AUDIOVISUAL TRANSLATION PROBLEMS OF CULTURE BOUND ELEMENTS a STUDY OF THE AMERICAN FILM PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN AT WORLD’S END

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOIUNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN DUY ANH AUDIOVISUAL TRANSLATION PROBLEMS OF CULTURE-BOUND ELEM

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

NGUYỄN DUY ANH

AUDIOVISUAL TRANSLATION PROBLEMS OF CULTURE-BOUND ELEMENTS: A STUDY OF THE

AMERICAN FILM PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT

WORLD’S END

Những khó khăn trong việc dịch các thành tố văn hoá

trong tài liệu âm-hình, nghiên cứu qua bộ phim Mỹ:

Cướp biển vùng Caribê: Nơi tận cùng thế giới

M.A COMBINED PROGRAM THESIS

Field: English Linguistics 2 Code: 60220201

Supervisor: Prof Dr Hoàng Văn Vân

Hanoi, 2015

RESEARCHER’S STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY

The work presented in this thesis is, to the researcher’s knowledge and belief, isoriginal and done by the researcher’s own effort, besides, all sources of thematerials quoted in the thesis are also acknowledged adequately Finally, the currentthesis has not been submitted for any degree at this university and others and alsohas not been published

Nguyễn Duy Anh

Secondly, I want to express my thanks to the professors, doctors, lecturers and allother people at the Post-graduate Faculty of ULIS for their lessons and supportsduring my MA course.

Last but not least, I want to express my gratitude to my beloved family and friendswhose supports and understanding contributed a lot in the success of my MA thesis

Hanoi, 2015Nguyễn Duy Anh

Analysing the selected American film entitled Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s

End, the study seeks to (1) identify the culture-bound elements in the film, (2) find

the translation problems of these elements and (3) suggest some strategies toimprove the translation of these elements The study is hoped to bring some helpfulinsights to the translation of films

TABLE OF CONTENTS

RESEARCHER’S STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vi

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Aim, Objectives and Research Questions 3

3 Corpus and Methodology 4

4 Scope of the Study 5

5 Design of the Study 5

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 7

CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 7

1.1 The Theories of Translation 7

1.1.1 Definitions of Translation 7

1.1.2 Audiovisual Translation 8

1.2 Culture Bound Elements in Translation 10

1.2.1 The Issues of Equivalence 10

1.2.2 Culture and Translation 13

1.2.3 Culture-bound Elements in Translation 14

1.2.3.1 Definitions Culture-bound Elements (CBEs) 14

1.2.3.2 Classification of CBEs 17

1.2.3.3 Classification Suggested for the Present Study 23

1.2.3.4 Translation Strategies for CBEs 26

1.3 Concluding Remarks 30

CHAPTER 2: THE TRANSLATION OF CULTURE-BOUND ELEMENTS IN PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD’S END 31

2.1 A Brief Introduction to Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End 31

2.2 Data and Examples Format 32

2.3 Culture-bound Elements in the Original Version 34

2.3.1 The Main CBEs throughout the Corpus 36

2.3.1.1 Talking Like Pirates: The Nautical Languages 36

2.3.1.2 The Elements from Third Cultures (E3Cs) 40

2.3.2 Other CBEs in the Film 44

2.3.2.1 The Verbal Elements 44

2.3.2.2 The Non-verbal Elements 47

2.4 Translation Problems of CBEs and Some Translation Strategies 50

2.4.1 Translation Problems of CBEs in the Current Film 50

2.4.2 Possible Strategies for CBEs 55

2.4.2.1 Loan 55

2.4.2.2 Calque or Literal Translation 57

2.4.2.3 Explicitation 59

2.4.2.4 Transposition 60

2.4.2.5 Addition 61

2.4.2.6 Compensation 62

2.4.2.7 Omission 63

2.5 Concluding Remarks 64

PART C: CONCLUSION 66

1 Summary 66

1.1 Theoretical Review 66

2.2 Study Results 67

2 Limitations and Suggestions for Further Research 68

2.1 Limitations 68

2.2 Suggestions for Further Research 69

REFERENCES 70

APPENDIX I

ESC Elements from source culture

ETC Elements from target culture

IC Intercultural

ICE Intercultural elements

ICRs Intralinguistic culture-bound references

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

Presently, with the advance of science and technology, the film industry is alsorapidly developing in both quantity and quality All nations across the world havedeveloped for themselves different film culture and at different level ofdevelopment A movie is not only a product of entertainment It shows the level ofdevelopment 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 themovies as an effective tool of expression, a new problem also rose, challenging filmdirectors and producers all over the world: their audiovisual products must betranslated in order to bring them across the boundaries of language and culture Theterm audiovisual translation (AVT) was born as a tool to facilitate the understandingand transferring of culture and ideas which are presented in film products and otheraudiovisual products such as TV show, TV dramas and video games

AVT has become an important part of our daily life Many scholars and scientistshave 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 EuropeanAssociation 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 verbalcommunication, and the non-verbal communication, namely the music, sounds,

objects, gestures of the characters and other features Besides, the film contains thecultural characteristics of the country where it was produced and also the socialcharacteristics of the historical periods that it presents These features of a featurefilm 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 Whentranslating a movie, translators have a very important role of not only transferringthe meaning of the language of the directors but also transferring the culture fromthe source to the target language In the translation of a movie, there are manydifficulties for translators in terms of language and culture The audience’s mainneed 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 beacceptable in the receptive society This problem lies on the differences between thetwo communities with different cultures and civilizations

Focusing on culture-bound elements, this thesis has the main aim of identifying theproblems 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, italso 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 offeudalism, in which the social values, the culture background and also the languagestyle were very different from present One of the film’s appealing factors is thatwhen 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 thestory of a golden reign of pirates of the Caribbean area, the film consists ofelements 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 tomis-translate it This study aims to find out the problems related to culture-boundelements 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 researcherhopes to bring some useful suggestions for translators of movies and otheraudiovisual products The study, thus, is expected to be helpful for translators andinterpreters of other fields

2 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 ofCBEs in the film

To achieve the above aim and objectives, the study raises the following researchquestions 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 problems experienced by the translator when translating

culture-bound elements in the film Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s

End?

3 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 themovie with Vietnamese subtitle is downloaded from the website www.phimmoi.netand the English filmscript is taken from www.script-o-rama.com In addition, theresearcher also records some examples from the VTV version on Starmovie (onTV) However, the names of the Vietnamese translators are unknown A briefintroduction 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 thetheoretical 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 thehelp of the downloaded English script and the culture-bound elements identified inthe characters’ talks and conversations will be recorded and categorised based onthe framework

After identifying the CBEs in the original version, the Vietnamese versions will beexamined The purpose of this is to find the problems in the translation of CBEs inthe film In fact, the researcher will compare the translated versions with theoriginal to see whether the translation of CBEs in these versions is appropriate andaccurate or not, base on the researcher’s personal experience and research Afterthat, the translation strategies for the elements found in the film will also besuggested based on the taxonomies given in the theoretical background

The main approach used in this study is qualitative, which means the researcher willbase himself on a theoretical framework to analyse the corpus The data of the studywill be presented quantitatively in their number of occurrence.

4 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 upwhen translating audiovisual products Due to the limitation of time and length ofthe 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 anevaluation by any translation versions of any other translators In fact, the selectedVietnamese versions are examined only to find the problems in translating theCBEs in the film It is also necessary to note that this study does not deal with anyparticular types of AVT namely subtitling, dubbing or interpreting

5 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

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 forthese 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

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

1.1 The Theories of Translation

1.1.1 Definitions of Translation

Presently, translation has become a very wide and complex area of research inapplied linguistics and it started to be scientifically concerned in the 1960s Theconcept of translation has been viewed and explained differently through a longtime of development; therefore, the definition of it has varied

Newmark (1988:7) defined translation as “a craft consisting in the attempt toreplace a written message and/or statement in one language by the same messageand/or statement in another language.” He also emphasized the role of the author’sintension when “rendering a written text into another language.” (Newmark, 1988:5)

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 thatthe readers can understand it easily To do so, an absolute accuracy in terms ofmeaning 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 Beingone among those, Bell (1991) considered the equivalence in terms of semantic andstylistic 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)1.1.2 Audiovisual Translation

As mentioned earlier, with the strong development of the global film industry, allcountries in the world have developed for themselves different film cultures and atdifferent levels of development In addition, to meet the demand of the majority ofthe audience world-wide, with the development of technology, language hadgradually been brought into films as an effective tool of content expression Thisadvance 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 tocope with the problems of the translation of films and TV programs as audiovisualtext The difficulty is that this kind of text is not simply the composition of languagebut 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 ofimages and recorded speech or music” The term audiovisual text is used along withthe appearance of audiovisual products such as films, tragedies, comedies, operashow, video games These products contain multimedia features namely sounds,music, or images and thus, can be considered as audiovisual texts, or multimediatexts

The term audiovisual translation (AVT) refers to the translation of audiovisual texts.Luis Perez Gonzales in Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies (cited byBaker & Saldanha, 2009: 13) defined audiovisual translation as follows:

Audiovisual translation is a branch of Translation Studies concerned with thetransfer of multimodal and multimedial texts into another language and/orculture.

Having a slight different view point, Jorge Dias Cintas and Remael (2007: 13)defined audiovisual translation as “the translation of products in which the verbaldimension is supplemented by elements in another media.” This definition is moresatisfactory due to a clear explanation of the nature of audiovisual products

From the definitions above, it can be concluded that audiovisual products aredifferent from other kind of texts because they involve many other codes than justthe 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, anaudiovisual text consists of ten codes as follows:

VERBAL CODE

 The linguistic code is the text, common point of all the other types oftranslation Chaume (p 17) specifies that this text “has to appear oral andspontaneous (written to be spoken as if not written […] )”

SOUND CODE

 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 aslaughing, 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 thestory, as an off-screen narrator (p 18)

VISUAL CODE

 The iconographic code is when iconographic symbols that are not known bythe target audience appear and they need to be explained in some way withinthe film (p 19) 52

 The photographic code refers to the changes in lighting, in perspective, or inthe 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 isassociated 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, howmuch characters are distant from other characters or from the camera Lipsynchrony is important too (p 20)

 The graphic code refers to the written text that appears on the screen, such astitles, intertitles, texts and subtitles (p 21)

 The syntactic code concerns the fact that “being aware of iconic associationscan help the translator to better understand […] the relationship of one scene

to another and the position of the scene within the development of the plotand the narrative” (p 21)

Chaume (2004: 17-22, cited in Sacconi, 2013: 51, 52)

As can be seen, the problems in translating movies are not only from the linguistictext but from other elements as well, such as sounds or images In fact, the currentstudy cannot deal with all of the above codes but focuses on the verbal elements,which are the only thing that can be actually translated However, the non-verbalelements are also mentioned as the supports for the verbal ones

1.2 Culture Bound Elements in Translation

1.2.1 The Issues of Equivalence

Through time, the area of translation studies has reached a high level ofdevelopment, thus, the number of approaches to this field is also various According

to Munday (2001: 1), the nature of translation can be considered multilingual andinterdisciplinary with many types of approach from the different points of view oflinguistics, communication or culture Despite the variety of approaches, as can beseen in the example of definitions above, all views in the field of translation studieshave a common concept of equivalence

In fact, equivalence is considered the central concept in the area of translationstudies; however, the true nature of it in translation is still arguable According toRoman Jakobson (cited in Munday, 2001: 36), a full equivalence betweenlanguages never exists while the Encyclopedia of Translation Studies (2009: 96)defined this term as the relationship between the original text (source text – ST) andits translation in the target language (target text – TT) A very famous author, PeterNewmark (1988), claimed that the effect of equivalence is the most wanted result inany translation He also considered this effect “the overriding purpose of anytranslation 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 bedivided into one-to-one equivalence, one-to-many equivalence, many-to-oneequivalence, one-to-part-of-one equivalence or nil equivalence This approachfocuses 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 andmeaning 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, theissue is that translators have to keep the author’s intention in the source text, thus, ameaning accuracy at word level may not be achieved In other words, whentransferring the sense from one language to another, translators cannot always useword-to-word translation; therefore, the problem of non-equivalence will appear.

As mentioned earlier, equivalence is considered, by many scholars, the centralconcept in translation As a consequence, it can be denied that non-equivalence isthe 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:

 Culture-specific concepts

 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 expressive meaning

 Differences in form

 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 andthis 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 inthe target culture The concept in question may be abstract or concrete; it mayrelate to a religious belief, a social custom, or even a type of food Suchconcepts are often referred to as ‘culture specific’ (Baker, 1994: 21)

In fact, the notion of culture and culture-specific terms/concepts/elements intranslation has been concerned by many authors in the broad field of translation andthe definitions as well as other issues about these elements has also beenapproached in many different ways This notion will be discussed further in the nextparagraphs

1.2.2 Culture and Translation

In general, culture can be defined as “the customs, beliefs, art, way of life and socialorganisation 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” includingall capabilities and habits that has been acquired by any member of the humansociety, namely human knowledge, belief, art, law, morals or customs

Toury (cited in Ray, 2008: 129) also claimed “translations are facts of targetculture” In fact, culture is always an essential aspect in translation due to theinvolvement 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" Thisopinion, thus, can be recapitulated that each language community has its ownculturally specific identity

Risager (2006: 3) stated that “in the generic sense, we are dealing with languageand culture as phenomena shared by all humanity” This can be understood thatlanguage and culture are inseparable aspects of human In fact, the inseparability oflanguage 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 naturallanguage However, these two aspects are independent In fact, the transference oflinguistic 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 cultureonto 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 tothe readers and audiences from the target culture Henceforth, the problem arisingfor 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 thebroad 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 everyelement 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 Infact, some academic scholars in the field had tried to give definitions to theseelements; however, the points of view were given differently, using a vast array ofterms such as culture-specific, culture-bound elements, references, expressions orterms

From a socio-linguistic view point, Nord (1997: 34) referred to these culturalelements 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 acorresponding social phenomenon in a culture Y, is found to be specific to cultureX.” This definition does not emphasise the role of culturemes in translation;however, a relationship between cultures was partially shown Besides, it can beinferred that it is, to some extent, problematic for the members of culture Y tounderstand this X-culture-bound element

The most general terms used to refer to these elements are cultural references orculture-specific references (CSRs) According to Mailhac (1996: 133-134), “bycultural reference we mean any reference to a cultural entity which, due to itsdistance from the target culture, is characterized by a sufficient degree of opacityfor the target reader to constitute a problem.” The author, concerning with the truenature of CBEs, mentioned the distance between the source culture and the targetculture which is considered the main cause to the difficulty for the target readers inunderstanding these elements Thus, this definition is quite useful to the area oftranslation studies where appropriate ways to translate CBEs are concerned

Concerning the translation of CBEs in subtitling, Dias Cintas and Remael (2007:200) defined these cultural elements as “extralinguistic references to items that aretied up with a country’s culture, history, or geography, and tend therefore to poseserious translation challenges.” Here, the authors suggested the term “extralinguistic

references”, which has already appeared in another definition written by Pedersen(2005: 114) as follows:

Extralinguistic Culture-bound Reference (ECR) is defined as reference that isattempted by means of any culture-bound linguistic expression, which refers to

an extralinguistic entity or process, and which is assumed to have a discoursereferent that is identifiable to a relevant audience as this referent is within theencyclopedic knowledge of this audience (Pedersen, 2005: 114)

In fact, the module discussed in Pedersen (2005) was limited to the area ofextralinguistic culture-bound references (ECRs), the elements that refer toextralinguistic entities or processes only, thus, this definition is not adequate for theidentification of CBEs in the present study However, Pedersen (2005) alsodistinguished his “ECRs” from another term called intralinguistic culture boundreferences, which, to this author, include idioms, proverbs, slang and dialects,which should not be excluded in any studies about CBEs Thus, for the purpose ofthe current analysis, the concept of CBEs should consist of both of the terms given

by Pedersen (2005), which are extralinguistic and intralinguistic elements

Besides, in this study, the term CBEs will be preferred to the others such as culturespecific references or cultural references According to Karen Risager (2006: 163,164), some distinction should be made between the two concepts of reference andliteral meaning, or denotation (ibid.: 163) when dealing with cultural elements.Lyons (1995, cited in Risager, 2006: 163) used the term “reference” for an act ofpointing at something in the real world in the process of language using and theterm “denotation” for the literal meaning of the language only Thus, by using theterms “references”, the scholars mentioned in the previous paragraphs cannotconvey the elements that do not possess any entities or processes to be referred to inthe real (extralinguistic) world In other words, the terms such as culture-specificreferences or cultural-references has unintentionally excluded the elements that

Pedersen (2005) called intralinguistic culture-bound references (ICRs) which can beinferred to have culture-bound contents which are specific to a particular culture but

do not possess any real culture-specific references

In conclusion, the present study will follow a fundamental concept of culture-boundelements (CBEs), the elements which are specific to particular cultures, whichconsists of two aspects of which the first one will be extralinguistic culture-boundreferences (the term given by Pedersen, 2005), as defined by the mentioned authorsabove For the second aspect, the area of slangs, idioms, dialects and so on given byPedersen (2005) will be kept but under another name of intralinguistic culture-bound elements instead of ICRs The classification of these CBEs will be discussed

in the next section

1.2.3.2 Classification of CBEs

Before Mona Baker (1994), who considered culture-specific concepts one of theproblems of non-equivalence in translation, Peter Newmark (1988), adapting theopinion of Nida (1945), proposed a well-known set of cultural categories This setbased on a range of field related to cultural-specific vocabulary:

 Ecology (animal, mountain, geography)

 Material culture (food, clothes, housing, transport and communications)

 Social culture (work and leisure)

 Organizations, customs, ideas (political, social, legal, religious or artisticterms)

 Gestures and habits

Although this categorisation is famous and has been quoted in many relevantstudies, in the opinion of Mailhac (1996) and Kwiecinski (2001, summarised in

Ranzato, 2013: 74), it was considered rigid and lack of contextualisation Moreover,

it can only deal with the cultural elements at word level

Dias Cintas and Remael (2007: 201) proposed a more detailed classification whichconcerns the challenges in the context of AVT This classification is as follows (theexamples are given by the authors):

Geographical References

 Objects from physical geography: savannah, mistral, tornado

 Geographical objects: downs, plaza mayor

 Endemic animal and plant species: sequoia, zebra

Ethnographic References

 Objects from daily life: tapas, trattoria, igloo

 References to work: farmer, gaucho, machete, ranch

 References to art and culture: blues, Thanksgiving, Romeo and Juliet

 References to descent: gringo, Cockney, Parisienne

 Measures: inch, euro, pound

Socio-political References

 References to administrative or territorial units: county, bidonville, state

 References to institutions and functions: Reichstag, sheriff, congress

 References to socio-cultural life: Ku Klux Klan, Prohibition, landed gentry

 References to military institutions and objects: Feldwebel, marines, Smith &Wesson

The above classification was particularly given to the method of subtitling in AVT.But similar to that of Peter Newmark, this system was grouped into lexical

categories and cannot explain the relationship between cultures in the translationprocess.

Pedersen (2005: 122), discussing the translation of CBEs, suggested someparameters involving the nature of cultural elements which he called ECRs, and thematters of choice in translation process The first parameter called “transculturality”states clearly the nature of cultural elements and the relationship between thecultures involving in the text By that, the author made a distinction between (1)transcultural, (2) monocultural and (3) microcultural ECRs The elements in thefirst group are the ones that belong to a specific culture but are known by manycultures, the elements in the second group are less known by “the majority ofpeople of the TT audience” than that of the ST due to the “differences inencyclopedic knowledge” (Pedersen, 2005: 123) and the third ones are, to theauthor, too specific to be well-known by even the members of the SC

The second parameter by Pedersen (2005: 123-124) is called “extratextuallity”.According to this author, the reference to a culture-bound element may exist outsidethe ST or may exist inside the text only In fact, most of the references to culturalelements have their presence in real life; however, there are some elements that arecreated for the texts only so their references are considered “text-internal” In the

corpus of the present study, for example, the place Shipwreck Cove, a pirate

stronghold, is text-internal and does not exist in the real life

Another parameter given by Pedersen (2005) is the “centrality of reference” (ibid.:124-125) This parameter in fact has a big influence in the choice and strategies oftranslators To Pedersen, some cultural elements may exist to be central to the textand create the theme of that text or in Ranzato’s words (2013: 76), the “leit motif”

of the text Pedersen (2005: 124) gave an example of the film The Bridges of

Madison County in which the element the bridges is central to the storyline of the

film In the present corpus, we will also be able to see the image of Davy Jones’s

Locker as a centre element to the plot.

Concerning subtitling, Pedersen (2005: 125-126) also suggested some otherparameters namely “intersemiotic redundancy” and “co-text” which state somecases in which translators do not need to translate the elements which are alsoconveyed by other media such as image or sound, or which are repeated in the textsuch as the repetition in dialogues or speeches This scholar also gave some otherissues related to constraints of subtitling as well as the audience problems such asage or knowledge These parameters are mainly related to the choice of strategies intranslation

These parameters seem to be useful in the analysis of AV texts in terms of CBEs;however, although Pedersen (2005) suggested the term intralinguistic culture-boundreferences, like Dias Cintas & Remael (2007), he only categorised CBEs with thepurpose of analysing “extralinguistic” elements By that, the “intralinguistic” termssuch as idioms or proverbs, which are also highly related to specific cultures, wereexcluded

Chiaro (2009: 155), referring to the AVT problems of CBEs, proposed the term

“translational hurdles”, which are divided into:

1 Highly culture-specific references (e.g place names, references to sports andfestivities, famous people, monetary systems, institutions, etc.)

2 Language-specific features (terms of address, taboo language, etc.)

3 Areas of overlap between language and culture (songs, rhymes, jokes, etc.)

In this macro categorisation, only the first one is directly related to the popular termCSRs However, the third category which falls into the area between language andculture is also referred to cultural elements Thus, unlike other scholars, Chiaroconsidered CBEs in both of their linguistic and extralinguistic natures, which is, as

mentioned earlier, suitable for the opinion of the current study For those cultural elements, this author also quotes a list from an earlier literature by Antoniniand Chiaro (2005: 39, cited in Chiaro, 2009: 156-157) which introduces ten areaswhat they named as “lingua-cultural drops in translational voltage”:

lingua-1 Institutions (including judiciary, police, military)

a Legal formulae: e.g ‘This court is now in session’, ‘All rise’,

‘Objection, your Honour’, ‘Objection overruled/sustained’, ‘You may

be seated’;

b Courtroom forms of address: e.g ‘Your Honour’, ‘My Lord’,

‘Members of the jury’;

c Legal topography: Supreme Court, Grand Jury, Court, etc.;

d Agents: lawyers, solicitors, attorneys, barristers, etc.; hospitalhierarchies such as consultants, interns, paramedics; militaryhierarchies, etc

2 Educational references to ‘high school’ culture, tests, grading systems,

sororities, cheer leaders, etc

3 Place names: The District of Columbia, The Country Club, 42nd Street, etc.

4 Units of measurement: Two ounces of meat, 150 pounds, twenty yards, etc.

5 Monetary systems: Dollars, soles, pounds, etc.

6 National sports and pastimes: American football, baseball, basketball

teams: The Nicks, Boston, Brooklyn Dodgers, etc

7 Food and drink: Mississippi Mud Pie, pancakes, BLT, etc.

8 Holidays and festivities: Halloween, St Patrick’s, July 4th, Thanksgiving,

Bar Mitzvah, Chinese New Year, The Festival of Light, etc

9 Books, films and TV programmes: ‘Did you watch the Brady Bunch?’;

‘Welcome to the road Dorothy’

10 Celebrities and personalities: Ringo Starr; Toppy; The Cookie Monster,

etc

Antonini and Chiaro (2005: 39, cited in Chiaro, 2009: 156-157)

In this taxonomy, the author’s main concern is language and culture, not merelyculture, thus, this way of division is also a practical tool for the current analysis.Ranzato (2013), basing on the opinion of Pedersen, has proposed a new taxonomy

in her analysis of the translation of culture specific references (CSRs) in Italiandubbing, which is, according to the author herself, a practical tool for analysis Thisclassification is adopted from the author’s table (ibid.: 80-81) as follows:

Realistic references

1 Source culture references

2 Intercultural references

3 Third culture references

4 Target culture references

Intertextual references

5 Overt intertextual allusions

6 Covert intertextual allusions

7 Intertextual macroallusions

All of the above can be either:

 Verbal or nonverbal cultural references

 Synchronous or asynchronous cultural references

In the category called realistic reference, the connections of the cultures involving

in the text are shown The author also gave a clear explanation for each of the categories Following that, it can be easy to understand that the source culture,target culture and third culture references refer to the elements belonging to thesource culture (SC), the target culture (TC) and to a third culture (3C) beside SCand TC The intercultural references are explained by the author as the elements

sub-“that forged a dialogue between SC and TC” which are, in other words, theelements well-known by both the source audience (SA) and the target audience(TA)

In the second category called intertextual references, another concept called

“intertextual allusion” is found According to Shaw (cited in Leppihalme, 1997: 6),

an allusion is “a reference, usually brief, often casual, occasionally indirect, to aperson, event, or condition presumably familiar but sometimes obscure or unknown

to the reader.” In fact, Ranzato (2013) used the term “intertextual allusions” todiscuss the elements that have their reference not to a real entity but to other textsand “create a bond between the translated text and other literary, audiovisual orartistic texts.” This scholar also stated that “the nature of these references isdifferent from the nature of realistic references.” (ibid.: 80)

This taxonomy is also remarkable for its distinctions between verbal elements,which are reflected by the language, and non-verbal elements, which are projected

by other media such as sound effects or images This distinction may be veryappropriate to the field of AVT where translators have to consider not only the textbut also the effect from other effects Another distinction was made by the authorbetween synchronous and asynchronous references She stated that the elements intexts are also set in a specific time and place, so they can be “time specific as well

as culture specific” (ibid.: 91) With the corpus selected for the current study, thisdistinction seems to be a very effective analytical tool.

1.2.3.3 Classification Suggested for the Present Study

The purpose of this study, as mentioned in the introductory part, is to investigate thecultural-elements appearing in the corpus which may cause difficulties andproblems in the translation process For this purpose, the following taxonomy issuggested as the analytical framework for the study This taxonomy adopts most ofthe categories from the one given by Ranzato (2013) but some slight adjustmentsare added for the purpose of the current study Thus, CBEs are classified as in thefollowing table:

Table 1 : Classification of CBEs

Culture bound elements:

1 Elements from source culture (ESC)

2 Elements from target culture (ETC)

3 Intercultural elements (ICE)

4 Elements from third cultures (E3C)

These elements can be either:

5 Verbal or non verbal elements

6 Synchronous or asynchronous elements

7 Realistic or intertextual references

8 Extralinguistic references or intralinguistic elements

The four categories in this taxonomy, as well as the termssynchronous/asynchronous, verbal/non-verbal and realistic/intertextual, are mainlyadopted from the classification by Ranzato (2013) which arranges cultural elementsbased on their cultural origins (SC, TC, 3C or IC); however, the term “element” is

used instead of “reference” in some cases since both extralinguistic andintralinguistic elements will be discussed, as mentioned earlier.

 Elements from Source Culture

These elements are the ones which originally come from the SC In this study, thedata is collected from an American film, so the SC is the Anglo-American culture

 Elements from Target Culture

This category consists of the elements coming from the cultural background of the

ST In the current analysis, these elements, if any, belong to Vietnamese culture

 Intercultural Elements

Ranzato (2013: 82) defined these elements as the ones which “forged a dialoguebetween SC and TC”; in other words, the elements are familiar to both the SA and

the TA (e.g Santa Claus).

 Elements from Third Cultures

These ones are the elements which do not belong “either to the SC or the TC but to

a third culture.” (Ranzato, 2013: 83)

 Realistic and Intertextual References

Also to Ranzato (2013), intertextual elements are also cultural but they are differentfrom others in their nature However, this scholar also stated that these elementsmay belong to the SC, TC or any other third culture In fact, the purpose ofcategorising CBEs basing on their cultural origin is to emphasise the role ofdifferent cultural backgrounds involving in the text; therefore, there is no need toput these intertextual references into a separated category because when doing so,their cultural origins may be forgotten Thus, in the current taxonomy, both realistic

(elements from real life) and intertextual elements (elements referring to otherfictional texts) are put into four categories as displayed in the table.

 Extralinguistic References and Intralinguistic Elements

As mentioned earlier, following the opinion of Pedersen (2005), the concept ofCBEs in this study will consist of both extralinguistic culture-bound references andintralinguistic culture-bound elements Extralinguistic culture-bound referencesconcerns with the elements which have their references which firstly exist in the

real world and are specific to a particular culture (e.g igloo, as given by Dias Cintas

and Remael, 2007: 201) Intralinguistic culture-bound elements (slang, idioms,proverbs, idiolects, dialects, according to Pedersen, 2005), in the opinion of theresearcher, are the elements which are not specific due to their reference in the realworld but specific in the way they are used in a particular culture The case ofidioms is a clear explanation for this idea In fact, the connotations of the idioms areshared among many communities in the world, but the linguistic elements which areused to express these connotations are, in contrast, different across culturalbackgrounds In other words, idioms belonging to a cultural background mayconvey shared connotations to those from another cultural background, but the use

of denotations is specific In contrast, slangs are the elements of which thedenotations are shared, but the connotations are specific

1.2.3.4 Translation Strategies for CBEs

As discussed, equivalence is considered the central issue in translation In fact, due

to its culture-specific nature, the CBEs are among the elements that can bringdifficulties to translators Sometimes, translators cannot find any equivalents ofthese elements in the target culture and this seems to be the most difficult situation.Many scholars have tried to find appropriate ways to translate these elements andthe most influential taxonomy for the translation of culture terms is that given byVinay and Darbelnet (2004: 84-112) In this set, the authors give two main types of

strategies called direct translation and oblique translation in which seven strategiesare presented as follow:

short terms and the literal translation is applied to long elements, as in to be or not

to be (tồn tại hay không tồn tại) For oblique translation, the authors also list

transposition (to replace one element with another), modulation (to restructure, as in

I don’t think you will have it = tao nghĩ mày sẽ không có được nó), equivalence and

adaption The strategies of the same terms can be seen in the taxonomy of a laterauthor, Leppihalme (2011) which are:

 Direct transfer

 Calque

 Cultural Adaption

 Superordinate term

 Explicitation

 Addition

 Omission

The strategies for translation are also concerned by another famous author, Peter

Newmark In A Textbook of Translation (1988), Newmark gives a very detailed

taxonomy which shows his focus on cultural terms In the book, Newmark spend awhole chapter to discuss the issue of literal translation (ibid.: 68-80) and then heprovides a list of other procedures (ibid.: 81-93) The procedures are summarized asfollows:

 Notes, additions, glosses

In the list, Newmark also mentioned the strategies given by other authors Theexamples given in the book also show the author’s interest in translating names andinstitutions

Pedersen (2005), concerning the translation of extralinguistic culture-boundreferences, gives a brief list of strategies as follow:

One of the clearest taxonomies is given by Dias-Cintas and Remael for audiovisualtranslation (2007: 202-207) This taxonomy consists of the 9 following strategiesand it can be seen that some strategies are adopted from the above-mentionedtaxonomies:

 Loan: the elements in the ST are also used in the TT In other words, theelements in the ST are borrowed The authors stated that the example can bethe place names, food, drink or historical events Those elements are in factcannot be translated

 Calque: it is a literal translation of the elements which have no accurateequivalent in the TL

 Explicitation: this strategy makes the text more understandable by giving thehyponyms (specification) or hypernyms (generalisation) of the elements

 Substitution: it is that a long element, which actually can be translated into the

TL, is replaced by a shorter one due to some technical limitations Theauthors stated that this is a variant of explicitation

 Transposition: it means a cultural element from one culture is replaced byanother cultural element from another culture This is the case of

measurements or currencies, for example K degree in English may be converted into C degree (temperature) in Vietnamese According to Dias-

Cintas and Remael, sometimes transposition needs an explanation orclarification

 Lexical recreation: it is the creation of a neologism in the TL to translate acreated neologism in the SL

 Compensation: it is adding a new element in the translation version tocompensate for another element which has been lost in translation process

 Omission: it is actually not a strategy Sometimes it is unavoidable to omit aculture element.

 Addition: it is a form of explicitation used when the element may causeunderstanding problems

Ranzato (2013) also adopted this taxonomy for her study with some modification insome categories but the basis is still kept These 2013 strategies includes loan,official translation, calque, explicitation, hypernym, hyponym, substitution, lexicalrecreation, elimination and creative addition, in which the term explicitation isparticularized by hypernym and hyponym, the term omission is replaced byelimination and the official translation is introduced However, as explained byRanzato herself, the official translation of a term is just a familiar term which istranslated “officially” by using some other strategies (ibid.: 103) In the currentstudy, the taxonomy given by Dias-Cintas and Remael (2007) will be employedwith some slight changes

1.3 Concluding Remarks

In this chapter, a brief review over translation and audiovisual translation has beenpresented 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 productinvolves not only the verbal code but also the support from other media

This chapter has also provided an examination of the concept of CBEs throughsome definitions and taxonomies Culture-bound elements, as mentioned, are theelement bound by some particular cultures and consist of both intralinguistic andextralinguistic cultural contents Beside this, some strategies involved in thetranslation of CBEs are also shown and the most notable taxonomy by Dias-Cintasand 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.