5. | Well, that's a fair question. (A. 657 — p.LX VID) Một câu hỏi công băng.
6. |And have I ever broken a promise?
(A.132 — pXII) Đã có bao giờ tớ thất hứa
chưa, hu?
7. | This is the heart and soul of our aviary.
(A.180 — p.XVII) Day chính là trái tim và
linh hồn khu chuồng chim.
8. | No, no, guys, really, I'm fine.
The cage is great.
(A.174 - XVII) Không. Đủ rồi, tôi on.
Cái lồng rat tốt.
9. | Yes! And unfortunately, the poor birds are often hurt
(A.190 — p.XIX) Đúng! Đáng tiệc những con chim tội nghiệp thường bị thương...
10. |- Blu? (A.538 — p. LIV) Blu?
- Where?
11. | Hey! My watch! (A.646 — p.LXVD E, cái dong ho!
12. | Where I need to come down for | (A.814 — p.LXXXIV) Tôi ha xuong hit tho
oxygen. một it oxy.
13. | I'm that samba, samba master (A.826—p.LXXXV) Ta là samba, samba
24
Master, master, master, master
14. | You're choking! Okay! Allright! | (A.961 — p.XCIX) Oi éi... Anh bi nghen
thiệt kia!
15. | Hey! Wait for us! (A.1185 — p.CXX) Ay... Doi da!
16. | It's Blu! Look, Tulio, it's Blu! (A.1278 — p.CXXX) Chinh Blu! Tulio, chinh Blu!
The table above clearly shows that examples 1, 2 and 3 are the translator’s omissions of the original text. Generally, an omission when conveying meaning from the SL to the TT can make readers or viewers miss the lines. For literary translation such as a translation of novels, stories or fictions, etc., this kind of omission is unacceptable as readers must base on the reading material to understand the meaning of the text. However, for the film “Rio”, untranslating these sentences and phrases may not cause misunderstanding to the audience. When watching the film, they not only listen to dialogues and music but also watch the background and
characters’ acts and postures. Hence, they can get most of the point. Especially,
examples 1 and 2 are the lyrics of the song Rafael sings when this bird persuades its
“wife” to help Blue and Jewel see Luiz. In the original film, Rafael appears as a romantic bird who sings not very well. Hence, if these 2 sentences are translated and then dubbed by a Vietnamese singer, the audience may misinterpret the quality of the voice actor. For the third example, the original text, “Hasta la vista”, is from Spanish language, which means goodbye. When following this scene, the audience may be confused about its meaning. The researcher herself must listen several times and then see the English subtitle to see what the character says.
In addition to three totally-untranslated texts above, the translator seems to have overlooked several words in other sentences. Examples 4, 5, 6, and 9 in the table
illustrate this point - they refer to the exclamation words which mean “Ừm, à,...” in
Vietnamese. The omission of those words does not cause much change in the meaning of the original version.
Examples 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16 demonstrate the missing of some
25
words in the sentences. Particularly, in examples 12 and 13, where and master, master, master, master, master is totally ignored. However, this sentence is from the lyrics of the song at the beginning of the film. The translator not only has to interpret the meaning of the original text but also make it suitable with the melody.
Therefore, this adaption is reasonable.
Examples 10, 13, 14 and 16 reflect the disappearance of the equivalence of the translated version of some words. Yet, it is agreeable as these texts are uttered in conversations where there exist many different kinds of sounds such as characters’
voice or the music. Therefore, the audience cannot realize any signals of this omission.
In general, all the above-mentioned texts show that a few words, phrases and even sentences in the translation of the film have been intentionally or deliberately left out. As previously discussed, in most cases, the omission of the words or phrases has no significant impact on general meaning of the original text. The translator may suppose that conveying the whole meaning of the dialogue is more important than translating every single word. Besides, as the influence of this on the audience’ understanding is immaterial and they can still grasp the main gist of the film, this kind of translating is still acceptable. However, it seems insupportable in one case: the phrase Hasta la vista is not translated, which affects the understanding of the audience who only have chance to watch the Vietnamese version of the film.
This may result from literary translation where the translator has to comply with the principles of the target language; hence, he might not be able to maintain the format of the original version.
3.2.2. The translator’s method
Viewers praise “Rio” not only because the message and meaningfulness the film brings about but also because its language is simple and easy to understand. In fact, the glossary and expressions in the film are not complex; hence, translating the film is not a hard job. Nonetheless, how to convey as much as the beauty of the content of the film, especially of content of the song, is a challenging task.
26
Generally, the translator has stuck to the communicative translation method as it attempts to produce the message from the original film to the audience in a very smooth and natural way. The Vietnamese version of “Rio” can be considered a target language biased translation because of its accessibility of thought and cultural content of original to viewers. On the other hand, in a long and complicated work like a film, the complexity of communicative language is inevitable; therefore, the translator certainly has to combine some methods of translation along with a chief method. Especially, for the song sung by the birds in the film, adaption translation method is also utilized.
3.2.3. The translation’s prospective readership
Resembling the original, the translated version generally aims at young audience such as children or young adults who love watching foreign animated cartoons. The methods and language the translator has used suggest that the targeted readership is mostly of these two types of audience and even those who are
interested in discovering Brazilian culture.
3.3. Comparison of the translation with the original
The third step of assessment, also considered as the heart of the study, will deal with how the translator has solved the particular problems of the SL text. The researcher will pick out the most selective and representative examples of the accomplishments and
shortcomings of the translated version in comparison with the original text. Then, they are grouped under general headings including the title, the structure, proper names, and cultural words (Newmark, 1988:187). In addition, a discussion of translation problems will be presented as well.
3.3.1. The title
In Viet Nam, editorial staff of film producers often determine titles of translated films. Potential viewers decide whether they will watch a film or not by
some scenes of the film narrative which starts with film titles (Hillman, 2011:388).
Briffa and Caruana (2009:14, 2) pointed out the complexity of title translation
27
Comment [A1]: The intended audience includes
children and young adults only, or all, young and old? This paragraph seems to contain conflicts.
Revise.
because it is “governed by non-detachability” considering that “the title derives its identity from the context and translation must take this into account.” Peter Newmark (1988:56) argues that the translated title “should usually bear some relation to the original, if only for identification”, but it should also “sound attractive, allusive, suggestive” to attract the potential readers. In general, a translator is entitled to “change” the title of the text (Newmark, 1988:156).
However, translating titles is not simple because the only true unit of translation (the minimal stretch of language that has to be translated together, as one unit) is the whole text (Newmark, 1988:54), that is to say, it is necessary to take the title into serious consideration as a part of the whole text when dealing with title translation.
It is compulsory that a translator understands the whole text before translating its title. Newmark (1988: 57, 156) suggests that all titles are either descriptive, which describe the topic of the text, or allusive, which have some kind of referential or figurative relationship to the topic; the latter ones are suitable for imaginative literature, and may have to be changed.
Titles of films need to be attractive, allusive, and suggestive in order to catch the attention of the viewers. For this purpose, itles should be able to attract the readers emotionally because, as Nida and Taber (1974:91) states, “we do not only understand the reference of words; we also react to them emotionally... This aspect of the meaning which deals with our emotional reactions to words is called connotative meaning.”
Concerning the film, both the original and the translated name is “Rio”. The title itself refers to the magnificent Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro, where the film is set. It seems that one of the film-makers’ purposes is to introduce the picturesque scenery and culture of Brazil in general, and of Rio de Janeiro in particular to the audience worldwide. The title is quite interesting, especially with those who have already had some knowledge about Rio de Janeiro or at least they have heard this name before. However, for those who have never heard of Rio, then the title seems to carry too little information to attract potential viewers. Hence, it is suggestible
28
that the translated title should have additional features to be more attractive, allusive, and suggestive.
3.3.2. The structure
This section of the thesis will present several key points with remarkable examples that reflect the differences between the ST and the TT.
3.3.2.1. Simple sentences vs. compound sentences
After the thorough examination of the ST and the TT, it is noticeable that in general, structures in both versions are mostly retained. Reasons for this may come from the fact that most of the texts in the film are parts of dialogues or of a song, which usually does not contain long and compound sentences. Thus, it is obvious that the translator is quite lucky as he/she does not have to modify structures from the original to the translated version.
3.3.2.2. Active voices vs. passive voices
No. | Original version Translated version