Rationale
Presently, with the advance of science and technology, the film industry is also rapidly developing in both quantity and quality All nations across the world have developed for themselves different film culture and at different level of development A movie is not only a product of entertainment It shows the level of development of the country where it comes from, and re-animates the language, culture as well as the history, the society and the beauty of this country
At the end of the era of the silent films, when the language was bought into the movies as an effective tool of expression, a new problem also rose, challenging film directors and producers all over the world: their audiovisual products must be translated in order to bring them across the boundaries of language and culture The term audiovisual translation (AVT) was born as a tool to facilitate the understanding and transferring of culture and ideas which are presented in film products and other audiovisual products such as TV show, TV dramas and video games
AVT has become an important part of our daily life Many scholars and scientists have been investing their properties and intelligence into the subject As a result, many documents namely Topics in Audiovisual Translation by Pilar Orero (2004),
Jorge Dìaz Cintas and Gunilla Anderman‟s Audiovisual Translation: Language Transfer on Screen (2009) were created The information for the field is also provided in many academic associations in the world, such as the European Association for Studies in Screen Translation (ESIST)
A feature film, or a movie, is a complete product which consists of many features
These features include the language of the film, presenting the verbal communication, and the non-verbal communication, namely the music, sounds, objects, gestures of the characters and other features Besides, the film contains the cultural characteristics of the country where it was produced and also the social characteristics of the historical periods that it presents These features of a feature film bring lots of challenges to translators
Translators are the people who bring the understanding of the texts to the “readers” from different language communities and at different knowledge background When translating a movie, translators have a very important role of not only transferring the meaning of the language of the directors but also transferring the culture from the source to the target language In the translation of a movie, there are many difficulties for translators in terms of language and culture The audience‟s main need is to understand what the characters are talking about on the screen However, there is another issue that is not less important: it is that the translation must be acceptable in the receptive society This problem lies on the differences between the two communities with different cultures and civilizations
Focusing on culture-bound elements, this thesis has the main aim of identifying the problems in terms of culture that occur during the English – Vietnamese translation of the American feature film entitled: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End directed by Gore Verbinski This is an American entertaining movie; however, it also contains many features for translators to concern The film was written based on a historical period in the past in the Caribbean area, when the pirates were a part of the society During that era, most of the countries were under the reign of feudalism, in which the social values, the culture background and also the language style were very different from present One of the film‟s appealing factors is that when watching it, the audience will come through many different tones of feeling, from horror to romance, from hatred to love, and from peace to war Telling the story of a golden reign of pirates of the Caribbean area, the film consists of elements from many cultural backgrounds, from the mysterious China to the wild Africa, thus, it is really a challenge for translators to transfer the culture-bound elements in this movie to the audiences who speak another language and come from another community
The differences in culture may cause translators to misunderstand the text and to mis-translate it This study aims to find out the problems related to culture-bound elements in the conversations of the movie‟s characters that bring challenges to translators and to give some suggestions to transfer these items into Vietnamese In Vietnam, there are few researchers interested in this field; therefore, the researcher hopes to bring some useful suggestions for translators of movies and other audiovisual products The study, thus, is expected to be helpful for translators and interpreters of other fields.
Aim, Objectives and Research Questions
The overarching aim of this study is to investigate the audiovisual translation problems of culture-bound elements (CBEs) in the film Pirates of the Caribbean: At
World’s End This aim is broken to be the following objectives:
Identifying and categorising the CBEs in the film;
Finding the translation problems of CBEs in the film;
Offering some suggestions on using possible strategies for the translations of CBEs in the film
To achieve the above aim and objectives, the study raises the following research questions for exploration:
1 What are the main culture-bound elements contained in the film Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End?
2 What are the major problems in translating the culture-bound elements in the film Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End?
Corpus and Methodology
The selected film to be used as the corpus of the current study is the American film
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End produced by Jerry Bruckheimer in 2008
The very first step of the research is to download the film The mp4 file of the movie with Vietnamese subtitle is downloaded from the website www.phimmoi.net and the English filmscript is taken from www.script-o-rama.com In addition, the researcher also records some examples from the VTV version on Starmovie (on TV) However, the names of the Vietnamese translators are unknown A brief introduction to the film (containing its producers, context, plot and main characters) will be presented at the beginning of chapter 2
Before collecting and analysing the data, the researcher will firstly study the theoretical framework concerning culture-bound elements and translation strategies
Henceforth, the following procedure will be conducted:
To answer the first research question, the researcher will watch the film with the help of the downloaded English script and the culture-bound elements identified in the characters‟ talks and conversations will be recorded and categorised based on the framework
After identifying the CBEs in the original version, the Vietnamese versions will be examined The purpose of this is to find the problems in the translation of CBEs in the film In fact, the researcher will compare the translated versions with the original to see whether the translation of CBEs in these versions is appropriate and accurate or not, base on the researcher‟s personal experience and research After that, the translation strategies for the elements found in the film will also be suggested based on the taxonomies given in the theoretical background
The main approach used in this study is qualitative, which means the researcher will base himself on a theoretical framework to analyse the corpus The data of the study will be presented quantitatively in their number of occurrence.
Scope of the Study
As mentioned above, the objectives of the study are to identify the culture-bound elements in the American film Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End and the translation problems of these elements, and to suggest the possible translation strategies for these elements The data for analysis is taken from the film Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End Therefore, this study cannot convey all aspects and features of culture-bound elements and it cannot point out all problems coming up when translating audiovisual products Due to the limitation of time and length of the study, the researcher will only focus on the culture references in the characters‟ conversations and speeches within the movie Otherwise, the current study is not an evaluation by any translation versions of any other translators In fact, the selected Vietnamese versions are examined only to find the problems in translating the CBEs in the film It is also necessary to note that this study does not deal with any particular types of AVT namely subtitling, dubbing or interpreting.
Design of the Study
The study will be organised as follow:
The first part, Introduction, will consist of five parts: Rationale, Aims and Research Questions, Scope of the Study, Corpus and Methodology and Design of the Study
The second part, Development, will consist of two chapters Chapter one is the Theoretical background which will provide some definitions of translation, the notion of culture in translation, some definitions and categorisation of culture- bound elements, some definitions and concepts of audiovisual translation and some taxonomies of translation strategies Chapter two entitled The Translation of Culture-bound Elements in the Film Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End form English into Vietnamese will discuss the categorisation, translation problems of the culture-bound elements in the film and suggest some translation strategies for these elements
The last part, Conclusion, will recapitulate the main contents of the study, point out limitations of the study, and provide some suggestions for further research.
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
The Theories of Translation
Presently, translation has become a very wide and complex area of research in applied linguistics and it started to be scientifically concerned in the 1960s The concept of translation has been viewed and explained differently through a long time of development; therefore, the definition of it has varied
Newmark (1988:7) defined translation as “a craft consisting in the attempt to replace a written message and/or statement in one language by the same message and/or statement in another language.” He also emphasized the role of the author‟s intension when “rendering a written text into another language.” (Newmark, 1988:
Having the same idea as Newmark (1988), Webber (1968) defined translation as
“the transposition of a text written in a source language (SL) into a target language (TL)”; however, in this author‟s opinion, the original text must be translated so that the readers can understand it easily To do so, an absolute accuracy in terms of meaning and content must be achieved, that says, translators have to pay attention to the matters of equivalence
The opinion of Webber (1968) was partially followed by some other authors Being one among those, Bell (1991) considered the equivalence in terms of semantic and stylistic elements an essence of translation This scholar stated: “Translation is the expression in another language (or TL) of what has been expressed in another, source language, preserving semantic and stylistic equivalences.” (Bell, 1991: 5)
As mentioned earlier, with the strong development of the global film industry, all countries in the world have developed for themselves different film cultures and at different levels of development In addition, to meet the demand of the majority of the audience world-wide, with the development of technology, language had gradually been brought into films as an effective tool of content expression This advance in the film industry had raised a new challenge to directors and producers in translating their film products into other languages According to Heiss (1996:
13, cited in Sacconi, 2013: 6), in the late 1990s, translators and scholars started to cope with the problems of the translation of films and TV programs as audiovisual text The difficulty is that this kind of text is not simply the composition of language but also includes sound and visual element
According to the Oxford Dictionaries (oxforddictionaries.com), the adjective audiovisual is defined as “using both sight and sound, typically in the form of images and recorded speech or music” The term audiovisual text is used along with the appearance of audiovisual products such as films, tragedies, comedies, opera show, video games These products contain multimedia features namely sounds, music, or images and thus, can be considered as audiovisual texts, or multimedia texts
The term audiovisual translation (AVT) refers to the translation of audiovisual texts
Luis Perez Gonzales in Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies (cited by Baker & Saldanha, 2009: 13) defined audiovisual translation as follows:
Audiovisual translation is a branch of Translation Studies concerned with the transfer of multimodal and multimedial texts into another language and/or culture
Having a slight different view point, Jorge Dias Cintas and Remael (2007: 13) defined audiovisual translation as “the translation of products in which the verbal dimension is supplemented by elements in another media.” This definition is more satisfactory due to a clear explanation of the nature of audiovisual products
From the definitions above, it can be concluded that audiovisual products are different from other kind of texts because they involve many other codes than just the verbal The codes in audiovisual products are categorized in detail by Chaume (2004: 17-22, cited in Sacconi, 2013: 51, 52) According to this citation, an audiovisual text consists of ten codes as follows:
The linguistic code is the text, common point of all the other types of translation Chaume (p 17) specifies that this text “has to appear oral and spontaneous (written to be spoken as if not written […] )”
The paralinguistic code is conventional symbols indicating brackets, silences, pauses (p 17)
The musical code and the special effects code are the songs and the rhythm of the music The special effects code refers to sound effects such as laughing, applauses, etc (p 18)
The sound arrangement code refers to diegetic sound, belonging to the story, or non-diegetic, belonging to somebody or something that is not part of the story, as an off-screen narrator (p 18)
The iconographic code is when iconographic symbols that are not known by the target audience appear and they need to be explained in some way within the film (p 19) 52
The photographic code refers to the changes in lighting, in perspective, or in the use of colour Chaume makes the example that a colour can be associated to a feeling in a country, while in the target country the same colour is associated to completely different things (p 19)
The planning code refers to the types of shots that could be present in film
In close-ups and extreme close-ups, the text has to respect lip synchrony (pp
19 – 20) It is also linked to synchronization with body movements (p 20)
The mobility code refers to the position of the characters in the scene, how much characters are distant from other characters or from the camera Lip synchrony is important too (p 20)
The graphic code refers to the written text that appears on the screen, such as titles, intertitles, texts and subtitles (p 21)
The syntactic code concerns the fact that “being aware of iconic associations can help the translator to better understand […] the relationship of one scene to another and the position of the scene within the development of the plot and the narrative” (p 21)
Culture Bound Elements in Translation
Through time, the area of translation studies has reached a high level of development, thus, the number of approaches to this field is also various According to Munday (2001: 1), the nature of translation can be considered multilingual and interdisciplinary with many types of approach from the different points of view of linguistics, communication or culture Despite the variety of approaches, as can be seen in the example of definitions above, all views in the field of translation studies have a common concept of equivalence
In fact, equivalence is considered the central concept in the area of translation studies; however, the true nature of it in translation is still arguable According to Roman Jakobson (cited in Munday, 2001: 36), a full equivalence between languages never exists while the Encyclopedia of Translation Studies (2009: 96) defined this term as the relationship between the original text (source text – ST) and its translation in the target language (target text – TT) A very famous author, Peter Newmark (1988), claimed that the effect of equivalence is the most wanted result in any translation He also considered this effect “the overriding purpose of any translation should be to achieve.”
The concept of equivalence can be investigated in many different approaches One of these approaches was quantitative-based by Munday (2001), which can be divided into one-to-one equivalence, one-to-many equivalence, many-to-one equivalence, one-to-part-of-one equivalence or nil equivalence This approach focuses on the quantity or the number of elements that are equivalent to each other in the source language and the target language For some other scholars, equivalence in translation can be meaning-based (Koller, 1989), function-based (Nida, 1964) or form-based (Baker, 1994)
Baker (1994) listed two levels of equivalence: word level and above-word level, among those, the word level focuses on the translation of a linguistic unit: word, when the other concentrates on the translation of the text in its general sense and meaning Munday (2001: 19) has the similar idea to Baker by giving the word-to- word translation and sense-to-sense translation By sense-to-sense translation, the issue is that translators have to keep the author‟s intention in the source text, thus, a meaning accuracy at word level may not be achieved In other words, when transferring the sense from one language to another, translators cannot always use word-to-word translation; therefore, the problem of non-equivalence will appear
As mentioned earlier, equivalence is considered, by many scholars, the central concept in translation As a consequence, it can be denied that non-equivalence is the hardest issue for any translators which can lead to a big problem called
“untranslatability” Baker (1994: 21-26) suggested 11 problems of non-equivalence at word level These problems can be listed as:
The source-language concept is not lexicalized in the target language
The source-language word is semantically complex
The source and target languages make different distinctions in meaning
The target language lacks a superordinate
The target language lacks a specific term (hyponym)
Differences in physical or interpersonal perspective
Differences in frequency and purpose using specific forms
The use of loan words in the source text
Among these, the problem of culture-specific concepts was put at the first place and this problem also draws the attention of many other academic scholars in the field of translation This problem can be explained briefly as follows:
The source-language word may express a concept which is totally unknown in the target culture The concept in question may be abstract or concrete; it may relate to a religious belief, a social custom, or even a type of food Such concepts are often referred to as „culture specific‟ (Baker, 1994: 21)
In fact, the notion of culture and culture-specific terms/concepts/elements in translation has been concerned by many authors in the broad field of translation and the definitions as well as other issues about these elements has also been approached in many different ways This notion will be discussed further in the next paragraphs
In general, culture can be defined as “the customs, beliefs, art, way of life and social organisation of a particular country or group.” This definition is given by the
Oxford Dictionaries (oxforddictionaries.com) From this point of view, it may be understood that culture is almost everything that forms a community
Anthropologically, Tylor (1871) considered culture as a “complex whole” including all capabilities and habits that has been acquired by any member of the human society, namely human knowledge, belief, art, law, morals or customs
Toury (cited in Ray, 2008: 129) also claimed “translations are facts of target culture” In fact, culture is always an essential aspect in translation due to the involvement of translation in different languages as well as different cultures
Paying more attention to the relationship between culture and translation, Newmark (1988: 94) defined culture as "the way of life and its manifestations that are peculiar to a community that uses a particular language as its means of expression" This opinion, thus, can be recapitulated that each language community has its own culturally specific identity
Risager (2006: 3) stated that “in the generic sense, we are dealing with language and culture as phenomena shared by all humanity” This can be understood that language and culture are inseparable aspects of human In fact, the inseparability of language and culture has been discussed by many scholars Lotman (1978: 211) states that "no language can exist unless it is steeped in the context of culture; and no culture can exist which does not have at its centre, the structure of natural language However, these two aspects are independent In fact, the transference of linguistic meanings is only considered one part of the translation process Bassnett
(1980) claimed that it is dangerous to try to impose the values of the source culture onto the target culture (Bassnett, 1980: 23) The translation of a text, practically, must be not only understandable in terms of lexical meaning but also acceptable to the readers and audiences from the target culture Henceforth, the problem arising for any translator is that in the process of translation, many other elements should be acknowledged and the culture-bound elements are among those
1.2.3 Culture-bound Elements in Translation
1.2.3.1 Definitions Culture-bound Elements (CBEs)
As mentioned earlier, Baker (1994) considered culture-specific concepts a problem in translation which brings many difficulties to translators However, due to the broad sense and nature of culture, it is not easy to define and identify those culture- bound elements According to Franco Aixela (1996: 56-57, cited in Ranzato, 2013:
67), the first difficulty arising in defining a culture specific element is that every element in a language, including even that language, is culturally specific
In translation studies, especially in the area of audiovisual translation (AVT), relatively few systematic definitions of these culture elements have been given In fact, some academic scholars in the field had tried to give definitions to these elements; however, the points of view were given differently, using a vast array of terms such as culture-specific, culture-bound elements, references, expressions or terms
From a socio-linguistic view point, Nord (1997: 34) referred to these cultural elements as cultureme He defined cultureme as “a social phenomenon of a culture
X that is regarded as relevant by members if this culture and, when compared with a corresponding social phenomenon in a culture Y, is found to be specific to culture
Concluding Remarks
In this chapter, a brief review over translation and audiovisual translation has been presented From that, the roles of culture and translation equivalence are explained
Besides, it can also be seen that the translation of a film as an audiovisual product involves not only the verbal code but also the support from other media
This chapter has also provided an examination of the concept of CBEs through some definitions and taxonomies Culture-bound elements, as mentioned, are the element bound by some particular cultures and consist of both intralinguistic and extralinguistic cultural contents Beside this, some strategies involved in the translation of CBEs are also shown and the most notable taxonomy by Dias-Cintas and Remael (2007) is taken as the base of strategies for the current study
In the next chapter, the CBEs appearing in the selected American film, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, and the translation of these elements are discussed
CHAPTER 2: THE TRANSLATION OF CULTURE-BOUND ELEMENTS
A Brief Introduction to Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
The data of the current analysis are taken from the American feature film entitled
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End from the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy produced by Jerry Bruckheimer There are five chapters in the Bruckheimer‟s Pirates series including the trilogy and two other follow-up full-length films and the movie taken for analysis in this study is the last chapter of the trilogy
The Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by the American director Gore Verbinski, consists of three feature products named
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), Pirates of the
Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006) and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s
End (2007) The film stories follow the adventures of the five main protagonists: Captain Jack Sparrow (portrayed by Johnny Depp), Hector Barbossa (by Geoffrey Rush), Joshamee Gibbs (by Kevin McNally), Will Turner (by Orlando Bloom), and Elizabeth Swann (by Keira Knightley) The situations in the trilogy take place in a fictional historical setting based on a real context in world history
This setting is described as a world ruled largely by the British Empire and the East India Company in which the pirates play an important role as the symbol of freedom against the rulers
The context in the last film subtitled At World’s End, continuing the story in the two previous chapters, is that Lord Beckett, the owner of the East India Company, gains captures Davy Jones and his ship, the Flying Dutchman By forcing Jones to provide supports, Beckett is now executing his plans to extinguish piracy forever
To confront Lord Beckett and the East India Trading Company, Will, Elizabeth, Barbossa and the other pirates plan to rescue Captain Jack Sparrow, who has been dead and locked in Davy Jones's Locker in the second film (Dead Man’s Chest) As one of the Nine Pirate Lords, Jack is needed in order to summon Calypso, an ancient goddess, to make use of her power to defeat Beckett's navy
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End was produced in a feature length of 169 minutes with a more than 9580-word-filmscript The setting of the film, happening in the Caribbean area, is believed to be based on the real historical context in world history from roughly 1650 to 1720 (around the reign of King George II of Great Britain, as seen in the film series) which is called the Golden Age of Piracy (Fiske, 1897: 338-339) In this era, the Caribbean area is said to witness unlimited battles between pirates from all over the world and the navy forces of the leading countries including Spain and England Thus, the pirate culture, along with a multi-cultural setting, has become the main cultural phenomenon in the movie.
Data and Examples Format
The analysis and discussion presented in this chapter will be illustrated by a number of examples and images taken directly from the selected film The examples will display the pieces of dialogue which contain CBEs and will be designed in two ways
First, to illustrate the presence of CBEs in the film, the examples will be presented in the following format:
Context: Calypso has been released to become a giant woman Barbossa and the Black Pearl crew are kneeing before her
BARBOSSA: Calypso! I come before you as but a servant, humble and contrite I have fulfilled me vow and now ask your favor Spare meself, me ship, me crew but unleash your fury upon those who dare pretend themselves your masters or mine
As can be seen above, each example in this chapter will be displayed in the form of a table which consists of two main parts The first part, located in the very first row of the table, will provide the Context of the dialogue (including the situation of the dialogue and the characters involving in the dialogue) The second part, Original Film Dialogue, will present the extracted piece of dialogue which contains CBEs
Second, to illustrate the suggestions for translation strategies, the format of the examples will be slightly changed as follows:
Context: Jack Sparrow recognises the presence of Barbossa at Davy Jones‟s Locker
Original Film Dialogue TL Translation (by phimmoi.net)
JACK SPARROW: Oh Hector! It‟s been too long, hasn‟t it?
BARBOSSA: Aye Isla de Muerta, remember? You shot me
JACK SPARROW: Ồ Hector! Đã lâu quá rồi nhỉ?
BARBOSSA: Ừ, Isla de Muerta, nhớ chứ?
Thus, the second part of the table of each example will be divided into two columns: the first column will still contain the Original Film Dialogue and the second column will provide a TL Translation of that dialogue The TL Translation will be the Vietnamese version translated by the website phimmoi.net or VTV or suggested by the researcher himself and the source of the translation will be put in parentheses
In both types of format above, in the dialogue, the name of the characters will be fully CAPITALISED and the CBEs in the dialogue will be highlighted in bold type Otherwise, the number of each example will be italicized and located above the example and the font size of the text inside the example table will be 11
In addition, the pictures captured from the film will also be employed to illustrate the presence of the visual elements in the film and these pictures will be printed in colours.
Culture-bound Elements in the Original Version
The data for the current research are collected and arranged into the four mentioned categories of elements from source culture, intercultural elements, elements from third cultures and elements from target culture The following pie chart and table demonstrate the collected elements in the audio-visual text in their number of occurrence
Table 2: CBEs in the Film over the Four Main Categories
Number of Occurrence Percentage Elements from Source Culture 86 57.7%
In the total of 149 collected elements, the number of elements from source culture, which represents the elements from the Anglo-American culture, is 86, accounting for 57.7% of the data The lowest number, on the other hand, belongs to the
Figure 1: CBEs in the Film over the Four Main Categories intercultural elements (the shared elements between the TC and SC, for example: colors, heart, tame the sea) which only occur 12 times throughout the text While the elements specifically belonging to the target culture (Vietnamese culture) does not exist, the occurrence of the elements specified to be of the other third cultures is counted to be 51, taking up 34.2% of the total data
When it comes to the nature of the elements, the number of intralinguistic elements in the AV text is 89 while the extralinguistic references appear in a smaller amount of 60 times Among them, the intralinguistic elements occur in the text mostly as idiomatic expressions and slangs The extralinguistic references in the text, in contrast, are the elements which have most of their references existing in the real world such as drinks, proper names and other vocabularies, however, some of them are uniquely created for the text only The number of both of these two sub- categories is displayed as follows:
Table 3: Intralinguistic Elements and Extralinguistic References
Beside the verbal elements, there are also some non-verbal (visual and acoustic) elements that appear throughout the movie and play an important role in the story line and in fact all of them are extralinguistic These elements will be discussed in section 2.2.2.2 It is also important to note that most of the elements are synchronous and realistic, but in the film, there also exist a small number of asynchronous (e.g.: pieces of 8, the non-verbal element of clothes) and intertextual elements (e.g.: Isla de Muerta) The detailed description of the CBEs in the original version of the film is presented in the Appendix
2.3.1 The Main CBEs throughout the Corpus
The following sections will provide the examples of the main CBEs in the film It can be seen that most of the elements belong to the nautical field
2.3.1.1 Talking Like Pirates: The Nautical Languages
As mentioned, the theme of this corpus film is about piracy in the Caribbean Sea in which the adventures of the main characters, the pirates, are told in a fictional historical setting This setting is believed to be based on a real context in the Caribbean history from around 1650 to 1720 when it is said to exist an era called the Golden Age of Piracy, as mentioned Therefore, at a macro level, the image of pirates and piracy has become the dominating cultural element throughout the chosen AV text
The pirates in this movie communicate in a kind of special dialect which is, in the current study, temporarily called the pirate dialect (dialectblog.com)
Film Context: Captain Jack Sparrow is on the Black Pearl (ship), at the place called Davy Jones‟s locker He is having a hallucination of himself commanding a crew which consists of many copies of him
JACK: Haul the halyard! Slacken braces!
CREW: Aye, captain! Slacken braces!
JACK: Step lively with a will!
CREW: Aye, aye! - Right away, sir!
JACK: Man the yards, you filthy toads!
JACK: Haul the sheets handsomely! Scandalize the lateens!
CREW: Aye, sir! Right away, sir!
Film Context: The Black Pearl is about to confront the Flying Dutchman (ship) around a maelstrom Captain Barbossa is standing on a boat side, watching Elizabeth is going to tell him to take the helm
ELIZABETH: Captain Barbossa! We need you at the helm!
BARBOSSA: Aye, that be true!
The pirate dialect (considered ESCs) is in fact a kind of non-standard English imitate the accent of the Southwest England accents (dialectblog.com), spoken by pirates in a strange tone of voice The above examples, extracted from the current corpus, illustrate the way the pirates in the film communicate It can be easily seen that the standard words and phrases have been replaced with slangs, which creates a very exotic, though impolite, style This style is well reflected through captain
Barbossa, one of the main characters The word Aye appearing in examples 1 and 2 is in fact a nautical word derived from the old English word aye, which means yes, even so, and the phrase aye aye sir is popular among sailors and pirates The literal meaning of this phrase is yes sir but the words aye and yes are different in their connotations Aye in fact is a response accepting an order (oxforddictionaries.com) while yes is simply a response to a yes-no question
Context: Calypso has been released to become a giant woman Barbossa and the Black Pearl crew are kneeing before her
BARBOSSA: Calypso! I come before you as but a servant, humble and contrite I have fulfilled me vow and now ask your favor Spare meself, me ship, me crew but unleash your fury upon those who dare pretend themselves your masters or mine
Another aspect to be considered is the non-grammatical speech of the pirates It seems that me is replacing the possessive my and the object me in the talks Besides, it can be realized that the copular verb be is sometimes not conjured, like in example 2
It is actually unknown if the pirates in the past used that way of talking in their communication; however, through the popular culture and media such as literature and cinema, the so-called pirate language, like the expression handsomely or aye, has become a popular cultural phenomenon in some countries including the US and the UK In fact, the Bruckheimer‟s Pirates movies are not the first cultural product about piracy in popular culture Pirates and piracy are very common cultural images in the US and UK society and were mentioned many times in a wide range of art works from cinema to literature In American popular culture, in novels, films and other media, pirates have emerged as heroic figures The notable works about pirates are Peter Pan, Treasure Island, Sinbad the Sailor and the Pirates of the Caribbean film series
The context of the film is mainly based on the adventure in the high sea with ships, sailors, pirates and captains; thus, it also contains some elements belonging to the nautical language, as illustrated in the examples 4, 5, 6 and 7 below
The first thing to consider is the opening song sung at the beginning of the film which tells in brief the story line of the whole movie It is written in the form of a folk rhythm sung by sailors when sailing the water and also consists of some pirates/maritime slangs and idioms Example 4 below is an extract of that song
Translation Problems of CBEs and Some Translation Strategies
Cultural elements always have their place in the translation process and can bring difficulties even to finest translators Lots of efforts though it takes, the AV translation of CBEs is normally well-done by professional people, which has been given birth to excellent products However, in many cases, the CBEs can be really problematic and may not be translated correctly In the current analysis, the problems found with the corpus come not only from the translators but also from the cultural aspects By studying the original and the Vietnamese extracts, the following problems have been spotted:
Translators do not recognize the CBEs
Translators fail to translate the CBEs
There is no equivalent in Vietnamese
The equivalents in Vietnamese are not accurate or adequate to some extents
There are many equivalents in Vietnamese
The following examples illustrate some of the problems mentioned above As stated in part A, most of the examples are taken from the Vietnamese version downloaded at www.phimmoi.net; besides, somes examples are recorded by the researcher from the VTV version on Starmovies (on TV)
Context: The talk between Barbossa and Sao Feng at Sao Feng‟s base in Singapore
Original Film Dialogue TL Translation (by phimmoi.net)
SAO FENG: You come into my city and you betray my hospitality…
BARBOSSA: I assure you I had no idea
SAO FENG: That he would get caught! …You intend to attempt the voyage to Davy Jones's Locker But I cannot help but wonder
SAO FENG: Các người đến thành phố của tôi, phụ bạc lòng hiếu khách của tôi…
BARBOSSA: Tôi xin cam đoan nếu tôi có cách khác
SAO FENG: Chính vì thế mà hắn ta sẽ bị tóm! … Ông muốn vào chiếc rương của Davy Jones sao? Nhưng tôi không thể giúp gì hơn… Chỉ có điều, tại sao?
In example 21, the idioms to have no idea and cannot help but are not so difficult to understand, however, the translators of the website seem not to recognize them and give a wrong translation The translators also give a word-by-word (literal) strategy for the translation of the phrase Davy Jones’s Locker which is considered inappropriate in comparison to its meaning as discussed in example 10 (in 2.3.1.2.) and this mistake is repeated several times in the translated version by the website
Context: Sao Feng and Elizabeth are arguing at Sao Feng‟s base
Original Film Dialogue TL Translation (by phimmoi.net)
SAO FENG: Elizabeth Swann! There is more to you than meets the eye, isn't there? And the eye does not go wanting
SAO FENG: Elizabeth Swann! Cô cần quan sát nhiều hơn đấy Mắt cô không nhìn thấy tất cả đâu
In example 22, there is an idiom, more to you than meets the eye, and a pun with the eye does not go wanting The problem here is that the translators may not recognize the idiom and the pun as well; therefore, their translation goes too far from the original In addition, no particular translation strategy is applied in this version and the translators only rewrite the dialogue in their own understanding
Context: Barbossa is sailing the Black Pearl into the battle against Davy Jones and the
Original Film Dialogue TL Translation (by phimmoi.net)
BARBOSSA: More speed! Haul your wind and hold your water!
BARBOSSA: Nhanh nữa lên! Đón lấy hướng gió và dựa theo dòng nước!
To hold someone’s water actually means to be patient, however, in the version translated by the website, the translators once more may not recognize the idioms and give a literal translation In another version, the translators of VTV (on Starmovies) translated the phrase as đừng có sợ! These translators seem to recognize the idiom but they misunderstand the meaning of it Both of these two versions are quite acceptable in the context, however, to compare with the original version, they are considered inaccurate
The CBEs are difficult to translate simply because they are “bound” by particular cultures and are strange to the translators who come from other cultures One of the problems is that some cultural elements in English do not have any equivalents in Vietnamese In fact, the nature of the CBEs, especially the extralinguistic ones, is that they are specific to a particular culture and to that culture alone Therefore, this problem seems to be very popular The examples in the film illustrating this issue are the references to proper name (Calypso, Kraken), idioms (meets the eye, hold your water) and the elements that created for the film only (Isla de Muerta)
When, there are several equivalents of any elements in the TL, there exist two cases The first case is that the equivalents themselves cannot express adequately the meaning of the elements in the SL The most notable cases are that of slangs and dialects, as shown in example 1 and 2 above As mentioned, aye is a nautical word expressing the meaning of yes and in fact there are many equivalents, standard words and slangs, in Vietnamese, for example rõ, vâng, ừ, đúng rồi, phải However, these equivalents do not ring any bell to Vietnamese audience of the case of nautical talks like the original word, which brings a difficulty in fully translating the text
The second case is a bit simpler It is when one word in English has many equivalents in Vietnamese and each Vietnamese equivalent must be used in a particular situation The example can be the title captain or the address form lord in the film The title captain can be equivalent to đại uý, thuyền trưởng, or đội trưởng in Vietnamese and the context should certainly be considered in translation
Similarly, the title lord can be translated as ngài (Lord Cutler Beckett) or thủ lĩnh/trùm (pirate lords), based on the circumstance
For solutions, at first, it is essential that translators study carefully the original texts before translating By that, translators can locate and understand the cultural elements in the texts It is also necessary that translators apply suitable strategies for translating these elements, however, along with this application, the role of context analysis is also very important because it can help translators in having a clearer view over the whole texts and choose the appropriate strategies for each situation
By context, Halliday and Hasan (1990) proposed a list of three components of what they call the context of situation These components are: (1) field: the subject/field of the text which determines the language used In the current text, the field is nautical; (2) tenor: the relationship between the participants in a conversational situation (e.g.: the relation between father and son) and (3) mode: the medium (spoken, written, or written to be spoken) and mode of rhetoric (namely expository, instructive or persuasive)
According to Taylor (1998), these three components can affect the choice of translators in the ways as follows:
Field: what terms to use, to what extent the writer‟s context is familiar to the
TA, the type of grammatical structures to employ (active/passive);
Tenor: the choice of register to apply (formal/informal, modern/archaic, technical/non-technical);
Mode: the organisation of text to choose (information focus or given and new information)
Besides, in AVT, it is necessary to consider the supports from other media such as sound, tone of voice or image to enhance the quality of translation
In the next sessions, some suggestions on possible strategies for the translation of CBEs in the corpus movie will be offered
As stated, one of the problems in the translation of CBEs is that translators use an inappropriate strategy so the quality of the translation is reduced, as can be seen in example 21 where the translators of the website give a literal translation of the phrase Davy Jones’s Locker The choice of strategies in a translation is very important and the duty of translators is to analyse carefully the text and context to find the most suitable way among many alternatives This section, therefore, discusses the use of some possible strategies suggested for the CBEs and the examples are extracted from the corpus film The strategies discussed here are employed from the taxonomy by Dias-Cintas and Remael (2007) with some slight changes to fit the purpose of the current study, as stated in chapter I It is necessary to note that in some cases, more than one strategy may be applied for the translation of one element and not all of the strategies in the taxonomy by Dias-Cintas and Remael are used
According to Dias-Cintas and Remael (2007: 202), in the case of food, drinks, names or historical events, the elements may be borrowed exactly from the ST to be used in the TT This strategy is used when other translations are not possible or no equivalents are found in the TL It seems to be similar to the strategy called retention by Pedersen (2005: 116) but to Pedersen, “the ECR can also be adjusted slightly to meet TL conventions, by adjusting the spelling or dropping an article.”
Actually, this Pedersen way of translation was quite familiar to Vietnamese audience several years ago and was used popularly in the translation of books or TV program or even in real life Some familiar terms for place and people name which are still used today are created by this way of translation, for example: Anh (England), Hà Lan (Holland) or Na-pô-lê-ông (Napoléon) However, currently, proper names tend to be directly borrowed from the English original text, as can be seen on TV and in many books
In the examined film, there are several situations that can be translated using this strategy Most of them are for names and places However, in some cases, it seems not adequate to use only loan for the translation The following examples are the cases that the use of loan is considered appropriate:
Context: Jack Sparrow recognises the presence of Barbossa at Davy Jones‟s Locker
Original Film Dialogue TL Translation (by phimmoi.net)
JACK SPARROW: Oh Hector! It‟s been too long, hasn‟n it?
BARBOSSA: Aye Isla de Muerta, remember? You shot me
JACK SPARROW: Ồ Hector! Đã lâu quá rồi nhỉ?
BARBOSSA: Ừ, Isla de Muerta, nhớ chứ?
As mentioned, Isla de Muerta is a fictional place in the film Beside a loan, another version will be suggested in the calque session (2.4.2.2)
Context: Pintel and Ragetti, two of the pirates, are standing on Kraken‟s dead body
Original Film Dialogue TL Translation (by the researcher)
ONE OF THE PIRATES: Pintel and Ragetti,
Kraken slayers We could serve up as slice as souvernir
ONE OF THE PIRATES: Pintel và Ragetti chính là những người đã tiêu diệt Kraken
Chúng ta có thể cắt một lát của nó mang về làm kỷ niệm đó
As the audience can see in the scene that Kraken is a giant octopus, there is no comprehension problem in applying a loan for this element
Context: Calypso is being released on the board of the Black Pearl
Original Film Dialogue TL Translation (by the researcher)
RAGETTI: (whispering) Calypso… I release you from your human bond
RAGETTI: (whispering) Calypso … Ta giải phóng nàng khỏi thân xác của con người
Concluding Remarks
In the chapter, an analysis on the translation of CBEs in the movie Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End has been presented From the analysis, the following issues are directed:
At first, answering the first research question, the CBEs in the movies have been recognized and arranged into four categories As has been seen, the SC elements dominate the others in their number occurrence while no element from the TC is detected The film is written in a nautical historical context with the main characters are the pirates, therefore, the majority of the CBEs found in the text belong to nautical and pirate languages (the pirate dialect, the nautical terms or slangs)
Besides few elements shared by both SC and TC (the ICEs, for example: sail, colors, or the idiom to tame the sea), some elements from third cultures (Calypso,
Kraken, Davy Jones’s Locker) are found and in fact they play an important role in the storyline In the film, there are also some non-verbal elements, for example the clothes of pirates and royal soldiers or the elements from the ride However, these elements do not have many significant effects on the translation
For the second question, there are some problems found from both the translators and the cultural aspects Sometimes, the translators fail to translate the cultural elements or even cannot recognize them which may lead to a low translation quality The reason lies on the translators‟ inappropriate choices of strategies as well as carelessness in context analysis From the cultural aspect, as stated by Bassnett (1980), it is dangerous to try to impose the values of the source culture onto the target culture (Bassnett, 1980: 23) In fact, the cultural elements are difficult to translate because they are culture-specific In some case, no equivalents or no exact equivalents of the elements can be found in the TL Besides, when there are several equivalents, there also exists a matter of choice in translation because each equivalent is only suitable for a particular situation (e.g.: captain or lord)
From the above discussion, it is important to note that context analysis plays an important role in choosing appropriate translation strategies for CBEs In the chapter, the model of context of situation by Halliday and Hasan (1990) is presented as a tool for context analysis Besides, it is also necessary for translators to study carefully the AV texts itself as well as the supports from the multimedia aspects in the text in order to locate and understand the cultural elements The chapter also suggests some suitable strategies for the translation of the CBEs in the analysed film The strategies are adopted from the taxonomy by Dias-Cintas and Remael
Summary
This study aims at investigating the audiovisual translation problems of Culture- bound Elements (CBEs) in the selected film entitled Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007) by the American producer Jerry Bruckheimer In the study, the following points have been discussed:
At first, the study has discussed the definitions of translation and it has been seen that equivalence plays an important role of a central concept in translation It can also be seen that culture is an essential notion in translation and culture-specific concepts are considered one of the problems of non-equivalence in the translation process (Baker, 1994)
Providing some general ideas around the notion of audiovisual translation, it can be inferred from the study that the translation of an AV text involves not only the transference of verbal code but also the supports from other media such as sounds or visual codes Particularly, in the translation of CBEs, beside the verbal text, the other codes are recognized to be also important
Secondly, the study has discussed the definitions of CBEs and CSRs By combining the opinions from some notable authors such as Pedersen (2005), Dias-Cintas and Remael (2007) Chiaro (2009) and Ranzato (2013), the study gives a summary of the concept of CBEs as the extralinguistic and intralinguistic elements which are specific to particular cultures These elements are also categorized into 4 main types which are (1) elements from source cultures, (2) elements from target culture, (3) intercultural elements and (4) elements from third cultures, based on the taxonomy by Ranzato (2013) with some slight changes Besides, the study has also used the taxonomy of Dias-Cintas and Remael (2007) (also with some slight adjustment) as the main base for the discussion about translation strategies
Based on the CBEs categorisation built in the theoretical background and some other notable taxonomies (Chiaro, 2009 or Dias-Cintas and Remael, 2007), the current analysis has found a variety of cultural elements in the selected movie and it can be concluded that the elements in the movie do not come only from the SC (Anglo-American culture) but also from the other cultures
At first, the film is based on a nautical historical context from around 1650s to 1720s which is called the Golden Age of Piracy (Fiske, 1897), therefore, the main elements in the film belong to the nautical language The notable elements are the pirates and nautical dialect and slangs Besides, the idioms and slangs in English also have their occurrence As many other feature films made in the USA, the current selected film also borrow some elements from other cultures and most of these elements appear as the main elements of the storyline (e.g pieces of 8,
Calypso, Davy Jones’s Locker) On the other hands, as an audiovisual product, the film also contains some non-verbal CBEs (clothes of pirates or the references to the Disney ride), though they do not have many significant effects on the translation process
The CBEs problems detected in the film lie in two aspects Firstly, from the translators, they sometimes fail to recognize or translate the elements and the reasons may be the lack of context analysis or the inappropriate choice of strategies
From the cultural aspect, most of the problems lie in the matter of equivalence when there is no equivalent or no exact equivalent in the TL Meanwhile, when there are many equivalents, it turns into a matter of choice, based on the context Thus, it is found that context analysis and strategies play an important role in translating a text from one language to another in general and in translating the CBEs in the film
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End in particular
In terms of translation strategies, the study has based itself on the taxonomy by Dias-Cintas and Remael (2007) and has used 7 possible strategies to discuss the translation of the CBEs in the film It is notable that some elements can be translated employing more than one strategies and the choice based mainly on the situation of the text It can also be seen that in the translation process, translators should learn about the text before translating in order to have a clearer view of it as well as to understand the important cultural elements Besides, it is necessary to analyse the context and consider the supports from other media (sounds, images, voice tones) to have suitable choice of strategies.
Limitations and Suggestions for Further Research
Beside the findings, due to the limitation of time and scale, the current study still reveals the following limitations:
Firstly, the analysis was conducted with a relatively thin corpus; therefore, it cannot convey all aspects of CBEs in Audiovisual translation Also due to this limitation, the strategies given in the study are not really adequate
Secondly, this is just a general study on the translation of CBEs in AV text and does not deal with any particular forms of audiovisual translation such as dubbing or subtitling, therefore, the problems may not be directed specifically for each form of AVT
Thirdly, the film has only focused on the verbal elements and the corpus is not large enough; thus, the non-verbal elements in AVT are not treated adequately
Fourthly, due to the limitation of the researcher‟s cultural and cross-cultural knowledge, some CBEs in the corpus might have not been found
To overcome the limitations above, further studies are expected to:
1 increase the volume of the corpus so that a more comprehensive analysis can be made It is suggested that the corpus includes different genres of films with different contents so that a comparative analysis can be done
2 conduct some analysis on the CBEs and translation strategies for a particular type of audiovisual translation such as dubbing, subtitling or interpreting
3 analyse the effects of the non-verbal elements on the process of AVT
Besides, researchers should enhance their own cultural and cross-cultural knowledge in order to adequately identify the CBEs contained in audiovisual texts and to be able to discuss the problems in translating CBEs from English to Vietnamese in a more significant way
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APPENDIX CULTURE-BOUND ELEMENTS IN THE ORIGINAL FILM
1 CBEs in the Original Version
Number of Occurrence Percentage Elements from Source Culture 86 57.7%
Extralinguistic references and intralinguistic elements:
2 Elements from Source Culture (ESCs)
Non-verbal Elements (3 elements, 9 occurrences)
All hands: RT, InL, Sync
As content as a cucumber: RT, InL,
Aye (aye captain): RT, InL, Sync Bloody hell: RT, InL, Sync Bosun: RT, InL, Sync Captain: RT, InL, Sync Cast a slight pall: RT, InL, Sync Deckapes: RT, InL, Sync
Feet: RT, InL, Sync Fiddler’s Green: Rt, InL, Sync Filthy toads: RT, InL, Sync
Fire in the hole: RT, InL, Sync.nc Get my sea legs: RT, InL, Sync
Heave-ho: RT, InL, Sync
Hold your water: RT, InL, Sync
Loose cannon: RT, InL, Sync.nc Lord: RT, InL, Sync.Me (Meself, me ship me crew): RT, InL, Sync
Me hearties: RT, InL, Sync
The visual references to the Ride at Disney: RT, ExL, Sync
The acoustic references to the Ride at Disney: RT, ExL, Sync
The royal costumes: RT, ExL, ASync
Shipwreck cove: RT, ExL, Sync
Steady as she goes: RT, InL, Sync
Sweat of a man’s brow: RT, InL, Sync
Strength of his back: RT, InL, Sync
To broadside: RT, InL, Sync
Be (That be true): RT, InL, Sync
Wash my hand: RT, InL, Sync
Yo-ho: RT, InL, Sync
Your majesty: RT, InL, Sync
Your highness: RT, InL, Sync
3 Elements from Target Culture (ETCs)
There is no element found in the film for this category
Non-verbal Elements (0 element, 0 occurrence)
Sail the sea: RT, InL, Sync
Tame the sea: RT, InL, Sync
5 Elements from Third Culture (E3Cs)
Non-verbal Elements (3 elements, 7 occurrences)
Davy Jones’s Locker: RT, InL, Sync
Pirates costumes: RT, ExL, ASync
Pirates flags: RT, ExL, Sync.