Functional Translators Deal with Doubt

There are no rules for translation. Translation is a decision-making process, and each decision point involves uncertainty. In the following article, I would like to show how, from a skopos-theoretical perspective, a top-down procedure can at least reduce uncertainty to some degree. The top level is that of the translation brief, which determines the choice of translation type and form. This is a binary decision. A documentary translation usually “documents” the pragmatics of the source text, whereas an instrumental translation gets a pragmatics of its own, for example with regard to deixis. At the next level, the translator has to deal with cultural norms and conventions. Here, the decision becomes more complex because the brief may require the reproduction of some source-culture behaviours and the adaptation of others to target-culture conventions, both in documentary and instrumental translations. The next level is that of language. We may safely assume that most translations are expected to conform to the norms of the target-language system, but there may be cases where source-language norms have to be reproduced, for example in an interlinear translation for linguistic purposes. At the last two levels, the remaining doubts have to be resolved first in line with contextual restrictions and, ultimately, the translator’s personal preferences, if necessary.

Translating stable sources in times of economic recession

This paper examines the translation of economic texts authored by Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman, published originally byThe New York Timesin both their printed and Internet editions, and in Spanish byEl País. It comprises a small parallel corpus of eighteen original columns and their equivalent Spanish versions, a total of 31,196 words. The article will consider the translation of stable sources (Hernández Guerrero 2009) within the narrative of the economic recession that started in early 2010s. It will use Nord’s functional model (2005) to analyse the texts. The objectives of the study are: (1) to establish whether translators opt for instrumental or documentary translation, and (2) to consider whether stable sources such as the opinion columns written by prominent figures can be regarded as closed sources that do not accept major shifts during the translational process. I will look at extratextual factors such as time, space and motivation, as well as intratextual features such as linking devices, thematic organization, markers of text composition and lexis. In the final section, I will attempt to provide an interpretation from the perspective of communication studies, which might inform translation research as well. For the discussion I will draw on Castells’ proposal for the study of media discourse and its connection with the political power (2009).

On the Translation of Chinese Political Vocabulary in Cross-Cultural Communication

Effective communication is more demanding as with China’s rapid economic and social development, and an increasing number of people are eager to know China more, especially in political system. Therefore, it is of great significance to carry out in-depth study on how Chinese political documents and policies are effectively communicated in English within an international context. The appropriate translation of Chinese political words and documents is the first and most important step to understand Chinese politics. Although great achievements have been made in documentary translation from Chinese to English, potential problems still exist, affecting the understanding of foreign people without Chinese cultural background. The purpose of this paper is to identify an effective and appropriate translation strategy to enhance the effectiveness of political translation, especially in Chinese political words and phrases. This paper conducted an analysis of political vocabulary translation from descriptive translation perspective, and recommends a practical strategy to apply this theory into Chinese political vocabulary translation.