Naslov
To have a tiger by its tail, or the bee's knees of working with words: animal idioms in subtitles

Autori
Čemerin, Vedrana

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, pp prezentacija, znanstveni

Skup
RaAM specialized seminar on Metaphors in/and/of Translation

Mjesto i datum
Liblice, Češka Republika, 10.06.2015. - 12.06.2015

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Međunarodna recenzija

Ključne riječi
corpus-based translation studies, corpus linguistics, idioms, translation strategies

Sažetak
Following the comprehensive definition of idiomatic constructions as complex symbols with specific formal, semantic, pragmatic and sociolinguistic characteristics (Langlotz, 2006:3), whose figurative meanings are motivated by the metaphorical knowledge people possess of the domains to which such expressions refer (Gibbs, 1993:74), the present study aims to focus on a specific cohesive group within the broader scope of idiomaticity: animal idioms. Due to a shared human experience, various types of animal idioms are pervasive in different languages, reflecting fossilized speciesist beliefs in the form of evaluative stereotypes (Moon, 1998:195-196). Within this broader framework, the central topic of this article is the translation of English animal idioms into Croatian, based on the case study of a comparable thematic corpus of 70 English animal documentaries and their subtitled Croatian translations, consisting of an approximate 400.000 words in total, that is currently being compiled at the University of Applied Sciences Velika Gorica and contains both professional and non-professional translations. Multiple studies have shown that corpus research enables multiword items to be examined more efficiently, with comparable and/or parallel corpora offering valuable insights into differences between source texts and translations. (Moon, 2006:230-234, Xiao and McEnery, 2005:2-13). As a reference corpus, the author shall use the Open Subtitles corpus which likewise contains pairs of English and Croatian subtitles, mostly of the non-professional variety. While most translation textbooks point out that idiom translation requires not only accuracy, but also awareness of the rhetorical nuances of both the source and target language (Fernando and Flavell, 1981:85, Baker, 1992:71), the strategies advocated in this respect (usage of an idiom with similar meaning and form, usage of idioms with similar meaning but dissimilar form, paraphrasing and omission) fall mainly into the category of domesticating translation procedures. However, Penttilä and Muikku-Werner (2012:135-136) have shown that sometimes foreignizing strategies may not only be used in idiom translation, but can also be beneficial to the overall results. In addition, since the meaning of specific idioms is frequently culture-bound, the socio-cultural layer needs to be addressed in order to fully develop proper research methodology for this project. Regarding the audiovisual translation practices, Croatia is mainly a subtitling country, with a relatively low occurrence of dubbing and even less of voiceover, which is primarily used for newscasts. This is the primary reason for selecting and compiling a corpus of subtitled translations in order to examine idiom translation techniques within the sphere of audiovisual translation. As a specific form of AVT, subtitling is at the same time bound by its technical constraints, while being able to enjoy the benefits of multimodality. Therefore, this paper shall examine strategies used to deal with animal idioms in the aforementioned corpus, as well as the overall treatment of the concepts which they denote, while taking into consideration specific features and requirements of subtitling.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Filologija, Interdisciplinarne humanističke znanosti

POVEZANOST RADA