The titles of the movies in this genre sound humorous. Most of the titles are allusive. The descriptive titles are created based on the protagonists.
- The translators‟ purpose
Translators preserve the characteristics of the descriptive titles, while they change allusive titles into descriptive ones.
- Comparing the translations with the originals
Data analysis shows that five strategies are used in translating titles of comedy movies. The frequency of each strategy is converted into percentage and illustrated in the below chart:
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Figure 3.5. Strategies employed in translating titles of comedies
All the allusive titles are turned into descriptive ones in Vietnamese, which makes adaptation the most dominant strategy. For plural nouns, the translators utilize Shift to eliminate “s”, which leads to the fact that in Vietnamese, these titles turn into uncountable or single noun.
- The evaluation of the translations
Results from assessing sixteen translations of comedy titles shows that most of the translations only satisfy the standard of translators. Meanwhile, no translations only meet the assessor‟s standard. The detail is given in the chart below:
31%
56%
13% All criteria
Only translator's standard No criteria
Figure 3.6. Quality of the translations of comedy titles classified according to Newmark‟s TQA framework
As can be seen from the above chart, five translations (31%) fully meet the TQA framework. The source texts and target texts are presented in the table below:
Source Text Target Text
Bad Teacher Cô giáo lắm chiêu
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Bridesmaids Phù dâu
What's Your Number Anh là số mấy
Gulliver‟s Travels Gulliver du ký
Three Stooges Ba chàng ngốc
Table 3.9. Translations of comedy titles fully meet the TQA framework As can be clearly seen from the above table, because all the translations are translated by faithful translation or modulation, they remain loyal to the source texts. Besides, the original titles are all descriptive and this characteristic is preserved in the translations, as a result, the translations do reflect the movie‟s content and genre directly. For example, “Bad teacherad” is translated into Vietnamese as “lắm chiêu”. The movie features a female, gold-digging teacher who is trying every possible way to earn money to get her breast enlarged because she believes that large breast can help her win over a male colleague who is very wealthy. So in the title, the word “bad” is used to describe her cunning rather her immorality. Consequently, “lắm chiêu” appears to be a more suitable choice. “Bridesmaids”is translated into “Phù dâu”, changing the title from a plural into a common noun. In Vietnamese, a common noun, without a measure word in front of them, can express a group of people or things. For that reason, the title “Phù dâu” still refers to bridesmaids. In the case of “Gulliver‟s Travels”, the translator preserve the English name “Gulliver” and chooses to translate the noun “travels” into “du ký”, which means a record of one‟s travels in Vietnamese. In fact, the movie depicts the journeys made by Gulliver; hence, the translation “du ký” in the case of this movie was correct.
Besides, nine out of sixteen translations (56%) only meet the standard of the translator. They are presented in the table below:
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Source Text Target Text
1. No Strings attached Yêu không ràng buộc 2. Something borrowed Yêu lầm chồng bạn 3. This means War Cuộc chiến tình yêu 4. What to expect when you are
expecting
Tâm sự bà bầu
5. Playing for Keeps Yêu hết mình
6. The Heat Cuộc chiến nảy lửa
7. The Watch Dân phòng tinh nhuệ
8. Friends with Benefits Yêu lầm bạn thân
9. The Other Woman Vợ, người yêu, người tình
Table 3.10. Translations of comedy titles only meet translator‟s standard These allusive titles are adapted to become descriptive. The new titles in Vietnamese remain faithful to the movie‟s content or the protagonists. For example,
“No Strings Attached” depicts the development of the relationship between two main characters, from friends with benefits to real love. Thus, the translation was added the word “Yêu”, which can both mean “love” or “have sex” in Vietnamese.
Another interesting translation made by using adaptation strategy was “The Other Woman”. In English, the other woman refers to the lover of a married or similarly attached man. This word can be translated into Vietnamse as “nhân tình”. However, in the movie, after discovering her boyfriend is married, Carly soon meets the wife he's been betraying. And when yet another love affair is discovered, all three women team up to plot revenge on the three-timing man. “Vợ, người yêu, người tình”
(Wife, girlfriend, mistress) was translated based on the movie‟s content. These titles could be faithfully translated into Vietnamese, however, to attract audience, the translator decided to rename them. Still, there were some cases, in which the translator, when facing a cultural word had no other choice but renaming the title.
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For example, “What to expect when you are expecting” follows the lives of five interconnected couples as they experience the thrills and surprises of having a baby, and realize that no matter what you plan for, life does not always deliver what is expected. The phrase “what to expect” implies a sense of surprise while “you are expecting” means to be pregnant. The title is a pun with the repetition of “expect”
which appears to be impossible to preserve its sense of humor in Vietnamese.
Consequently, explaining the title based on the movie‟s content was the best solution.
Two translations met no criteria in the TQA framework. They are presented in the table below:
Source Text Target Text
So Undercover Nữ đặc vụ xinh đẹp
A Few Best Men Dân chơi kiểu Úc
Table 3.11. Translations of comedy titles fail to meet the TQA framework
The two titles are translated by adaptation. Although, they sound ear- catching, these two new titles do not correctly reflect the content of each movie. For example, in the case of “So undercover”, its translation “Nữ đặc vụ xinh đẹp”
(Beautiful agent) is by no means related to the movie‟s content or the main character of the movie. The movie is about Molly Moris, a private investigator, who was offered a job with the FBI to watch over the daughter of a Senator by going undercover as a sorority. After many funny incidents, she finally succeeds in the mission. The movie‟s content is not related to the beauty of the protagonist.
Therefore, translating the title into Vietnamese as “Nữ đặc vụ xinh đẹp” (The beautiful agent), the translator fails to be faithful to the original titles and the movie‟s content. At the same time, for “A few best men”, the translator seems to misunderstand the phrase “best men”. The movies features funny incidents occur
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when a groom and his three best men travel to the Australian outback for a wedding.
It is clear that “best men” means a male friend or relation of the bridegroom who stands with him and helps him during a marriage ceremony. However, it appeared that due to the translator‟s “deficiencies” (Newmark, 1988, p.188), s/he decides to rename the title based on the context where the story happens: Australia. This helped to explain why the phrase “Dân chơi kiểu Úc” (Australian players), which originates from an advertisement showing Australian people‟s unique, insane, funny and risky actions, was used. However, this was not related to the movie‟s content at all.
3.1.4. Emerging themes
Data analysis in Phase one has revealed answers to the research question related to the quality of the translated titles produced by translators in CGV Cineplex from 2011 to 2014.
The assessment results show that most of the translaitons of animation, action movie and comedy titles meet either translator‟s standard or the assessor‟s standard.
The two most dominant strategies are adaptation and faithful translation.
In addition, after analyzing unsuccessful translations, it seems that there reasons for producing such translations. Firslty, some original titles contain cultural words, however, translators when handling such titles are not aware of this feature.
Consequently, their translations fail to convey the message of the original titles. In addition, translators tended to turn allusive titles into descriptive ones using adaptation strategy based on the content of each movie. The problem is that the new titles bore no relationship even to the movies‟ content. In fact, because a movie‟s title is always created before the full movie is released; it may be difficult for translators to understand the content of one movie by just reading the English title.
Besides, some translations become inaccurate because translators added words that
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are not related to the movie to make the translation sound more ear-catching. It is noteworthy that these appear to originate from the translator‟s “deficiencies”
(Newmark, 1988, p.188).
Now, there is no better way to resolve such problems than finding techniques or measures that translators with successful translations often use in translating movie titles. In order to do so, three translators whose translations are considered accurate and attractive according to the TQA model proposed by Newmark (1988) were invited to participate in Phase two of the study.