Translation Quality Assessment (TQA) of Subtitles: Criteria for the Evaluation of Persian Subtitles of English Movies Focusing on Semiotic Model of TQA for Poetry Translation and Appraisal Theory 3631770103, 9783631770108

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SPRACHE – KULTUR – GESELLSCHAFT 19 Beiträge zu einer anwendungsbezogenen Sozio- und Ethnolinguistik Hrsg. von Prof. Dr. Sabine Bastian Prof. Dr. Laurent Gautier

Yasamin Khosravani

Translation Quality Assessment (TQA) of Subtitles Criteria for the Evaluation of Persian Subtitles of English Movies Focusing on Semiotic Model of TQA for Poetry Translation and Appraisal Theory

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar. Zugl.: Leipzig, Univ., Diss., 2018

15 ISSN 2195-3678 ISBN 978-3-631-77010-8 (Print) E-ISBN 978-3-631-77107-5 (E-PDF) E-ISBN 978-3-631-77108-2 (EPUB) E-ISBN 978-3-631-77109-9 (MOBI) DOI 10.3726/b15329 © Peter Lang GmbH Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften Berlin 2019 Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Peter Lang – Berlin · Bern · Bruxelles · New York · Oxford · Warszawa · Wien Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. Diese Publikation wurde begutachtet.

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Dedicated to… my mother who dedicated 30 years of her life to me. the 8-year memory of my father, which is so sweet that can compensate for his absence in my life. my brothers, Pooyan and Aryan, the hero and the motivation of my life. my grandmother who has always motivated me to finish my work soon and come back to her.

Table of Contents List of Figures ........................................................................................................13 List of Tables ...........................................................................................................15 List of Abbreviations ..........................................................................................17 Acknowledgments................................................................................................19 1 Introduction ......................................................................................................21 1.1 Overview .........................................................................................................21 1.2 Motivation and Summary of the Work .......................................................21 1.3 Statement of the Problem..............................................................................22 1.4 Significance of the Study ...............................................................................23 1.5 Purpose of the Thesis.....................................................................................24 1.5.1 Research Questions and Hypotheses ................................................. 24 1.6 Organization of the Thesis ............................................................................25 1.7 Definition of the Key Terms .........................................................................26

2 Review of Literature .......................................................................................29 2.1 Overview .........................................................................................................29 2.1.1 Translation Studies and the Emergence of New Disciplines ........... 29 2.1.2 The Concept of Translation ................................................................. 29 2.1.3 Translation Studies as a New Discipline ............................................ 31 2.1.4 Equivalence............................................................................................ 32 2.1.5 The Concept of Equivalence in Translation ...................................... 33 2.1.6 Types of Equivalence ............................................................................ 34 2.2 Typology of Translation ................................................................................36 2.2.1 Word for Word (Literal) vs. Sense for Sense Translation ................ 36 2.2.2 Faithful Translation .............................................................................. 37 7

2.2.3 2.2.4 2.2.5 2.2.6

Semantic vs. Communicative Translation ......................................... 37 Adaptive Translation ............................................................................ 38 Free Translation .................................................................................... 38 Idiomatic Translation ........................................................................... 39

2.3 Translation of Poetry .....................................................................................40 2.4 Strategies for Translation of Poetry .............................................................40 2.5 Audiovisual Translation ................................................................................42 2.5.1 Subtitling vs. Dubbing.......................................................................... 42 2.5.2 Subcategories of Subtitling .................................................................. 46 2.5.3 Surtitles .................................................................................................. 46 2.5.4 Intertitles ................................................................................................ 47 2.5.5 Fansubs................................................................................................... 47 2.5.6 Translation of Subtitles......................................................................... 48 2.5.7 Focus of the Present Work................................................................... 49

3 Translation Quality Assessment (TQA): Background and History..............................................................................51 3.1 Overview .........................................................................................................51 3.2 Criticism vs. Quality Assessment.................................................................51 3.3 Translation Quality Assessment: Approaches to TQA from Past to Present .............................................................................53 3.4 Importance of Evaluation .............................................................................54 3.5 History of TQA...............................................................................................54 3.5.1 Nida’s Approach .................................................................................... 55 3.5.2 Nida and Taber’s Approach ................................................................. 55 3.5.3 Nord’s Approach ................................................................................... 56 3.5.4 Wilss’ Approach .................................................................................... 57 3.5.5 Hatim and Mason’s Approach ............................................................. 58 3.5.6 Venuti’s Approach ................................................................................. 58 3.5.7 Reiss’ Approach ..................................................................................... 58 3.5.8 House’s Approach ................................................................................. 59 3.5.9 Baker’s Approach .................................................................................. 62 8

3.6 Approaches to TQA of Poetry ......................................................................62 3.6.1 A Practical Model for Translation Analysis and Assessment of Poetic Discourse.......................................................... 63 3.6.2 Semiotic Model of TQA ....................................................................... 64 3.7 Approaches to TQA of Subtitles...................................................................65 3.7.1 Translator’s Daffodil: A Model for the Quality Assessment of Subtitles ........................................................................ 66 3.7.2 High Felicity as an Approach to the Quality Assessment of Subtitles ........................................................................ 67 3.7.3 Appraisal Theory as an Approach to the Quality Assessment of Subtitles ........................................................................ 71 3.7.3.1 Attitude..................................................................................... 78 3.7.3.2 Graduation ............................................................................... 82 3.7.3.3 Engagement ............................................................................. 83 3.8 Appraisal and Translation Studies ...............................................................88 3.9 The Focus of the Present Work ....................................................................90

4 Subtitles and TQA:A Model for the Evaluation of Musical Parts of the Persian Subtitles of English Movies .............91 4.1 Overview .........................................................................................................91 4.2 Semiotics and TQA ........................................................................................91 4.3 Summary of the Semiotic Model of TQA for Poetry ................................92 4.4 Musical Movies...............................................................................................93 4.4.1 Musical Films: History ......................................................................... 93 4.4.2 Translation of Musical Movies: Problems ......................................... 94 4.5 Summary of the Chapter ...............................................................................96 4.6 Methodology ..................................................................................................97 4.7 Data Collection ..............................................................................................98 4.7.1 Selection of the Movies ........................................................................ 98 4.7.2 Selection of the Subtitles .................................................................... 100 4.7.3 Data Procedures .................................................................................. 101

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4.8 Data Analysis and Interpretation .............................................................. 101 4.8.1 Analysis of Anastasia.......................................................................... 102 4.8.1.1 Textual Analysis .................................................................... 102 4.8.1.2 Extratextual Analysis ............................................................ 107 4.8.1.3 Concluding Remarks on the Analysis of Anastasia ......... 109 4.8.2 Extratextual Analysis of Les Misérables .......................................... 110 4.8.2.1 Concluding Remarks of Les Misérables............................. 115 4.8.3 Extratextual Analysis of Sweeney Todd ........................................... 115 4.8.3.1 Concluding Remarks of Sweeney Todd ............................. 120 4.9 A Tentative Model for the Evaluation of Persian Subtitles of English Musical Movies.............................................................................. 120

5 Evaluation of Subtitles Regarding the omission of Interpersonal Elements of Language .................................................. 125 5.1 Overview ...................................................................................................... 125 5.2 Summary of Appraisal Theory .................................................................. 125 5.3 Fansubs and the Problem of Evaluation................................................... 128 5.4 Summary of the Chapter ............................................................................ 129 5.5 Methodology ............................................................................................... 130 5.5.1 Data Collection ................................................................................... 130 5.5.1.1 Selection of the Movies ........................................................ 130 5.5.1.2 Selection of the Subtitles ...................................................... 131 5.5.2 Data Procedures (Visual Basic and Automation) ........................... 131 5.5.2.1 Data Analysis and Interpretation........................................ 131 5.5.2.2 The Application of Appraisal Theory to the Persian Subtitles of Prisoners............................................................. 132 5.5.2.3 Omission of the Interpersonal Elements in Persian Version of Prisoners: Tentative Reasons ............................ 146 5.5.2.4 The Application of Appraisal Theory to Persian Subtitles of Houdini .............................................................. 149 5.5.2.5 Results of the Analysis and Comparison in two Movies..................................................................................163 5.5.2.6 Automating the Process of the Analysis ............................ 164 10

5.6 Main Findings of the Chapter ................................................................... 167

6 Results and Conclusions ........................................................................... 169 6.1 Overview ...................................................................................................... 169 6.2 Concluding Remarks on the Evaluation of the Translation of Persian Subtitles of English Movies .......................................................... 169 6.2.1 Concluding Remarks Regarding the Application of Semiotic Model of TQA to the Persian Subtitles of English Musical Movies ..................................................................... 169 6.2.2 Concluding Remarks Regarding the Application of Appraisal Theory to the Persian Subtitles of English Musical Movies ................................................................................... 171 6.2.3 Application of Appraisal Theory and Semiotic Model of TQA to the Subtitles: a Comparison ................................................ 172 6.3 Major Findings of the Study ..................................................................... 174 6.4 Implications of the Study ........................................................................... 175 6.5 Limitations of the Study ............................................................................. 176 6.6 Suggestions for Further Research ............................................................. 177

Bibliography ........................................................................................................ 179 Appendix I Transcription Guide .............................................................. 193

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List of Figures Fig. 2–1: Holmes’s ‘map’ of Translation Studies from Toury (1995:10)............31 Fig. 2–2: The Position of Free Translation in Translation Studies ....................39 Fig. 2–3: The Subtitler’s Work by Antonini (2005) .............................................44 Fig. 3–1: House’s Model of Translation Quality Assessment (1997:108) .........61 Fig. 3–2: A Tentative Model of Poetic Translation Analysis Discourse Assessment: Textual Level (Vahid, Hakimshafaaii, and Jannesaari 2008) ......................................................................................63 Fig. 3–3: A Tentative Model of Poetic Translation Analysis Discourse Assessment: Extratextual Level (Vahid, Hakimshafaaii, and Jannesaari 2008) ......................................................................................64 Fig. 3–4: Vahid et al.’s Semiotic Model of Translation Quality Assessment for Poetry (2011) ................................................................65 Fig. 3–5: The Translator’s Daffodil (Bittner 2011)...............................................66 Fig. 3–6: Taxonomy of Translation Strategies (Pedersen 2008:103) .................68 Fig. 3–7: Clark’s Participant Model (adapted from Clark (1996:14)) ...............69 Fig. 3–8: Communication Structure in Television (Pedersen 2008:110) .........70 Fig. 3–9: Hierarchy of Translation Studies Based on Illocutionary Points (Pedersen 2008:112)....................................................................71 Fig. 3–10: Munday’s (2012:16) Illustration of Sense and Sensibility Adopted from (James R. Martin, 2004a and 2004b) ..........................75 Fig. 3–11: Summary of the Appraisal System ........................................................77 Fig. 3–12: Continuum of Attitude by Munday (2012)..........................................80 Fig. 3–13: The Illustration of Strategies of Inscribing Attitude by Munday (adapted from Martin & White 2005) ..................................81 Fig. 3–14: The Engagement System (Martin and White 2005:122) ....................88 Fig. 3–15: The Process of Interpersonal Communication in Translation ..........89 Fig. 4–1: Screenshot from Anastasia min. 01:20–02:02 ................................. 108 Fig. 4–2: Screenshot from Anastasia min. 15:30–17:28 .................................. 109 13

Fig. 4–3: Screenshot from Les Misérables min. 19:00–21:02 .......................... 112 Fig. 4–4: Screenshot from Les Misérables min. 19:00–21:02 .......................... 113 Fig. 4–5: Screenshot from Les Misérables min. 19:00–21:02 .......................... 114 Fig. 4–6: Screenshot from Sweeney Todd min. 12:49–12:53 ........................... 119 Fig. 4–7: The Interrelation of Available Codes ................................................. 121 Fig. 4–8: Codes and Coherence .......................................................................... 122 Fig. 4–9: Tentative TQA Model of Musical Film Subtitles.............................. 123 Fig. 5–1: The System of Appraisal ...................................................................... 127 Fig. 5–2: Summary of Engagement ................................................................... 128 Fig. 5–3: Table Generated for the Analysis of Translations. ........................... 165 Fig. 5–4: Separation of Interpersonal Elements Using the Developed Program ............................................................................. 166 Fig. 5–5: Frequency of Interpersonal Elements Omission Reasons within the two Translations ................................................................ 167 Fig. 6–1: Tentative TQA Model of Musical Film Subtitle ............................... 173 Fig. 6–2: The System of Appraisal ...................................................................... 173 Chart 5–1: The Frequency of Tentative Reasons of Omission of the Interpersonal Elements in Prisoners by two Translators ................. 147 Chart 5–2: The Frequency of Tentative Reasons of Omission of the Interpersonal Elements in Houdini by the two Translators ........... 163 Chart 5–3: The Comparison of the Frequency of Tentative Reasons of Omission of the Interpersonal Elements in Prisoners and Houdini by the two Translators .......................................................... 164

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List of Tables Tab. 4–1: Elements for Textual Analysis of Poems according to Vahid et al’s (2011) Model .......................................................................92 Tab. 4–2: Criteria for the Evaluation of Translated Poem ....................................93 Tab. 4–3: English and Persian Subtitles of Anastasia ......................................... 102 Tab. 4–4: The Comparison of Persian and English Rhyme Patterns ................ 105 Tab. 4–5: Comparisons of Figures of Speech in English and Persian Subtitles of Anastasia ............................................................................. 106 Tab. 4–6: English and Persian Subtitles of Les Misérables ................................. 110 Tab. 4–7: English and Persian Subtitles of Les Misérables ................................. 115 Tab. 5–1: Reasons of the Omission of the Interpersonal Elements in Prisoners ........................................................................... 149 Tab. 5–2: Reasons of the Omission of the Interpersonal Elements in Houdini .............................................................................. 162

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List of Abbreviations Abbreviation AV AVT Lang SFL S1 S2 SL ST TL TQA TT

Word Audiovisual Audiovisual Translation Language Systemic Functional Linguistics First Subtitler Second Subtitler Source Language Source Text Target Language Translation Quality Assessment Target Text

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Acknowledgments First and foremost I would like to take this opportunity to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor Prof. Dr. phil. habil. Sabine Bastian for her endless patience, supports and encouragements; every step of completing this dissertation from application for the University to finding scholarship, etc. was done under her careful and close supervision; without her supports this work could not be completed. My sincere thanks goes to Professor Jeremy Munday who motivated me to select my research topic. I also gratefully acknowledge Prof. Dr. phil. Sylvia Kalina for her supportive comments on the first part of the present work. I feel it a duty to appreciate Prof. Dr. habil. Peter A. Schmitt for his supports and advices during the completion of this dissertation and Prof. Dr. phil. habil. Klaus-Dieter Baumann for accepting me in his seminars and for his useful helps during my Ph.D. studies. My special thanks goes to my Master supervisor in Iran Prof. Vahid Dastjerdi for his limitless supports and for reviewing the dissertation specially the Persian part of the data and analysis and for accepting to be the second supervisor of this dissertation. I would also like to thank all my colleagues and friends who supported me in writing this Ph.D. dissertation especially Shirin Ohadi who was not just a colleague but also a wonderful companion. I am also very grateful to Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD: German Academic Exchange Service) for funding this project for the duration of 4 years. Last but not least, my heartfelt gratitude goes to my mother for her patience and endless love and supports during my life and my brothers Pooyan and Aryan which are more than brothers to me and without their helps and encouragements this work had not been started let alone finished.

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1 Introduction “Translator is severely criticized if he makes a mistake, but only faintly praised when he succeeds” Nida (1964:155)

1.1 Overview This Chapter presents a general insight of the whole dissertation. First and foremost the motivation behind conducting this research will be explained. A summary of the work will then be presented to prepare the reader for following the work in the next chapters. The statement of the problem, significance, and purpose of the study will also be explained in the following sections. The organization of the thesis will be provided in this chapter as a reference for the reader to follow the work more precisely. Research questions and hypotheses section introduces the areas of the research that the researcher tries to tackle, and finally, the definition of the key terms will be discussed to clarify the points and avoid misunderstandings.

1.2 Motivation and Summary of the Work Translation quality assessment (TQA) as a growing topic in the field of translation studies has recently been investigated in different types of texts and different languages. In 2011, a study entitled as “Translation Quality Assessment: a Semiotic Model for Poetry Translation” has been made to provide a model for the assessment of poetry translation in Persian language (Vahid et al. 2011). Attempts have then been followed in 2012 at Institut für Angewandte Linguistik und Translatologie to provide a comprehensive model of TQA that is not only useful for poetry translation but also for other types of texts such as subtitles. To reach this goal, the case studies of the present research, which are Persian subtitles of the English movies, are divided into two subcategories, i.e., musical movies and non-musical ones. The quality assessment of musical movies is investigated regarding our work entitled as “Subtitles and Translation Quality Assessment: Focus on Musical Parts of the Persian Subtitles of English Movies” (Khosravani & Bastian 2013). Regarding the new insight into the field of translation, i.e., the application of “appraisal theory” to the translation studies (Munday 2012), the present work focuses mainly on the omission of the interpersonal elements in Persian subtitles of English movies using appraisal theory as the theoretical framework. The data are selected from 500 subtitles of the movie Prisoners and two of its Persian 21

subtitles (Khosravani & Bastian 2017). To verify the results, the study is repeated on a case study of 750 sentences of the English movie Houdini and two of its Persian subtitles (Khosravani & Bastian 2015). The above-mentioned attempts will provide a set of strategies as criteria for the assessment of subtitles and a partially automatic model of translation quality assessment for evaluating Persian subtitles of English movies. A model will also be provided for the evaluation of Persian subtitles of English musical movies based on the Semiotic Model of TQA for poetry.

1.3 Statement of the Problem The ever-increasing importance of subtitling and its evaluation emerges the need to provide specific methods of evaluation for subtitles. Evaluation of subtitles can lead to better productions and as a result more satisfaction on the side of the movie viewers. Unfortunately, the evaluation of subtitles in the Persian language has been ignored for several reasons, including the cultural constraints. On the other hand in Iran most of the concentration of the movie translators is on dubbing and subtitling is considered an unofficial task. These factors explain why there is a gap in this field. To fill one part of this gap, this study aims at proposing some criteria of TQA for the subtitlers to avoid mistakes and omissions in their translation works. Another point, which is essential to mention here is what Schmitt (1999 as cited in Williams 2004) states: “There are no generally accepted objective criteria for evaluating the quality both of translations and of interpreting performance. Even the latest national and international standards in this area — DIN 2345 and the ISO-9000 series — do not regulate the evaluation of translation quality in a particular context. […] The result is assessment chaos” (Williams 2004b). The quotation mentioned above can explicitly explain the need to work more in this field. So far the concentration of most TQA methods has been on grammatical and lexical aspects of a text; little work has been done regarding the context in which the words appear and the interpersonal function of language. Attempts have been made in 2011 to deal with this problem in poetry translation, and a model has been provided that can be useful in this area of translation (Vahid et al. 2011). The study has then been continued by referring to “Evaluation of Translation, Critical points of translator decision making”(Munday 2012). In the book, the previous methods of evaluation are argued, and a new approach to translation evaluation based on appraisal theory is introduced. According to Munday (2012:19), instead of knowing the translator as a communicator, and translation as mediation, recent work prefers “intervention.” Therefore 22

the translator should be known as “intervenient being.” Juliane Hause refers to intervention as “a manipulation of the source text beyond what is linguistically necessary” (House 2008:16). Regarding the points mentioned above, it would be necessary for the researchers to have a look at appraisal that “expands the interpersonal function of language” (Munday 2012). It is also important to focus on the translator’s role as an interventionist agent. As the nature of most movies is dialogical, appraisal theory can be a beneficial method in evaluation of subtitles, since it deals with the interpersonal function of language. This study tries to apply appraisal theory to the Persian subtitle of English movies to check for its validity in the field. The other focus of the study would be on the translation of subtitles in musical movies, which has been ignored in the field of TQA. Attempts have been made to provide a model for the evaluation of these types of subtitles based on the Semiotic Model of TQA for poetry.

1.4 Significance of the Study As was mentioned before, this study is an attempt to provide some criteria for translation quality assessment of subtitles. The tips and the criteria of TQA concluded from this study can help the translators to reduce the risk of omitting some parts of the translation. The results of the study can also be extended to other languages; the model and the criteria of TQA for the subtitlers can be used as a tool for the evaluation of translation in different languages. A significant part of the appraisal analysis has become automated that can save time in the analysis in future context. The criteria for TQA proposed in this study can be tested on texts other than subtitles and may be useful in other contexts with some modifications. The model of TQA for musical subtitles that will be provided in chapter 4 of this research can also be tested on subtitles of other languages besides Persian. The investigation of evaluation in translation can help to understand the interpersonal elements of language better, and it can be a useful means for the adaptation and evaluation of translated works. Appraisal theory can be used as a systematic framework for the researchers to adopt evaluative methods for every kind of text. The results of the study can also be used for pedagogical purposes; university students’ works can be evaluated in a systematic framework. The application of appraisal theory in the translation of subtitles sheds light on the interpersonal relationship of the author, the translator and the readers. In a nutshell, the results of this study can be a step forward towards filling the existing gap in the field of subtitling at least in the Persian language. 23

1.5 Purpose of the Thesis One of the new approaches to the evaluation of translation is the application of appraisal theory to this field. The main focus of the present study is on appraisal theory and its application to the translation of subtitles. Attempts are made to test the omission of the interpersonal elements in Persian subtitles of English movies. It should be noted that little work has been done regarding the interpersonal function of language in the translation of subtitles since until now the focus has been on other functions like ideational and textual. The analysis would lead to some guidelines as criteria for translation quality assessment that is not only based on textual matters, but also on the interpersonal function of language. The study also focuses on the evaluation of musical subtitles to be applicable to the subtitles of musical movies, too. To achieve this aim, the Semiotic Model of TQA for poetry is used as the base for a new model of TQA of subtitles of musical movies.

1.5.1 Research Questions and Hypotheses Regarding the points mentioned in the previous sections, this study tries to deal with the following research questions and hypotheses: Hypothesis 1.

The Semiotic Model of TQA developed by Vahid et al. in 2011, which is used to evaluate the quality of poems, is applicable to the translation of musical subtitles to evaluate the quality of their translation. Hypothesis 2. Appraisal Theory can be used as a tool to evaluate the quality of Persian subtitles of English movies Hypothesis 3. The combination of Semiotic Model of TQA and Appraisal Theory can provide some strategies as criteria for TQA in translation of subtitles. Research Question 1. Regarding the defined categorizations in Appraisal Theory, what are the tentative reasons of the omission of the interpersonal elements of language in Persian subtitles of English movies? Research Question 2. Assuming that the first hypothesis is correct, is there a way to automate the process of analysis to save time in evaluating the quality of Persian translations of English movies?

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1.6 Organization of the Thesis This Ph.D. thesis consists of six chapters. The first chapter contains an introductory section and a summary of the whole work, significance, purpose and finally the organization of the dissertation. The definition of the key terms will also be provided in this chapter. Chapter 2 deals with the review of the literature. It ranges from the definition of translation to the typology of translation. Afterwards, translation of poetry and audiovisual translation, which are the main focus of the present work, will be explored in detail to prepare the readers to follow the contents of the next chapters. In chapter 3, ‘Translation quality assessment’ (TQA), which is the central concept of the dissertation, is discussed. TQA has many facets, including the definition of assessment and its difference with criticism, approaches to the quality assessment and translation quality assessment of different text types including poems and subtitles, all of which will be explained in this chapter. The two approaches used as the theoretical framework of this thesis, i.e., ‘semiotic model of TQA for poetry translation’ and ‘appraisal theory’ will be discussed in detail in chapter 3. Chapter 4 focuses more specifically on the practical aspect of the work; it consists of an introductory section dealing with the semiotic model of TQA, musical movies, and their translation. It explains about the application of the semiotic model of TQA to the Persian subtitles of English musical movies, using a pilot study tested on the musical sections of three English movies. After explaining the methodology and doing the analysis, a tentative model of TQA will be suggested for the quality assessment of Persian subtitles of musical movies. Chapter 5, which includes the main set of practical work and data analysis, starts with an introduction to the appraisal theory and will be continued with the focus on the problems of TQA. It then goes further through the process of data collection and analysis using Persian subtitles of two English movies. Afterwards, Visual Basic Programing language will be explained as a tool to save time in the process of analysis. Finally, some tips will be introduced as criteria of TQA for the translation of Persian subtitles, which may also be used in other languages. In chapter 6 the conclusions of the work will be discussed, and the implications of the study will be introduced. Explaining the limitations of the study and suggestions for further research is also part of this chapter.

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1.7 Definition of the Key Terms The following key terms have been used in this research: • Translation Quality Assessment: Before elaborating on translation quality assessment abbreviated as TQA, it is essential to talk about the concept of quality itself. American Society for Quality defines quality as “a subjective term for which each person has his or her definition. In technical usage, quality can have two meanings: 1. The characteristics of a product or service that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs. 2. A product or service free of deficiencies” (American Society for Quality, (ASQ Six Sigma Forum n.d.) TQA is one of the ongoing subfields of translation that deals with almost all aspects of the text in the source and target language. Depending on the type of the text, TQA model varies to a great extent. In House’s words: “translation quality assessment means both retrospectively assessing the worth of a translation and prospectively ensuring the quality in the production of a translation” (2014:2). • Subtitle: Subtitling can be defined as “diasemiotic translation in polysemiotic media (including films, TV, video and DVD), in the form of one or more lines of written text presented on the screen in sync with the original dialogue” (defined by (Gottlieb 2004)). Gottlieb considers two types of translation, which are called ‘isosemiotic and ‘diosemiotc’ translation. ‘Isosemiotic’ refers to the type of translation that uses the same semiotic channel (speech as speech, writing as writing) and ‘diosemiotic’ in contrast refers to the type of translation that transfers speech to writing, like subtitling and writing to speech. • Semiotic Model of TQA: The semiotic model of TQA was proposed by Vahid et al. and tested for poetry translation and was published in the Journal of Lebende Sprachen (2011). The results show that the model could be useful in the field of poetry. • Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL): Systemic functional linguistics is defined as an approach to language which was developed during the 1960s by Halliday in UK and later in Australia. This approach is also used widely in language education and discourse analysis. “While many of the linguistic theories in the world today are concerned with language as a mental process, SFL is more closely aligned with Sociology: it explores how language is used in social contexts to achieve particular goals. Concerning data, it does not address how language is processed or represented within the human brain, but instead looks at the discourses we produce (whether spoken or written), 26

and the contexts of the production of these texts. Because it is concerned with language use, SFL places higher importance on language function (what it is used for) than on language structure (how it is composed)” (Defined and explained by (O’Donnel 2011:2)). • Appraisal Theory: Appraisal theory, mainly proposed and developed by J. R. Martin and P. R. R. White during the late 1990s, is an extension of the study of interpersonal meaning under the framework of SFL (Appraisal Theory Homepage 2016). Appraisal theory is primarily concerned with evaluation, and it aims at establishing a set of systems to cover all evaluative usages in texts. • Interpersonal Metafunction of Language: The interpersonal function of language is one of the three functions of language, which is defined in systemic functional linguistics introduced by Halliday (1994). They are ideational, interpersonal and textual. The word interpersonal consists of interactive and personal; Halliday (1994:30) has made a comparison between the ideational and interpersonal function of language: “if the ideational function of the grammar is language as reflection” the interpersonal metafunction “is language as action” (1994:30). The detailed discussion of the definitions mentioned above is the main topic of the next chapter, which contains the review of the literature of the thesis.

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2 Review of Literature 2.1 Overview This chapter starts with the first steps of translation studies and its categorization. It scrutinizes the concept of equivalence as the key term for the translation and explains the importance of equivalence in translation. The typology of the translation is another important topic that will be discussed in this chapter and finally, the translation of poetry and audiovisual translation, which are the main topics of the present dissertation, will be viewed in detail.

2.1.1 Translation Studies and the Emergence of New Disciplines This section presents a history of translation studies; it explains the emergence of the field and the way it has been connected to other disciplines. Before explaining this process, it is necessary to define the concept of translation.

2.1.2 The Concept of Translation Merriam-Webster dictionary presents a simple definition of translation: “1. Words that have been changed from one language into a different language: words that have been translated 2. The act or process of translating something into a different language 3. The act or process of changing something from one form to another (Definition Of Translation 2017)”

This simple definition points to the fact that translation’s usage is not only restricted to the language studies, rather it may refer to “changing something from one form to another”, which may serve for other disciplines like in this example “The translation of economic power into political strength” or its definition in medical dictionary: “the process of forming a protein molecule at a ribosomal site of protein synthesis from information contained in messenger RNA” (Definition Of Translation 2017). The main and first definition of translation as was mentioned above matches to the language studies and the related fields. In fact, the word translation is profound enough to be the concern of many language and translation scholars. There exist abounding resources and conceptualizations about the term translation, which will be discussed in this section. It is worth mentioning here that in English language the word translation can both refer to the process and product 29

of translation, however, Kade (1968) refers to two different concepts implied in the word translation in German, which are Übersetzen (written translation) and Dolmetschen (interpretation) and refer only to the process of translation. (Kade 1968 as cited in; Mark and Cowie 1997:191) Different scholars in the field of language studies and translation have defined the term translation. Some of the definitions are provided as follows. Catford (1965:20) defines translation as “the replacement of textual material in one language (SL) by equivalent textual material in another language (TL)” (P:20). The definition is controversial because of his one-dimensional reference to the textual material and lack of attention to other aspects of language. Sager (1994, p. 121) however points to the fact that in this definition and similar definitions of translation, the focus is on preserving the equivalence in the text. Sager believes that in contrast to the old definitions of translation, Jakobson (1959:233) provides a more innovative definition as “the interpretation of verbal signs by means of some other language” (p. 233) he introduces translation process as the substitution of “messages in one language not for separate code units but for entire messages in some other language” (p. 233). Larson (1984:3) on the other hand defines translation as transferring the meaning from source text into target text.” Nida and Taber’s (1969:12) definition of translation directs more towards the transference of the influence of the source text on the target text: “Translating consists of reproducing in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source language message, firstly in terms of meaning and secondly in terms of style” (p. 12). However, Koller claims that many definitions of translation are normative rather than descriptive; they dictate to the translator to translate in their suggested framework and they state what they should do rather than what it really is (Mark and Cowie 1997:191). In contrast to the normative definitions of translation, Toury (1982 as cited in; Hermans 1985:20), Vermeer (Vermeer 1982:97 as cited in; Mark and Cowie 1997:191), and Nord provide more target-text oriented definitions: “any target-language utterance which is presented or regarded as such within the target culture, on whatever grounds” (Toury 1982 as cited in; Hermans 1985:20), “information about source text in another language”(Vermeer 1982:97 as cited in; Mark and Cowie 1997:191) and “Translation is the production of a functional target text maintaining a relationship with a given source text that is specified according to the intended or demanded function of the target text.” (Nord 1991:28 as cited in; Mark and Cowie 1997:191). By considering the above-mentioned definitions on the one hand and the new developments both in technology and translation, Sager (1994), provides a more up-to-date and comprehensive definition of translation: Translation is the production of a functional target text maintaining a relationship with a given source 30

text that is specified according to the intended or demanded function of the target text (Sager 1994:293). All these definitions can clarify the importance of translation as a field of study, which has now found new perspectives in different disciplines that will be explained in the next section.

2.1.3 Translation Studies as a New Discipline By defining translation it is now much easier to focus on translation studies as a new field of study. Along the history, translation has played an important role in improving the communication between humans. The need to translation can range from religious purposes in past to the advances in trade and technology at present time. The importance of the field has led to the insertion of translation in an academic framework. This was done first with Holme’s (1975 as cited in; Munday 2001:16) attempts to introduce the discipline as translation studies. In ‘the name and nature of translation’, he considers translation as “A new discipline concerned with the complex of problems clustered round the phenomenon of translating and translations.” He introduces two subcategories for translation studies, which are pure and applied translation studies and simplifies the idea and definitions in figure 2–1: Fig. 2–1: Holmes’s ‘map’ of Translation Studies from Toury (1995:10)

The map has some deficiencies, which have been mentioned by some translation experts like Pym(1998:4). He believes that Holme’s work ignores some important

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points in translation such as individuality of the style and the decision-making process and working practice of the translator. The other translation expert who has focused on the categorization and definition of translation studies is Bassnett (2013:12). She expresses her concern about the fact that translation has not been studied for its own sake due to the old belief that it is an intrinsic part of language teaching. She considers four dimensions for translation studies, which are the history of translation, translation in the TL culture, translation and linguistics and finally translation and poetics. (Bassnett 2013:20) But for Snell-Hornby (1988), translation studies is a much wider concept. She emphasizes that translation studies should be used as a coverall term that ranges from different types of translation such as literary translation and technical translation and it should go further to other types of translation such as neglected oral translation (Mark and Cowie 1997). She considers translation as an interdiscipline that consists of the following fields: “special language studies, terminology and lexicography, machine translation and machine-aided translation; relevant areas of linguistics such as semantics, socio and psycholinguistics; literary translation (including all forms of stage translation, film dialogue and dubbing, subtitles and so forth) and neighbouring fields of interest from literary history to psychology. Not to be forgotten is the neglected field of translation history, and it should be a foregone conclusion that the teaching and practice of translation, along with empirical fieldwork, would assume a central and unifying role” (Snell-Hornby 1991:19). The above-mentioned points highlight the connection of translation studies with different fields. This has also been emphasized by Robinson (1997) in his book Western Translation Theory from Herodotus to Nietzsche: “We are currently in the middle of a translation studies boom: all around the world new programs are springing up, some aimed at the professional training of translators and interpreters, others at the academic study of translation and interpreting, most at both.” (Robinson 1997 as cited in; Linguist List – Book Information) Among different fields of translation studies the author of the present dissertation focuses mainly on subtitling as a part of audiovisual translation and poetry translation as a part of the literary translation and finally the field of translation quality assessment. But before going through these concepts it is first important to talk briefly about the controversial topic of equivalence in translation.

2.1.4 Equivalence Webster dictionary defines equivalence as “the quality or state of being alike: the quality or state of having the same value, function, meaning, etc.” 32

(Equivalence – Definition For English-Language Learners From Merriam-Webster’s Learner’s Dictionary 2016). Let’s now have a flashback to the definition of translation by Catford (1965): “Translation…[is] the replacement of textual material in one language (SL) by equivalent textual material in another language (TL) He continues the definition by claiming that: “The central problem of translation practice is that of finding TL translation equivalents. A central task of translation theory is that of defining the nature and conditions of translation equivalence.” (Catford 1965:20) The central problem of defining equivalence can simply be stated using the definition provided in Webster dictionary; it refers to the sameness of value, function, meaning, etc. on the one hand and on the other Catford (1965) refers to the replacement of textual material of ST by equivalent ones in TT. In what terms should the textual materials be like each other, is the debate among many scholars of translation studies. Therefore, finding a definition for equivalence as a central issue in translation will be discussed in the next section.

2.1.5 The Concept of Equivalence in Translation To explain the concept of equivalence in translation studies, Leonardi (2000) divides the theories related to this concept into three categories. The first category consists of the translator scholars who are in favor of a linguistic approach to translation and ignore the fact that translation is not just confined to linguistic matters. The second category belongs to the theoreticians that have tried to overcome the deficiencies of the first category by regarding translation equivalence as the transference of the message from source culture to the target culture. Therefore, they favor functional and pragmatic translation. The third group in this categorization consists of the scholars like Baker who seem to stand in the middle position and consider the translation equivalence as a matter of convenience in a sense that translators have used to it rather than accepting it as a theory of translation. Considering this categorization, one may conclude that it is not possible to reach a unique definition of equivalence, rather there must be a typology of equivalence, which will be discussed in the next section. But before that, some of the well-known definitions of equivalence in the field of translation studies will be explored. Dictionary of translation studies provides a simple explanation about equivalence, “A term used by many writers to describe the nature and the extent of relationships which exist between SL and TL texts or smaller linguistic units. As such, equivalence is in some senses the interlingual counterpart of synonymy within a single language” (Mark and Cowie 1997:49). For Vinay and 33

Darbelnet (1995:342), equivalence has a different meaning; it is replicating the same situation as in the original by using different wording. In this way, the risk of losing the meaning is much less than other methods of translation and the stylistic impact of SL can best be transferred into TT. The other scholar whose wellknown “equivalence in difference”, has been cited in many works related to the definition of equivalence, is Jakobson (1959:232). He first considers three types of translation as intralingual (translation within the same language), interlingual (translation between two languages) and intersemiotic (translation between the sign systems of language). For him, interlingual translation is transferring the message from source text to target text. In fact “translation involves two equivalent messages in two different codes” (1959:233). Leonardi (2000) believes that the definitions provided by Jakobson on the one hand and Vinay and Darbelnet on the other, have something in common i.e. a translation is not restricted to the linguistic theory, rather it can go over the limits of linguistic theory in necessary cases. House (House 1977:49) is another scholar who concerns about the definition of equivalence in her model of translation quality assessment. To her, the adequacy of a translation depends upon matching the target text with the linguistic profile and function of the source text. The diversity of definitions and categorization in this field leads to introducing different types of equivalence by different translation scholars, which is explained in the next section.

2.1.6 Types of Equivalence In this section, six different categorizations of equivalence have been introduced. The categorization belongs to the famous scholars of translation studies named Catford, Baker, Nida and Taber, Kade, Koller, and Popovič. It should be noted that the criticism of these definitions and their analysis is not the concern of the present research. Catford (1965:32) has made a distinction between formal correspondence and textual equivalence. Formal equivalence refers to “any TL/target language/ category, which may be said to occupy, as nearly as possible, the same place in the economy of the TL as the given SL/source language/category occupies in the SL.” (p. 32) and textual equivalence refers to “any TL form (text/portion of text), which is observed to be equivalent of a given SL form (text/portion of text)” (p. 27). He continues the definition as: “SL and TL texts or items are translational equivalents when they are interchangeable in a given situation.” (p. 49) In her book ‘In Other Words’, Baker (Baker 1992:11–12) considers different levels of equivalence i.e. at the level of word, phrase, grammar, text, and 34

pragmatics. She considers a distinction between word-level and above word-level equivalence. She considers a bottom-up process for translation, starting from the word as a unit of translation. A single word in source text may have different meanings in target text and different factors such as gender, number and tense may influence the translation. After considering equivalence at word-level, grammatical equivalence might cause some problems in translation according to Baker, because different languages obey different grammatical rules that might change the way the message is transferred from one language into another. The last type of equivalence introduced by Baker is textual equivalence, which, refers to the achievement of equivalence between source text and target text in terms of information and cohesion. Baker pinpoints the importance of texture for the translator since it can help the translator to understand and analyze the ST better and to produce a cohesive and coherent text in TT (Panou 2013:4). Nida in Nida and Taber (1969:200) introduces two types of equivalence named as formal correspondence and dynamic equivalence. In formal correspondence, attempts should be made to transfer both the form and content of the ST to the TT, but in dynamic equivalence what is important for the translator is the message that should be transferred as naturally as possible. Nida himself favors dynamic equivalence since his translations include mainly religious texts such as the bible, in which the message should be correctly and effectively transferred. Kade (1968 as cited in; Hatim 2014:29) is the Leipzig translation scholar who has dealt with the topic of equivalence. He defines four types of equivalence as follows: one to one equivalence, which refers to the cases where there is one single expression in TL for a single expression in SL. One to many equivalences referring to the cases where there is more than one single expression in TT for a single expression in ST. One to part of one equivalence that happens in cases where a single ST expression is available for part of a concept in TT and finally null equivalence which refers to the cases where there is no TT equivalence for an ST expression. This categorization is considered a quantitative approach to defining equivalence that can be useful in terminology and technical translation. Koller (1979) is another German translation scholar who distinguishes five types of equivalence namely denotative, connotative, text-normative, pragmatic and formal equivalence. Denotative equivalence refers to the extra-linguistic content of a text. Connotative equivalence refers to the lexical choices, textnormative deals with text-types. Pragmatic equivalence considers the receiver of the text or message and finally formal equivalence, which refers to the form of the text on the one hand and aesthetics of the text on the other (pp. 186–191). The last translator whose categorization of equivalence is described here is Popovic (1976). He considers four types of equivalence, which are linguistic, 35

paradigmatic, stylistic and textual. Linguistic equivalence resembles word for word translation and refers to the cases where the translator keeps a balance between ST and TT at the linguistic level. Popovic considers Paradigmatic elements of language as the elements that occupy a higher category than lexical equivalence. Regarding this point, he defines paradigmatic equivalence as “equivalence of the elements of a paradigmatic expressive axis upon the stylistic level as a system of expressive elements” (Popovic 1976:6). The third category is stylistic equivalence, which refers to the similarity between form and structure of the ST and TT and finally, textual equivalence refers to the similarity of the form and structure in the two texts. The above-mentioned categorizations overlap each other in many cases but there are also differences in the categorizations that were explained in this section. Different categorization in the concept of equivalence, leads to different categorization for the types of translation, since equivalence is the core concept in the field of translation that will be explained in the next section.

2.2 Typology of Translation The act of translation is the transference of a text (written) from one language into another. Since the emergence of translation, there has been a debate among the translator scholars about an exact definition for translation. The debate leads to different definitions and typologies for translation that will be discussed in the next sections. For more information for the definition of translation see section 2.2.1.

2.2.1 Word for Word (Literal) vs. Sense for Sense Translation According to Munday (2008a:19), the distinction between word for word and sense for sense translation dates back to Cicero and St. Jerome (from first century BCE and late fourth century CE) and their ideas form the basis for the current definitions. He introduces his translation as follows: “That is to say I translated the most famous orations of the two most eloquent Attic orators, Aeschines and Demosthenes, orations which they delivered against each other. And I did not translate them as an interpreter, but as an orator, keeping the same ideas and the forms, or as one might say, the “figures” of thought, but in language which conforms to our usage. And in so doing, I did not hold it necessary to render word for word, but I preserved the general style and force of the language. For I did not think I ought to count them out to the reader like coins, but to pay them by weight, as it were.” (Cicero 1949:364) 36

Considering this statement, Munday refers to the ‘interpreter’ as literal or word for word translator and ‘orator’ as a person who does not care to the words, rather the message of the text. In this sense, in word-for-word translation, each word should be translated separately in the framework of grammatical rules, while in sense-for-sense it is the message that is of great importance. Although some scholars use ‘literal’ and ‘word-for-word’ translation interchangeably, some other make a distinction among them; in word-for-word translation, only words are translated without paying attention to the grammatical structure of the sentence, while literal translation refers to the type of translation which transfers the words directly in the framework of grammar. (Mark and Cowie 1997:198) There are still controversial debates about which type of translation to choose among these two translations which are not the direct focus of the present research, but what is important for the translator is to be aware enough about the context and by considering the conditions, choose among one of the methods.

2.2.2 Faithful Translation In general, in the field of translation, faithfulness refers to the degree that TT represents ST according to specified criteria. In traditional studies in the field of translation, faithfulness has also been considered criteria for the evaluation of translation and faithful translation has been defined as the type of translation that is semantically and spiritually close to the original text. This conceptualization indicates the reason why the concept of faithfulness and fidelity has been used frequently in the translations of holy scripts (Mark and Cowie 1997:57). For Nida and Taber (1969:201) however, faithfulness refers to a property of a text that displays dynamic equivalence. Faithfulness in this sense refers to the evoking the same response from the receptor of the TT as the response evoked from the receptor of ST. For Gutt, on the other hand, faithfulness refers to the “resemblance in relevant respects” (1991:111) whether in semantic or in formal aspects. Finally, Popovič (1970:80) sees faithfulness in translator’s commitment to his categorization of shifts in translation. He believes that the translator who uses the shift strategy in his own work does not want to change the text, rather is trying to keep the elements of text in totality in TT.

2.2.3 Semantic vs. Communicative Translation In semantic translation, the most important element of translation is the words of the ST. The translator shows his commitment to the source text more than the target text no matter if the translated text cannot match the cultural framework 37

of the TT. Semantic translation considers the SL words as sacred even if there are mistakes in it. This type of translation is used for literary, scientific and technical texts. In contrast to semantic translation, communicative translation focuses mainly on the message of the ST. It takes the message and conveys it to the TT regarding the cultural framework of the TT. This type of translation has been favored by some translation scholars such as Roberts who believes that adhering too strictly to the source text does not necessarily lead to “effective communication in TT” and it can result in the “distortion of the message.” (Roberts 1985:158) In fact, the categorization of translation into communicative and semantic was proposed by Newmark: “Communicative translation attempts to produce on its readers an effect as close as possible to that obtained on the readers of the original. Semantic translation attempts to render, as closely as the semantic and syntactic structures of the second language allow, the exact contextual meaning of the original” (1988:39).

2.2.4 Adaptive Translation By referring to functional theories of translation, adaptive translation can be considered one of the translation methods proposed by Reiss (1971), which concentrates on the idea that translation should transfer equivalent effect among the TT readers. This type of translation according to Reiss is useful for operative texts and aims at creating the desired response in the TT receiver. This type of translation is considered to be very free among other types of translation and is, therefore, best applicable to the poetry and plays. It can also be used in the contexts that a text should be adapted for a specific of people in TT, such as children, etc. or it may be used in the contexts which translation is not the only purpose of transferring a text into TT. For this reason, Nida and Taber (1969:134) consider this type of translation unfaithful and never recommend it for the translation of holy texts.

2.2.5 Free Translation What is important in free translation is the TT reader and not the source text. It is not essential to stick into the text and grammar of the source text; the text must be clear and fluent enough for the reader to feel comfortable when reading the text. In some contexts, this type of translation has been considered sensefor-sense translation, which stands against word-for-word and literal translation (Mark and Cowie 1997:62). Therefore one can say that in free translation adherence to words is nonsense, the translator chooses a unit of translation, which 38

can properly convey the gist and message of the original. According to Catford (1965:25), the prerequisite of a free translation is being UNBOUNDED and in this sense, it can be considered more target-text oriented than source-text oriented. The free translation is the same as imitation in the categorization of translation by Dryden. He introduces three types of translation, which are metaphrase, paraphrase and imitation (Baker and Saldanha 2009:88) in this categorization metaphrase and paraphrase are similar to word-for-word and sense-for-sense translation, and according to Jerome’s categorization these two subcategories can match faithful translation. Jerome considers on the other hand free translation, which is similar to imitation, as unfaithful. In fact, free translation has been considered bad translation or no translation at all. The summary of this discussion can be seen in figure 2–2 taken from Rutledge encyclopedia of translation (Baker and Saldanha 2009:88) Fig. 2–2: The Position of Free Translation in Translation Studies

2.2.6 Idiomatic Translation Idiomatic translation is the type of translation in which the meaning of the original and the form of the target texts are the most important elements of translation. In this type of translation, the translator’s attempt is to communicate the meaning in the natural form of the TL. The term ‘idiomatic translation’ has been mainly used by Beekman and Callow (1974) and Larson (1984) for the type of translation in which the aim is a TT that is as natural as possible for the reader. Like dynamic equivalence, which was explained in the previous sections, the idiomatic translation aims at producing the same effect on the TT reader as the ST reader. Larson 39

(1984) calls idiomatic translation as meaning-based translation since the focus in this type of translation is on the meaning of the original text. From the discussions made in this section and previous sections, we can conclude that dynamic translation, free translation, and idiomatic translation are all overlapping terms that are non-technically termed as thought-for-thought translation.

2.3 Translation of Poetry Among the wide range of typology of texts and different types of translation, this research focuses mainly on the translation of poetry and audiovisual translation, which is the primary concern of the present dissertation. This section analyzes different scopes in the translation of poetry and audiovisual translation will be explained later in this chapter. Translation of poetry has been considered the most demanding and the most challenging form of translation and is known as one of the subcategories of literary translation. Although some scholars prefer to call the translation of poetry as an impossible task, others are so motivated to translate poetry. This has led to the point that some prefer to call the translation of poetry as ‘the art of the impossible’ (Baker and Saldanha 2009:176). Despite the debates among the scholars about the possibility or impossibility of translation of poetry, it is important to consider the famous works of poetry translation by Fitzgerald translating Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1859) and Pound’s (1925) Cantos, which are well-known and admirable works in the field of literary translation. It is not only the text that is translated in the poetry translation but also the cognitive features, discourse and the action by and between the human and textual actors which play a role in the social and physical setting (Buzelin 2007). To summarize this section, it is appropriate to refer to the explanation of poetry translation by Landers (2001:97): “Translating poetry well is so difficult as to be called impossible by most experts, the late John Ciardi referred to translation as “the art of failure” and yet we go on trying, sometimes with remarkably reduced degree of non-success. If literary translation is itself a leap of faith, poetic translation puts that faith to the severest of all tests.”

To come up with the problem of translating poetry some strategies have been suggested that will be explained in the next section.

2.4 Strategies for Translation of Poetry Several strategies have been proposed for the translation of poetry. As the first example of these strategies we may refer to the categorization by Holmes 40

(1988:25). He introduces four strategies for the translation of poetry, which are mimetic, analogical, organic and deviant. In mimetic translation what is important is the original text and attempts should be made to maintain the original text. In analogical translation, a culturally corresponding form is applied to the translation. In organic translation the semantic material allows the translator to use the ‘unique poetic shape as the translation develops.’ Finally in deviant translation, both form and content deviate from the original text. Jones (1989) also considers four strategies for the translation of poetry, which are the literal translation, approximation, adaptation, and imitation. Abbasi and Manafi (2004:67&68) have also proposed some guidelines for the translation of poetry by dividing literal-verse translation into some subcategories as Phonemic translation, Stanza imitation, Meter imitation, Imitation of rhyme scheme, Literal blank verse translation, and Rhymed translation. Phonemic translation refers to the replacement of the phoneme in source text with the corresponding phoneme in the target text. This type of translation can be applied to the languages that have similar phonemes. Stanza imitation focuses mainly on the content of the original text but also tries to keep the general form of the original text too by imitating the stanza pattern of the ST. In meter imitation, besides the literal rendering of the original text, the translator tries to imitate the metrical pattern of the original text. In literal blank verse translation, the translator’s main concern is on the meaning; s/he can freely transfer the meaning without being bound to the rhyme pattern of the original text and finally, in rhymed translation, the rhyming pattern of the original text will be under the focus of the translator. Abbasi and Manafi also have a subdivision for the free translation as a strategy for translation of poems. They are rhymed translation, blank verse translation, and interpretation. In free rhymed translation the most important factor for the translator is the form of target text and sometimes the original meaning is sacrificed for the form of the target text. In contrast, in free blank verse translation, the meaning of the original text is of great concern for the translator, the formal features such as rhyme and rhythm occupy the second priority. Finally, interpretation or imitation is the freest type of translation in which the translator extracts the general meaning of the source text and recreates it in the target text using his style and rules. Lefever (1975) is another translation scholar who has dealt with poetry translation. He proposes seven strategies for the translation of poetry as follows: phonemic translation, literal translation, metrical translation: reproducing the source language meter, verse to prose translation, rhymed translation, blank/free verse translation, interpretation, version, and imitation. Phonemic translation as 41

was explained before refers to the reproduction of the sounds of the ST in TT, Literal translation is word for word translation of the poems, metrical translation reproduces the meter of the original text in the target text. In verse to prose translation, the communicative features and syntax of the ST are totally distorted in TT. In rhymed translation, the rhyme pattern of the original text is transferred into the target text. In blank verse translation the translator makes an attempt to find the proper equivalence for the terms of the original text, regarding the semantic features of the poem. Finally in interpretation, as was mentioned before, the translator takes a gist of the original text and produces his poem. The strategies mentioned above are all useful in different contexts. However, when a poem is translated there must be strategies to evaluate the work of the translator. This is a topic that will be explained in detail in the next chapter. Before finishing this chapter audiovisual translation and its subcategories will be discussed.

2.5 Audiovisual Translation Audiovisual translation (AVT) is a coverall term for subtitling, dubbing, and their entailments. Such as revoicing, respeaking, etc. By the new advancements in the field of media and the appearance of new technology, new ways of communication have emerged, which consequently leads to new forms and methods of translation. Nowadays, many new terms have been used for the translation of movies including short film translation, movie translation, screen translation. In general, AVT is considered one of the fastest growing subcategories of translation studies. The reason why the scholars once ignored the field was the tendency to consider it not a translation but an adaptation. In fact, the spatial and temporal limits imposed by the media has led the scholars to take the audiovisual translation as an adaptation. To define AVT, Diaz and Cintas believe that, “Audiovisual translation refers to the translation of products in which the verbal dimension is supplemented by elements in other media” (Díaz-Cintas and Remael 2006:13). Following this definition, the most common subtypes of AVT are subtitling and dubbing which will be explained in the next section.

2.5.1 Subtitling vs. Dubbing In 1929 the first sound film was produced for the international audience, since then two methods were proposed for the transference of the contents of the movie to other languages. These two methods were subtitling and dubbing. 42

After this categorization, the world was divided into four types of countries: source language countries, dubbing countries, voice-over countries, subtitling countries. Source language films, which are mainly English speaking, refer to the languages that prefer subtitling more than dubbing and are mainly art movies prepared for the literate audience. In dubbing countries such as German, Italian, Spanish speaking countries, almost all the movies are dubbed rather than being subtitled. Voice-over countries such as Poland, Russia, etc. dubbing cannot be afforded; therefore a narrator reads the dialogue in the target language while the source language dialogue is muted. Subtitling languages include many non-European countries as well as some small European countries, with a high literacy rate. In these countries, subtitling is preferred to dubbing. (Baker and Saldanha 2009:244) It was once a question to consider subtitling as a type of translation or not. Some professionals tend to disagree to recognize subtitling as real translation. One of the reasons for this reluctance to accept subtitles as translation is that the constraints of time and space that exists in subtitling cause the condensation of the original text which does not exist in typical translation. Another reason may refer to the fact that many people tend to call only the written transference of languages as translation. However, for the purpose of the present study and many other studies in this direction, “all types of interlingual transfer” are labeled as translation, “as they all share one basic quality: verbal messages are recreated in another language” (Gottlieb 2004:219) Subtitling is a special form of translation that is distinguished from other types of translation regarding a shift from oral to written language. Because of the shift from one semiotic system to another, Gottlieb refers to this type of translation as “diagonal translation” (Díaz-Cintas and Remael 2006:78) Subtitle, in general, is a one or two line of almost 35 characters of transcription of film dialogues. In another definition by Gottlieb subtitle is “the rendering in a different language of verbal messages in filmic media, in the shape of one or more lines of written text presented on the screen in sync with the original written message” (2001b:87). The main types of subtitles are open and close subtitles. Open subtitles are printed on the film directly but closed subtitles are selected by the viewer from DVD or teletext menu and in another form of subtitling that is more common in film festivals the subtitle is projected on the screen. (Munday 2009:148) In general, subtitle is shorter than the original text because the viewer must both concentrate on the movie and at the same time on the subtitle. According to Antonini (2005:213), the words existing in the original dialogues are reduced by between forty and seventy five percent to give a chance to the viewers to read the 43

subtitle and at the same time watch the film. Therefore the subtitle is naturally subject to elimination and omission of some words. Antonini (2005:213 & 214) proposes the figure 2–3 as the process of subtitling. Fig. 2–3: The Subtitler’s Work by Antonini (2005) From audio to written Transcription Spotting Translation

Adaptation

Condensation

Rendering

Elimination

Simplification

Synchronisation

As is shown in fig. 2–3, the task of the subtitler contains the process of rendering, elimination, and simplification. In the elimination process, the subtitler focuses on the form of the original text rather than the meaning. This may include hesitations, repetitions, and interjections. Extra information like shaking head for example that can be understood from the visuals will also be omitted. In rendering, the translator mainly focuses on removing or modifying cases like slangs or taboo language, and finally, in simplification, the syntax of the original is simplified to the extent that is comfortable for the reader. After the work of the translator is over a technician usually carries out the process of synchronization and other related tasks, and finally, in some cases, a third person is obliged to check the language on the one hand and to check whether the text is correctly synced to the film or not on the other. The length of the subtitle depends on many factors such as the size of the screen or its application and way of use in the market. For example, a DVD viewer has the chance to rewind the movie to reread the text if it is too long

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or pause it to read it thoroughly. Therefore, it is not always appropriate to lose text at the expense of simplification. The second main type of audiovisual and movie translation is dubbing. In dictionary of translation studies, two different usages have been considered for dubbing; firstly it is defined as “covering the original voice in an audiovisual production by another voice” (Dries 1995:9 as cited in; Mark and Cowie 1997) and in narrower sense it refers to the process in which “the foreign dialogue is adjusted to the mouth movement of the actor in the film” (Dries 1995:9 as cited in; Mark and Cowie 1997). It is presented in such a way that the viewer may think that the actor is talking in the target language and is like what is now common among young generation as Dubsmash. By replacing the soundtrack of the source language with that of the target language, dubbing can be considered one of the means that can closely reproduce the goal and nature of the original in the target language (Pavesi, Formentelli, and Ghia 2015:8). Like subtitling, the investigation of dubbing in the framework of translation studies has been ignored for a long time because of the fact that in the process of dubbing, it is not only the language transfer that is important but also the quality of dubbing depends on using up to date equipment, the choice of actors, the skill of the editor, and standard of sound engineering (Dries 1995:12). It should be considered that dubbing is not just a phonological transfer, rather it is regarded as an exercise in what is termed as visual phonetics, because the synchronization process is more visual rather than acoustic (Mark and Cowie 1997:46). By making a comparison between dubbing and subtitling it can be concluded that in dubbing the viewer needs less effort to understand what is going on in the movie than in subtitling (Delabastita 1989:205). Omissions and compressions are also less in dubbing than in subtitling (Luyken et al. 1991:74). In some European countries, dubbing is preferred for movie translation because of the mentioned reasons. However, dubbing has some disadvantages compared to subtitling. The first disadvantage of dubbing is that it is less authentic than subtitling. The flexibility of dubbing is also less than subtitling because there is no space for extra information (Goris 1993:171). Another disadvantage is that generally, dubbing is time-consuming and expensive compared to subtitling. Regarding the points mentioned above, and considering the available materials, countries decide to choose one of these techniques for the translation of movies. As was mentioned before, countries are divided into dubbing counties and subtitling countries. Iran, which is the focus of the present thesis, is a dubbing country and for this reason, attempts in improving the quality of subtitles have been ignored in this country. Therefore, in this work, the concentration 45

would be more on subtitling rather than dubbing. Subtitles consist of several subcategories, which will be explained in the next section.

2.5.2 Subcategories of Subtitling Shuttleworth and Cowie define subtitling as “the process of providing synchronized captions for film and television dialogue.” Several categorizations have been considered for the translation of subtitles. Most highlighted categorizations include interlingual vs. intralingual, and open vs. closed subtitles. Interlingual subtitles refer to the most common type of subtitles, which exists in the market and was explained in the above definition. Intralingual subtitles, on the other hand, refer to the subtitling for the deaf. The other general categorization of subtitles is open vs. closed subtitles, in which open refers to the cases where the subtitle appears on the screen and forms part of the original film or broadcast, and close subtitle is separately available for example in the form of teletext when the viewer needs it. Apart from these categorizations, there are more specialized sorting of subtitles, which will be explained in the next sections.

2.5.3 Surtitles Surtitling also known as supratitling is a type of translation, which is considered a hybrid form between translation and interpretation. It was first used on a theater stage in the 1980s in Scandinavia and is categorized as a form of interlingual translation. Surtitles usually appear on a LED display above the stage. They can either scroll down from right to left or stay in a stationary position. In some theaters, they appear on smaller monitors throughout the theater (DíazCintas and Remael 2014:25). According to Griesel (2009:120) “Surtitling is a hybrid form of translation, which is introduced when foreign language companies go to stage.” In the process of surtitling, text passages are presented in a condensed, translated form and are manually projected on to the stage (Griesel 2009:63). Surtitling is a new subject in the field of translation studies, and its primary usage is in theater and opera translation. The special characteristic of surtitles is that they are dependent on the context. Without joining them to the performance, they are meaningless and inappropriate. Each scene has its specific surtitle, any changes made in the stage interpretation should be considered in the translation. The nature of theater is such that the viewer should not only watch the theater but also concentrate on the existing symbols and signals in the text. If they choose to read the surtitles they will not have enough time to go deep through the semiotic symbols of the text. On the other hand, the viewers do not go to the theater to read the surtitles, rather they prefer to watch the 46

performance itself. Therefore the specific function of surtitles is to empower the audience to communicate with other symbolic modes used in the performance (Virkkunen 2004:93). Surtitles function as a medium for the verbal features that exist in theater and help us to understand the music and acting at the same time. The important point to mention here is that since music cannot be translated into words and at the same time has many effects on the libretto, surtitling can help the audience to get more out of the act and music (Lindenberger, Poteat, and West 1985:125); in fact surtitling is an important innovation in the history of opera performance since in opera the understanding of verbal line is as critical as other symbolic functions (Virkkunen 2004:93).

2.5.4 Intertitles “A printed narration or portion of dialogue flashed on the screen between the scenes of a silent film.” This is the definition of intertitles provided by the Free Dictionary (Intertitle 2016). Intertitles, also known, as title cards are text frames, drown or printed, that appear intermittently between the sequences of a film. Intertitles are divided into two subcategories, which are dialogue intertitles and expository intertitles. Dialogue intertitles are used to convey dialogues and expository ones which are narrative texts to explain the situations where the photographed scene cannot convey the meaning directly (The History of Silent Movies and Subtitles – Video Caption Corporation n.d.). Intertitles are considered the oldest relatives of subtitles and were proposed in the early 20th century mainly to explain some parts of the silent movies. The conventional form of intertitles is a text on a dark background, usually white on black. Nowadays, because of the addition of the soundtracks to the movies, the usefulness of the intertitles is under question; they tend to be called inserts in when they are used in the contemporary films. In the early times, intertitles were translated by replacing the text frame of the source language with that of the target language, later they were left without any changes and were explained to the audience by a sort of master of ceremonies. Today subtitling and voice-over is preferred to this method of film translation (Díaz-Cintas and Remael 2014:26).

2.5.5 Fansubs In many countries it is usual that professionals or specific organizations would do the translation of subtitles, however parallel to the progress in technology and education, nowadays, there is more tendency towards translation of subtitles by fansubbers. Fansubbing can be done individually or by a group of people working together. The practice of fansubbing dates back to 1980s as an attempt 47

to popularize Japanese cartoons known as “manga” and “anime.” Because of the linguistic barrier and lack of distribution of these subtitles in America and European countries, fans decided to produce subtitles of their own “fan for fan” subtitles. The subtitles would then be available for free on the internet for other fans (Díaz-Cintas and Remael 2014:26). This method of subtitling is most common in dubbing countries such as Iran; the concentration is more on dubbing and therefore there are not much available organizational subtitles for them. The other reason for producing fansubs in such countries might be the problem of censorship; because of the cultural barriers, many movies are censored or not released in these countries. For this reason, fansubbers provide the translation of subtitles online on the websites, and they prefer to remain anonymous. The problem with these subtitles is that they do not follow a particular rule or guideline and they may contain many deficiencies.

2.5.6 Translation of Subtitles As a subcategory of audiovisual translation, subtitling has its own rules and criteria. It is different from other types of translations since it is restricted to time and space. Gottlieb (1992:164) introduces two types of constraints for subtitling namely formal and textual constraints. Textual constraints refer to the constraints proposed due to the visual context and formal constraints refer to the constraints of space and time of the subtitles. The translator should be aware of these restrictions. In subtitling the semiotic features of a text as well as the existing audio can affect the translation. In fact “subtitles are just one channel of information in a polysemiotic text like a film which includes other semiotic channels such as picture, music and sound effects, all of which carry information” (Vahid & Rahekhoda 2010). Therefore, the process of subtitling can be summarized as spotting, translation, simulation, and correction. Spotting refers to the calculation of the time that is needed for the subtitle to appear on the screen to be synchronized with the audio of the film. Then the source text will be translated or sometimes adjusted according to the available time and space. Afterward the translated subtitles will be adjusted to the scene and audio of the film, and finally, errors will be evaluated, and new suggestions will be proposed for better work (Introduction to Subtitling 2014). Depending on the type of the country (dubbing country vs. subtitling country) there are rules and guidelines for providing better subtitles. It is reasonably clear that subtitling countries have more experience in the process of subtitling and more works have been done in this respect to improve the quality of subtitles. In some countries such as the UK, subtitling is so important that in 2009 BBC decided to provide a set of guidelines. 48

This set includes detailed information about the way subtitles should be applied to the movie from timing, editing, keeping in sync to music and sound, accents, sound effect labels, etc. (Williams 2009).

2.5.7 Focus of the Present Work According to what was introduced in this chapter, the present dissertation focuses mainly on interlingual subtitles as a subcategory of AVT considering the translation of poetry for musical subtitles. Iran, as a dubbing country, has encountered many problems regarding the translation of subtitles. Lack of organizational practice of subtitling and educated subtitlers work as a barrier to create appropriate subtitles. Many movies are translated by non-professional translators without considering the important factors of subtitling. For these reasons, setting a standard for Persian subtitling of English movies is far from reality. The only attempt that can be done in this respect is the improvement of subtitles as much as possible by setting available and straightforward frameworks based on the analysis of the problems that exist in the present subtitles. The present work is one of these attempts; by analyzing the tentative reasons of omission of interpersonal elements in Persian subtitles of English movies, this research tries to provide some tips as criteria for the evaluation of subtitles to avoid problems of this kind in future works as much as possible. Before going through the data, a history of TQA will be presented in chapter 3, and Appraisal theory as a subcategory of SFL will be introduced in detail to be used as the framework for the analysis of the data in the subsequent chapters.

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3 Translation Quality Assessment (TQA): Background and History 3.1 Overview In this chapter, the primary focus will be on the concept of quality and the definition of quality assessment. Different approaches regarding TQA by different scholars will be discussed. Afterwards, the main concern of the present Ph.D. dissertation that is translation of subtitles will be explained in more details. As the domain of subtitling consists of both musical and non-musical texts, TQA in the field of poetry will also be introduced in a separate section. Appraisal theory as a subcategory of systemic functional linguistics, which is the theoretical framework of this study, will also be discussed in this chapter.

3.2 Criticism vs. Quality Assessment Of the two options, criticism and quality assessment, which are both the focus of translation studies, quality assessment has been used for this study. The overlap between the definitions of the two options may cause some misunderstandings in the field. Therefore, it is important to clarify the difference between translation criticism and translation quality assessment and to clarify the focus of the present study. In many works on translation, the two terms have been used interchangeably, and for this reason, in a speech by Farahzad (2007) the difference between the two terms has been emphasized. She believes that quality assessment is different from criticism in the sense that quality assessment deals with the evaluation of correct or incorrect, good or bad. It deals with testing the translation, judging the quality and similar affairs. In other words, quality assessment tests (or evaluates) a target text in comparison with the source text and focuses on the text in the framework of correct or incorrect on the one hand and good or bad on the other. She also believes that the criterion for assessment is “equivalence,” which does not have a fixed and precise definition, and depending on the type of the text, genre or time, the definition varies. With this viewpoint, assessment is free from any theoretical framework, and therefore there is no criterion for that. On the other hand, criticism may start from a comparison between the source text and target text, but it is not confined to that. It does not deal with correct or incorrect; instead, it focuses on the effect of the lexical or syntactic choices on the target reader, or target society (or societies). 51

The author refers to Popovic’s “metatext” and “prototext” (target text and source text) and points out that the relationship between these two texts is not “equivalence,” in the sense that metatext is not the equivalence for prototext rather, it is only intertextually related. In other words, they are both in the chain of the texts which are related together from the viewpoint of content and history, and one is necessarily produced before the other. For example, a text produced in philosophy is related to all other texts that are written in this field in ST. When it is translated into TT, it is syntactically and semantically adopted to the target language. It is shaped, read and interpreted according to the target society and history, and therefore its relationship with the prototext is intertextual. As soon as the metatext is produced it will be intertextually connected to other texts with other languages that are related to the same field. Therefore, “translation” puts the metatext in an intertextual relationship with all other texts written in different languages, but in the same field (2007:1). What distinguishes “criticism” from “translation quality assessment” is that criticism can be done regardless of the comparison with the source text. To reduce the subjectivity of criticism Farahzad believes that there must be a theoretical framework for analysis and proposes her model of translation criticism based on critical discourse analysis. Regarding the points mentioned above, translation quality assessment can be considered a less explored field because it is so much in danger of subjective comments. It is true that translation quality assessment deals with correct and incorrect, good and bad, but in what sense is a translated sentence or word incorrect? How is it good or bad? There must at least be a framework that can make the comparisons of the TT and ST more objective and at the same time distance it from translation criticism that may deal with the TT in isolation from ST. As was mentioned before, the problem may be caused by the lack of a fixed definition for equivalence. What is worth mentioning here is the fact that languages are different, and so are the texts. Therefore, it would be far from reality to set a TQA model that can be useful in all languages and all types of texts. Webster Online Dictionary defines criticism as a noun in four ways: “1. The act of expressing disapproval and of noting the problems or faults of a person or thing 2. The act of criticizing someone or something 3. A remark or comment that expresses disapproval of someone or something 4. The activity of making careful judgments about the good and bad qualities of books, movies, etc.” (Definition Of Criticism 2016).

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Among these definitions, the last definition is closer to the insight of the present thesis, because the purpose is not only focusing on the problems but also cherishing the positive points to consider them in the future works. In fact, the last definition (which is not a technical definition) can explain the overlap between the definitions of translation criticism and translation quality assessment and can explain why they have been used interchangeably in some contexts. To be straightforward and to remove the misunderstandings, the phrase “quality assessment” has been used in this work as a means for judging the goodness and badness or correctness and incorrectness of a translated work. “Evaluation” has also been used as an alternative for “quality assessment.” What is now worth mentioning here is the definition of quality itself from American Society for Quality (ASQ). American Society for Quality defines quality as “a subjective term for which each person has his or her definition.” In technical usage, quality can have two meanings according to ASQ (2017): “1. The characteristics of a product or service that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs. 2. A product or service free of deficiencies.” As its name purports, translation quality assessment deals with the assessment of the quality of a translation. It reports the goodness and the badness of a translated text. It claims that a translated text can always be improved and tries to provide guidelines that lead to a better translation. TQA is one of the ongoing subfields of translation that deals with almost all aspects of the text in the source and target language. Depending on the type of the text, TQA model varies to a great extent.

3.3 Translation Quality Assessment: Approaches to TQA from Past to Present Translation studies is a growing field of study with different subfields. In 1960, it was developed at the Leipzig school of translation studies by Otto Kade, Gert Jäger, and Albert Neubert at Leipzig University. The pioneers of this school tried to take translation as a subfield of linguistics and believed that it should take advantage of scientific methods to widen its insights. (Farahzad 2004:229) Today, translation studies is known as the field of translatology (translatologie) at Leipzig University. The suffix “logy” which is used in names of sciences and bodies of knowledge is clear evidence for the Leipzig school’s attempts to put translation studies in the framework of science. One of the subfields of translation studies that had been the focus of different translation scholars is translation quality assessment. To be able to put translation studies into the framework of 53

science, one of the attempts should be made to set objective criteria for the quality assessment of translation. One of the central concerns of translation and communication is the evaluation. In “Evaluation in Translation” Munday (2012:11) quotes the words of the Soviet Bakhtin circle linguist Volosinov (1973:105): “No utterance can be put together without value judgment. Every utterance is above all an evaluative orientation. Therefore, each element in a living utterance not only has a meaning but also has a value.”

3.4 Importance of Evaluation Munday pinpoints Volosinov’s idea that evaluation should be done not only in the connotation of a word or comment on the propositional content, but also in every aspect of communication, including “the choice of word and intonation that accompanies it in speech, in the syntax, in the arrangement of an argument, in the choice of genre, and form of language or dialect.” These are all the factors that stick evaluation to the semiotic aspects of language. Volosinov sees language as a “never-ending process of re-evaluation” because during the time with the production of new and more powerful utterances, meaning changes to a considerable extent. In fact, depending on the situation in which the utterance is stated and depending on the expected response from the audience, the values are negotiated by the writer/speaker and reader/listener. (Bakhtin n.d.) Evaluation is also helpful in understanding the interpersonal relationships in the process of translation. These relationships exist between the author and the translator, the translator and the reader, etc. and it leads to interpretation and appreciation of a translation. In a nutshell, translation quality assessment is essential because without it there would be no way to improve the quality of a translated text. A translated text may be full of mistakes, or it may be badly written regarding style and other features, or it may simply not match with the reader’s expected criteria. Therefore, there must be a kind of assessment criteria to find the problems which exist in a translation. Another advantage of TQA may be the fact that when translators know that their work will be assessed, they will try their best to provide an accurate translation.

3.5 History of TQA During the sixties and seventies, the concentration of most translation studies scholars was on the assessment of equivalence. The evidence for this fact is pointed out in the works provided by Nida (1964) and Nida and Taber (1969). But this 54

was not end of the story; Since the 1980s, by the advent of receiver-oriented approaches in the field of translation, the focus of most translation scholars and analysts shifted to the receiver and function of the text rather than the author or the producer of it. Text-based, functional approaches (Reiss 1989; Vermeer 1989; Nord 1997) pragmatic approaches (Baker 1992; House 1977) and system based approaches (Toury 1982 and Chesterman 1997) caused a revolution in the assessment of translations (Chiaro 2008:244). For a long time, translation quality assessment has been the concern of many translation scholars and attempts to keep it objective are still in progress. The following sections introduce the works of the scholars who have spent their efforts on this field during the history. It should be noted that the analysis and close look at these works is not the focus of this research; rather, the list is presented as historical background of the study since the beginning of the efforts.

3.5.1 Nida’s Approach Nida (1964:155), brought about the problem by stating that “Translator is severely criticized if he makes a mistake, but only faintly praised when he succeeds.” This sentence clarifies the importance of assessment for Nida and his concern about the work of translators that is ignored by the readers. Nida introduced the concept of “dynamic equivalence” to step toward objectivity in the field. He believed that the text should have the same effect on ST and TT audience, but it was not clear whether it could be tested by empirical studies to produce an objective assessment.

3.5.2 Nida and Taber’s Approach Nida’s attempts were then followed by the cooperation of Taber (1969:171) in the field, and they tried to objectify the analysis by proposing the use of cloze tests by asking the recipients to fill the gaps of deleted TT words. Finally, they came to a conclusion that “It is often difficult to administer and the results are sometimes cumbersome to analyze.” To handle this problem, they introduced a list of “practical tests” for the analysis. They are as follows: 1. Reactions to alternatives: sometimes it is difficult for the readers of the text to point directly to the negative parts of a translated text. In such cases, the evaluator may introduce some alternatives to the readers (and make the translator absent) to prepare a less pressured atmosphere for them to give their comments. 2. Explaining the contents: in this type of testing, someone reads the translated text to someone else, and then the individual explains the text to other people 55

especially those who are not acquainted with the content of the text. In this technique, it is helpful to note “the lexical modification that takes place, the extent of built-in redundancy, the distortions in meaning which may be introduced, and the syntactic alterations which are automatically made.” This test is helpful because it focuses both on the total content and the correctness of understanding. 3. Reading the text aloud: According to Nida and Taber, this is one of the best tests of translation. In this test, several different people read the text aloud, and the translator listens to them carefully. Whenever the translator encounters a lack of fluency in the reading, they will take a second look at the text to find the source of the problem. 4. Publication of sample materials: Nida and Taber take the publication of sample materials as the only way that “can provide the kind of test necessary to judge the acceptability of a translation.” Despite the existing problems in this method, Nida and Taber believe that the best ways to judge the published material are: “1. To determine the extent to which people buy copies of such translations to share them with friends, 2. The amount of time people read such translations outside of church…, and 3 the degree of involvement the individual shows when he is reading such a translation…” (171, 172). There are many advantages and disadvantages of these techniques that were the focus of the next scholars to get closer to objectivity. The leading figure against subjectivity in assessment during last two decades was House (1997). In her opinion, “it seems unlikely that translation quality assessment can ever be objectified in the manner of natural science” (251). Regarding this fact, it can be concluded that all attempts in this field should be directed towards a more objective criterion, although it is almost impossible to have completely objective assessment criteria. House’s attempts were then followed by Hatim and Mason (1996), Baker (1992) and Horton(1998).

3.5.3 Nord’s Approach Nord’s (1991) model of TQA is considered non-quantitative, textological model because of its focus on microtextual analysis and error counts. Her model, called ‘skopostheorie’, is based on Reiss’ (1989) focus on translation as “intentional”, “interlingual”, “communicative” action and introduces a model in which the skopos (intention and function) of the target text in target culture is important. Consequently, such a model applies to pragmatic and literary documents. For TQA based on this model, the starting point would be the TT skopos. Put TT against “skopos” and the “translator’s explicit strategies” and 56

then compare ST and TT for the “inferred strategies.” For Nord (1991): error analysis is an incomplete process: “it is the text as a whole whose functions and effects must be regarded as the crucial criteria for translation criticism” (66). In this type of translation, the main focus is on the TT, and therefore many translation strategies such as compensation and the use of implicatures might come in handy. This process will lead to a change of view in evaluation and error analysis of translated text and according to Leuven-Zwart, “shifts in meaning” that are considered “unsatisfactory” in professional translation but are not an errors at all (1990:228–29). This leads to the conclusion by Williams (2001:333)that “microstructural analysis is insufficient.” What is important for Nord is “a pragmatic analysis of the communicative situations involved and that the same model be used for both the source text and the translation brief, thus making the results comparable” (1997:62). The following list is a summary of intratextual factors introduced by Nord (1991) as one of the possible models for ST analysis: • Subject matter; • Content including connotations and cohesion; • Presuppositions: real-world factors of the communicative situation presumed to be known to the participants; • Composition including microstructure and macrostructure; • Non-verbal elements: illustrations, italics, etc.; • Lexis including dialect, register, and specific terminology; • Sentence structure; • Suprasegmental features including stress, rhythm and “stylistic punctuation.” (Munday 2001:83) Williams (2004b:13) criticizes Nord’s approach by evaluating her assessment as “parameter specific comparison” and wonders how she “generates an overall assessment from parameter-specific comparisons, particularly when her judgment is based on the nature of the errors, not their number.”

3.5.4 Wilss’ Approach According to Juliane House, “pioneering linguistic work in translation evaluation includes the programmatic suggestions” by several translation scholars like Catford (1965), Wilss (1974), Koller (1979) and the scholars of Leipzig school. However, no direct and specific procedures were offered by these scholars at the time. Wills (1982) states the problem of objectivization in the following words: 57

“The ensuing problem of objectivization can be explained primarily by pointing out that translation cannot be termed a purely ‘linguistic operation’ […] but rather must be thought of as a psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic and pragmalinguistic process […] which lends itself to an exhaustive scientific depiction only with the greatest difficulty” (65).

Although intuition plays a crucial role in interpreting the intentions of the ST writer, some believe that it is far from reality to find a model of quality assessment that is completely objective. This may also be caused by the fact referred to by Al-Qinai (2000:498) “languages vary in their choice of lexical connotations, sentence structure, and rhetorical strategies, the only tangible tools for assessment.”

3.5.5 Hatim and Mason’s Approach Hatim and Mason (1990:3) on the other hand have complained about the lack of accuracy in the evaluation of translations because of the ignorance of the process involved in translation and the single focus on the product. In fact, lack of attention to the process involved in translation leads to the subjective assessment of translation that has been the concern of many translation scholars over the last two decades.

3.5.6 Venuti’s Approach Venuti is considered to belong to the post-modernist and deconstructionist thought. According to House (2001:246), such scholars as Venuti (1995) critically examine translation practice from a “psychological” and “socio-political” stance to reveal inequality in power relations, which is considered to create certain skewing in translation. These power relations are typically reproduced and understood in different ways by different people. If meaning is controlled by an externally observable reaction, translation evaluation involves response-based methods; however, if it is controlled by larger units involving the situational and cultural context, and the context surrounding individual units, evaluation should be done based on critical discourse analysis.

3.5.7 Reiss’ Approach Reiss (1971) first introduced translation criticism and for a long time, her model of translation criticism has been used in different theses as a model of criticizing the translation. What she terms ‘criticism’ is very close to the definition provided for ‘translation quality assessment’ and has much overlap with that definition. Reiss’ concern was also the problem of subjectivity in translation criticism. She 58

argues about the phrases used to assess translation: “translated fluently”, “reads like an original”, “excellent translation”, “sensitively translated”, and she considers all these phrases to be vague and unsupported. She sets forth the problem of subjectivity that exists in translation criticism and believes that there must be criteria and a comparison between ST and TT, and it is not only the TT that should be the center of attention. She feels the need for a guideline to be able to compare the language of the author and that of the translator. She defines the objectivity of criticism in the following words: “In the present context, objectivity means to be verifiable as in contrast to arbitrary and inadequate. This means that every criticism of a translation whether positive or negative must be defined explicitly and be verified by examples.” (2014:4). In this sense, the critic (or the evaluator) should also open ways for subjective options, and what is important both in negative and in positive criticism is the attention to the decision-making process of the translator and to find a reason behind selecting a specific choice. One of the suggestions that Reiss provides for improving a translation is that the person who criticizes a translation must give their suggestion for translation, because evaluation is not the matter of taste or feeling, and it is not suitable to reject a translation only because you don’t feel that it is okay. Another critical factor that is also the focus of the present work is that the task of evaluation should be done by experts and those who have enough knowledge of the literature and particular field of the text in both ST and TT. But before considering these points, Reiss believes that it is also important to distinguish the type of the text that is going to be criticized. What is important for Reiss is the addition of “the criteria of personal category which should complement or replace the normal categories of translation criticism” (2014:113). She believes that it can restrain the critic from making absolute judgments; in other words, it is not appropriate to restrict evaluations to a strict framework, rather the framework should be flexible enough to open ways for independent opinions.

3.5.8 House’s Approach In ‘Translation Quality Assessment: Linguistic Description versus Social Evaluation’, House analyses widely held approaches in translation quality assessment (mentalistic, behavioristic, functionalistic, descriptive, linguistic and deconstructionistic), and based on her criticisms, she provides her functionalpragmatic model for TQA. Her model is a combination of the strong aspects of the other techniques with the consideration of sociolinguistic concerns. She 59

introduces the concept of cultural filtering that “helps differentiate between a covert translation and a covert version” (2001:251). This pragmatic strategy is also called adaptation, acculturation, and naturalization. According to Tempel and Tijes, the cultural filter is considered to be the characteristics of the source text that should be transferred to the target culture through translation to reach the required level of functional equivalence in the target culture (2012:5). As Barrick (1997:2) states, there was a criticism on House’s model of assessment because of the lack of empirical testing. For twenty years, Juliane House’s model of translation quality assessment was used by different translation scholars and researchers. In fact, the model was the pioneer of more objective translation quality assessment models. After several criticisms, it was revised by House herself in 2001. The criticisms of House’s model of quality assessment are introduced by Munday (2013:94) in four categories: 1. 2. 3. 4.

The nature of the analytical categories and the terminology used Lack of intersubjective verifiability of the analyses The limits of translatability The distinction between overt and covert translation

Considering the criticisms, House updated her model. The previous model focused on the fact that the target-oriented notion should be less considered in the process of translation and the basis of the model was the comparison of ST and TT and finding the errors and mismatches. In contrast to the previous model, the new model focused on Hallidayan systemic functional linguistics. This time the comparison between the ST and TT was based on lexical, syntactic and textual means and textual means fall into three subcategories: 1. Theme dynamics: thematic structure and cohesion. 2. Clausal linkage: additive (and, in addition), adversative (but, however) 3. Iconic linkage: parallelism of structure In House’s model register includes field, tenor, and mode, each with a technical definition. According to House field refers to “what is going on” and the field of activity that is part of the social action. It deals with the specificity of lexical items. Tenor refers to the participants, their relationships, superiority, etc., it also includes the addresser’s temporal, geographical, and social provenance followed by his/her emotional, intellectual, and effective stance (the personal viewpoint). By mode, House means the channel (spoken or written) and the degree of participation between the addresser and the addressee.

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After these definitions House presents a set of steps to be followed to analyze the quality of a translation. 1. A profile of ST register is produced. 2. The general purpose and ST genre is added to the previous section. 3. In the third step, “the statement of function” of ST is introduced. This statement covers both the interpersonal and ideational component of function; it talks the information and the relationship between the sender and the receiver 4. The same process will be done on TT. 5. The TT and ST profiles are then compared to one another and cases of errors and mismatches are distinguished. 6. At this level, a “statement of quality” is made about the translation. 7. The translation will be categorized either as overt or covert translation. By overt translation, House refers to those translations that are close to the ST so that the addressees are entirely aware that they are reading a translation. By contrast, a covert translation refers to the type of translation that is far from the syntax and semantics of ST, rather it is very similar to the original writings of TT. As far as the focus of the present research is on the interpersonal function of language and its effects on translation quality assessment, Juliane House’s model (figure 3–1) and Jeremy Munday’s Studies on appraisal theory that will be discussed in the next chapter are used as the basis of this research. Fig. 3–1: House’s Model of Translation Quality Assessment (1997:108)

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3.5.9 Baker’s Approach In her book “In Other Words” Mona Baker quotes Fawcett’s impressive definition of translation quality assessment: “Translation quality assessment proceeds according to the lordly, but completely unexplained, whimsy of ‘It doesn’t sound right.” (2002:142)

Several definitions have been provided for the word “quality.” In “In Other Words” Baker refers to Grice’s (1975:45) “general principle of communication, the Co-operative Principle, in which he explains the general laws that participants are expected to observe…Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.” There are four maxims associated with this principle, namely: Quantity, Quality, Relevance, and Manner. For quality he gives the following statement: “Try to make your contribution one that is true’, specifically: (a.) Do not say what you believe to be false. (b.) Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.” These statements should also be kept in mind in the process of translation analysis to be more objective. So far the introduced quality assessment models were general and not subject specific. However, after the introduction of text types by Reiss in 1989, more field-specific quality assessment models were considered in translation studies. For example, poetry that was once considered by Jakobson to be untranslatable (Baker, 2001) is now one of the important subjects of study for translation quality assessment. One of the models that has been introduced for the assessment of poetry will be discussed in the following section.

3.6 Approaches to TQA of Poetry Several approaches have been considered for the evaluation of poetry translation. Two of the approaches, which are proposed for Persian translation of English poems and are more related to the requirements of the present work will be explained in this section. The first approach is a practical model of translation quality assessment of poetry and the second one is a semiotic model of TQA in poetry translation, which is the revision of the first model.

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3.6.1 A Practical Model for Translation Analysis and Assessment of Poetic Discourse In 2008, Vahid et al. started their project of translation quality assessment of poetry by considering Newmark’s (1988) semantic and communicative categorization. They take the translatability of poetry for granted and favor semantic translation, which respects the author’s linguistic level. They believe that the success of a translator depends on the degree of his/her faithfulness to the author. They favor Newmark’s (1988) belief that if the text is out of TL space and time, the equivalent effect cannot be produced. In the model, they try to consider space and time, but they fail to define them. They consider different relationships and participants in the process of text and especially poetry translation (Vahid, Hakimshafaaii, and Jannesaari 2008); the provided model is shown in figures 3–2 and 3–3. The model assesses translation at two levels: textual level and extratextual level. The participants include the author, author’s readership, post-author’s readership, translator, translator’s readership, post translator’s readership, the critic, critic’s readership and post-critic readership. Therefore, the process of quality assessment should consider all these minds involved in the process. In fact, Vahid et al. consider a continuum of poetry that puts it in place between mind, feelings or emotions on the one hand and language on the other. They resort to subjective methods of evaluation and fail to address the nature of different minds that are involved in the process of translation. Fig. 3–2: A Tentative Model of Poetic Translation Analysis Discourse Assessment: Textual Level (Vahid, Hakimshafaaii, and Jannesaari 2008)

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Fig. 3–3: A Tentative Model of Poetic Translation Analysis Discourse Assessment: Extratextual Level (Vahid, Hakimshafaaii, and Jannesaari 2008)

3.6.2 Semiotic Model of TQA In 2011, the model explained in the previous section was updated with consideration of the shortcomings of the previous model. In this new model, time and space were defined more understandably; the human mind was added as a new element to be analyzed. Subjective elements such as feelings and emotions were reconsidered, the concept of “closeness to the ST” was defined more clearly, and other vague factors were either removed or clarified. The elements of the semantic model were added to the previous one, and the available codes of the participants were also considered an important element of analysis. 64

Figure 3–4 shows a summary of the model. Fig. 3–4: Vahid et al.’s Semiotic Model of Translation Quality Assessment for Poetry (2011)

In the model, text, and interpreter are both involved and they work at parallel levels. The interpreter unfolds the hidden aspects of a text by using the mind’s codes, and the final result is both a textual and extratextual analysis.

3.7 Approaches to TQA of Subtitles As is stated by Bassnett (1980) in Munday (2008b), the debate of fidelity in translation dates back to the first century BC by the distinction that Cicero and Horace made between word-for-word and sense-for-sense translation. However, translation quality as an independent subject in academic research is not such an old subject. Much research has been done regarding the quality assessment of translation, but only a few of them point directly to the quality assessment of subtitles. One of the justifications that can be made for the lack of research in quality assessment of Persian subtitles of English movies is the fact that Iran is mostly considered a dubbing country in contrast to subtitling countries, and most subtitles are made by the authors of fansubs that have little knowledge of 65

translation and language studies. However, three of the approaches that seem to be more straightforward and applicable to the quality assessment of subtitles will be introduced in the following sections.

3.7.1 Translator’s Daffodil: A Model for the Quality Assessment of Subtitles Translator’s Daffodil is a model of translation quality assessment of subtitling proposed by Bittner as a tool to come up with two problems. The first problem is the wide variety of translation approaches, the variety of quality concepts, and different views on what does it mean when we say a text is stylistically appropriate. The second problem concerns the fact that the translator should encounter many “constraints of subtitling” and “few opportunities of audiovisual medium” (2011:76). Bittner’s primary concern about TQA models of translation is the problem of subjectivity. In this respect, he quotes House’s idea that looks at objectivity as an almost unreachable goal and knows translation criticism to be “a highly complex and, in the last analysis, probabilistic undertaking” (1997:119). Bittner looks at translation, not in isolation, rather in connection with several external factors. These factors include ST and TT, their respective text forms, the agents in the translation process, and the cultures and politics involved. He summarizes his view in the following so-called ‘Translator’s Daffodil’ (figure 3–5), as it is reminiscent of a flower. Fig. 3–5: The Translator’s Daffodil (Bittner 2011)

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This is a simple model that a translator should have in mind when translating a text. The difference between this model and many other existing models is the fact that here the main concentration is on TT in isolation and in the center of the flower surrounded by six interrelated ‘petals.’ As far as the context and customer of translation are concerned, there can be no specific reason for a particular translation to be good or bad. It might just match/not match the relevant framework of clearly defined criteria; therefore according to Kußmal (2000:25) the question of quality in translation is the question of being “more appropriate” and “less appropriate.” According to Bittner (2011) “good quality is, then, the perception of a translation as most appropriate within the context in which it functions” (78). As far as subjectivity is concerned, attempts should be made to provide a quality assessment that can be supported by as much subjective reasoning as possible. Bittner applies his model of TQA to subtitling and finally states his comments on them based on Translator’s Daffodil. Although it is a subjective way of evaluating the subtitles, it can be justified by objective reasoning according to Schippel (2006:7). This point can be considered a key for the analysis of the omission of the interpersonal elements that are the focus of the present work to provide some guidelines as the framework for the quality assessment of subtitles.

3.7.2 High Felicity as an Approach to the Quality Assessment of Subtitles Pedersen is another researcher who has investigated an approach to the quality assessment of subtitles. For this purpose, he has selected speech act theory as a basis. He considers subtitling as a pragmatic form of translation and assumes that “it is more felicitous to give a speaker’s primary illocutionary point (what is meant to get across) precedence over what is actually said” (2008:101). After analyzing Extra-linguistic Cultural References, (ECRs), he concludes that there is a distinction between felicitous translation and translation error. In fact, the assumption would be based on the point that a felicitous subtitle would be faithful to the original message despite media-specific constraints, and would enable the viewer/reader to have access to the message. The other aspect that Pedersen refers to as a tool for the quality assessment of subtitles is skopos, which will be explained later in this section. He suggests that what is important in translating subtitles is the speaker’s primary illocutionary act and what the speaker intends to transfer to the addressee. For this purpose, he has focused his analysis on translation crisis points known as (ECR). These are elements which are complicated for the translator 67

and encourage them to make decisions on how to fill the gap between ST and TT cultures. The difference between the translator of subtitles and the translator of regular texts is the fact that the latter is not constrained by the limitations of time and space that exist for the former. To start his analysis, Pedersen first introduces a taxonomy of translation strategies which can be summarized in figure 3–6: Fig. 3–6: Taxonomy of Translation Strategies (Pedersen 2008:103) Official Equivalent

Retention

Direct Translation

Minimum Change

ECR Transfer Strategies

Omission

Intervention

Specification

Addition

Completion

Generalization

Hyponymy

Paraphrase

Substitution

Cultural

Situational

To focus on the quality of translation he concentrates on the cases of translation shifts (105) and tries to investigate the reasons why a shift has happened in the translation. The other important point which is referred to in Pederson’s work is the unit of translation (108) in subtitling. For this purpose, he refers to Gottlieb’s advocation of speech act-based translation “In subtitling, the speech act is in focus; verbal intentions and visual effects are more important than lexical elements in isolation (2000:19). With this definition Pedersen sees a problem in case of indirect speech acts “which are often turned into direct speech acts in subtitles, because they are often more concise” (2008:107). The suggestion that he proposes to solve this problem is to “look beyond the speech act, to Gottlieb’s “verbal intentions” or what Searle (1979:33) calls “primary illocutionary point.” Pedersen sees a problem in traditional speech act scenarios for subtitled films; they are too simplified. To solve this problem, Clark (1996) and Goffman (1981) introduce a 68

model which includes “side participants”, who may take part in the conversation if they wish. They introduce overhearers who “have no right or responsibilities in it [the conversation].” These overhearers are of two main types, namely “bystanders and “eavesdroppers” (132). Bystanders are the listeners whom the speaker is aware of, and eavesdroppers are those who can listen to the conversation, but the speaker is not aware of their existence. Pedersen’s adopted model is presented in figure 3–7: Fig. 3–7: Clark’s Participant Model (adapted from Clark (1996:14))

According to Chiaro (2008:109), Pedersen’s adopted model of subtitling quality assessment is mainly based on Goffman (1981), but it “further elaborates the audience design in television.” Like the previous model, the speaker and the addressee are the centers of attention. On the one hand, the speech act is received by side participants and overhears on the screen, and on the other hand, someone decides about what the speaker is going to say. This “original sender” termed by Pedersen is termed as “author” by Goffman (1981:44). He believes that a message is conveyed indirectly from someone or some organizations to the final TV audience (1981:138). 69

Pedersen considers two other intermediate audiences for this transference process and makes a summary of the whole process. “A speaker produces a speech act, an addressee reacts to it, the immediate audience may react to the speaker and the addressee, the intermediate addressee reacts to everybody on stage, and the final audience reacts to everything (2008:109).” The communication structure in television can be summarized in figure 3–8. Fig. 3–8: Communication Structure in Television (Pedersen 2008:110)

Regarding the points mentioned above, Pedersen (2008:111) introduces a hierarchy of translation priorities pioneered by Zabalbeascoa (1994:91) and further developed in 1999: “In a felicitous translation, the speaker’s illocutionary points ought to be preserved. If there has to be a choice between primary and secondary illocutionary points, it is more felicitous to transfer the primary one.” He then refers to the problem of such a hierarchy in subtitling where it is not always identifiable which point is the primary and which is the secondary illocutionary point. To solve this problem, he suggests that the translator consider the context to solve the problem and decide about appropriate choice; in this case “high fidelity is achieved through high felicity” (112).

The other point that Pedersen considers here is that when there is a conflict between skopos of the utterance and the speaker’s primary illocutionary point, priority is given to the skopos. Pedersen summarizes the hierarchy in figure 3–9. 70

Fig. 3–9: Hierarchy of Translation Studies Based on Illocutionary Points (Pedersen 2008:112) Skopos of utterance (the original sender’s primary illocutionary point)

The speaker’s primary illocutionary point

The speaker’s secondary illocutionary point

Other considerations

Based on the model of TQA for subtitling a translation error may appear when none of the primary and secondary illocutionary points have been transferred to the TT. A translation strategy here can be simply omission, which will be the focus of the present work in the following chapters.

3.7.3 Appraisal Theory as an Approach to the Quality Assessment of Subtitles In the opening section of his book ‘Evaluation in Translation’, Jeremy Munday points to the uncertainty and the lack of confidence of translators about the choices that they must take in the process of translation. He sets forth a crucial question in the field of translation studies, i.e.,: “what a strong translation is meant to be and how much a translator may intervene to achieve it?” In fact, this is a deciding question that has caused the emergence of a new field in translation studies, i.e., Translation Quality Assessment, since the start of the efforts in 1964 by Nida (see chapter 2). As a starting point for the study of evaluation, it is necessary to focus on text linguistics and especially systemic functional grammar. 71

Systemic functional linguistics (SFL) was first developed by Halliday with the aim of addressing the needs of language teaching and learning. The central focus of SFL was the fact that we cannot judge language as good or bad, rather as appropriate or inappropriate for a specific context. The same concept can also exist for the product of translation, in the sense that the translation of a text might be appropriate/inappropriate regarding the source text and the expectations of the author and at the same time taking into regard the target context and expectations of the receiver; and the latter refers to the point that language function should be considered more important than language structure, which is one of the fundamental points in SFL. Text linguistics is a branch of linguistics that deals with the study of texts and their classifications by genre. It is a new field which was established in the 1960s. The discipline has been growing by taking advantage of the related disciplines such as linguistics, semiotics, sociology, anthropology, literature, etc. According to Guy Cook, text linguistics falls into three schools regarding their theoretical origins: goals of research, methods, and focuses. The first school is called British-American school that has systemic functional grammar, sociolinguistics, and pragmatics as its main theoretical basis. This school focuses mainly on the language in use, and its related areas of research include conversation analysis, cohesion, and coherence, textual discourse type, text grammar, genre theory, speech act theory interactional sociolinguistics, the ethnography of communication, pragmatics, variation analysis, etc. Therefore systemic functional linguistics that deals with language in use falls into this category. The second school is Foucault School, which does not focus mainly on the language in use, rather on the order of discourse, ideology, and social relationships reflected in text/discourse analysis. In this school, it is believed that the concentration of text and discourse is not only on the reflection of social order but also on the construction and regulation of social relationships as well as people’s social identity and activity. Critical discourse analysis is the third school of text linguistics, which is inspired by critical linguistics and systemic functional grammar. As Munday (2008b:90) pinpoints, this school mainly concentrates on the way language choices in text and discourse reflect the power relations between the speaker and the listener, and the way people use text or discourse “to manipulate social activities or to create and maintain the unequal social structure.” Systemic functional linguistics (SFL) that was developed by Halliday in 1994 sees language as communication, “seeing meaning in the writer’s linguistic choices to a wider sociocultural framework.” 72

SFL introduces three metafunctions for the language (Thompson 2014:30): 1. Experiential, which is also called ideational metafunction, uses “language to talk about the world” (2014:30) 2. Interpersonal that is using language to communicate with other people, and finally, 3. Textual metafunction, that is, related to the organization of language to fit in its context. (Halliday 1970) The three functions mentioned above all operate together to give meaning to the text. Ideational and textual functions are the two elements that have been the centers of attention of translation analysts and critics, leaving the interpersonal untouched or let’s say “less explored” (Munday 2012:321). The interpersonal function is “central for the negotiation of meaning between writer and reader, the resources of which have been described in the last decade through appraisal theory.” (2012:321) The main purpose of communication is to interact with other people: to establish and maintain appropriate and personal links with them. We communicate with other people to receive feedback, and therefore, it is a two-way process. The exchange of information, question, and answer, changing one’s attitude and behavior takes place in the process of communication. If we want to relate this exchange to the different functions of language, it matches to the interpersonal function of language, which refers to the use of language in communication. Thompson (2000:9) divides the interpersonal function into two aspects: personal and interactive, and clarifies the point with an example: “Might I ask you if you could recommend a couple of nice books on taboo?”

He believes that in this example the experiential meaning (the content) can be separated from the interpersonal one (the interaction): CONTENT

(I ask you)

you

recommend

books on taboo language

INTERACTION

Might I ask you if

could

nice

?

In this example, the interpersonal meaning refers to the fact that the clause is interrogative, while it functions as a command. Thompson takes this as the writer’s assessment of probabilities and her attitude and as a signal of writer’s negotiation with the reader. Each metafunction has specific focuses; ideational metafunction analyses the clause concerning the participants, process, and circumstances. Interpersonal 73

metafunction focuses on mood, modality, and appraisal in a clause, and finally the textual metafunction deals with theme and rheme in the structure of a clause. As the focus of the present study is on the appraisal theory that is the third subcategory of interpersonal metafunction, we will not go through the other two metafunctions that are ideational and textual. Instead, the work concentrates on the third aspect of interpersonal metafunction, i.e. appraisal that is known as the language of evaluation. In describing the interpersonal metafunction, Halliday focuses on the speech act of exchanging information and services that can be realized through mood and modality. Mood can be realized through different forms of structure: declarative, interrogative, imperative and modality falls into four categories: probability, usuality, obligation, and inclination. According to Thompson, (2000:55) for analyzing mood, two subcategories should be considered: subject and Finite. A subject is an entity on which the validity of the clause rests while the function of Finite is to orient the listener towards the kind of validity being claimed for the proposition, by relating it either to the here-and-now reality of the speech event or the speaker’s attitude. This orientation is the same element that was taken for granted in the semiotic model of translation quality assessment that was mentioned in the background of the study. Halliday in Halliday and Matthiessen (2004) considers four dimensions for the mood system. They are modality type, orientation, value, and polarity, and describe modality as the language resource, which expresses the intermediate meaning lying between negative and positive polarity. By reference to the distinction between proposition and proposal, Halliday divides modality into Modalization (degrees of probability and usuality) and modulation (degrees of obligation and inclination). By orientation, he means the speaker’s judgment and evaluation and the way the speaker states their opinion, whether implicitly or explicitly. In categorizing the interpersonal function of language, Thompson (2000) adds a third subcategory to the mood and modality, i.e., evaluation. As Munday (2012:21) states, several terms have been used for the concept of evaluation by different scholars. He lists them as follows: Stance used by Biber and Finegan (1989), Conrad and Biber (2000), Biber (2006) Englebretson (2007), Jaffe (2009), evaluation used by Hunston and Thompson (2006), Bednarek (2006), appraisal used by Martin and White (2005), metadiscourse used by Crismore (1989), Hyland and Tse (2004), Hyland (2005), evidentiality used by Chafe and Nichols (1986), Aikhenvald (2006) and finally subjectivity used by Stein and Wright (2005), Finegan (1995). Among all these terms, like Munday, we also pick up the term ‘evaluation’ for our analysis. Munday states that Thompson and Hunston solve the terminological conundrum “by opting for the general term ‘evaluation’ and the subordinate

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term ‘stance’, since for them ‘evaluation’ is a broad cover term for the expression of the speaker or writer’s stance towards, viewpoints on, or feelings about the entities or propositions that he or she is talking about. For the same reasons, we shall also adopt ‘evaluation’” (Munday 2012:21).

The recognition of evaluation in a text could best be done through the system of ‘appraisal’, developed by Martin and White (2005), which is based on the Hallidayan framework of interpersonal meaning. Munday (2012) refers to the interesting link that Martin (2004a and; 2004b) establishes between his “ideological” and Halliday’s “ideational”, and on the other hand between “axiological” and “interpersonal.” He adapts Martin’s illustration of these two functions (figure 3–10): Fig. 3–10: Munday’s (2012:16) Illustration of Sense and Sensibility Adopted from (James R. Martin, 2004a and 2004b)

As shown in the illustration, ideational metafunction refers to the truth, whereas interpersonal relates to the community or solidarity and determines the text’s value orientation. Munday’s advice is that for evaluative purposes one should not rely on axiology alone, rather it is important to consider the ideological and textual metafunctions of language as well. In fact, “representation of truth and negotiation of value and solidarity are realized through texts and discourses in a social system.” What is important in the analysis of translation is the degree of the translator’s intervention and the decision-making process involved, because the translator’s cultural background and ideology may cause shifts in translation. Hatim and Mason (1996:28) suggest that the translator transfer the range of interpretations from ST to TT to avoid constraining the reader to a specific interpretation. For 75

this purpose, they use what they term ‘static-dynamic’ continuum of language, and they relate it to the reader’s expectations and norms. By static, they mean ‘norm confirming’ and ‘expectation fulfilling’, while by dynamic they refer to the texts that are ‘expectation defying’ and ‘norm flouting.’ Munday (2012:18) relates these two concepts to the ‘markedness’ and ‘unmarkedness’, by referring to the fact that a marked structure or term is more dynamic since it is far from reader’s expectation, whereas an unmarked structure is more norm based. Regardless, “it is the responsibility of a translator to pay attention to these features to provide a better translation. Any shift of markedness in translation can be considered an intentional or unintentional intervention of the translator.” Regarding this fact House (2008:16) directly advocates those translators who do not intervene in the translation: “… as a translator (and a translation critic) one must be aware of one’s responsibility to the original author and his or her text, and one must use the power one has been given to re-textualise and re-contextualise a given text with discretion. In many – if not most – cases it might be wiser to not intervene at all.”

In response to House’s orientation towards translator intervention, Munday (2012:20) prefers not to argue with the argument; rather he stresses that all these interventions are evaluative and one should take account of “conscious and unconscious choices made by the translator” (2012:20). Until now, different theories from various fields have been applied to the field of translation to develop the insights of the field. One of the theories that has recently been applied to translation studies is appraisal theory. The initial purpose of developing appraisal theory was to support literacy programs in Australia and according to Munday (2012:324) it was later used for specific genres in English. To get a better understanding of the insights and elements of appraisal theory it is a good idea to refer to “The Language of Evaluation” by Martin and White (2005). Appraisal is a coverall term proposed by Martin and encompasses all evaluative uses of language. According to Martin and Rose (2003:25), the special concern of appraisal theory is evaluation of the types of attitudes that are expressed and negotiated in a text, the strength of the feelings and how values are sourced and readers aligned. As a brief definition, appraisal theory is a systemic framework based on systemic functional linguistics provided by Halliday (1994). As was mentioned before, Halliday provided the concept of metafunctions as a detailed framework for interpreting language in use and divided it into three subcategories: ideational, interpersonal and textual. Appraisal is a subcategory of interpersonal 76

metafunction, completed by two other elements, which are Mood and modality. In a more technical definition by Martin and Rose (2003), appraisal is one of the three major discourse semantic resources construing interpersonal meaning the other resources being involvement and negotiation. Martin and White take ‘negotiation’ as a factor that complements appraisal by focusing on the interactive aspects of discourse, speech function, and exchange structure, and on the other hand, they believe that ‘involvement’ “complements appraisal by focusing on non-gradable resources for negotiating tenor relations, especially solidarity.” Appraisal, which is the focus of this Ph.D. thesis, is itself categorized into three interacting domains, which are attitude, engagement, and graduation. In a general view, our feelings, emotional reactions, judgements of behavior and evaluation of things are all categorized under the attitude label. Engagement is concerned with sourcing attitude and play of voices around opinions in discourse, and finally, graduation refers to grading phenomena where amplification of feelings is involved, and categories are blurred. The system of appraisal can be summarized in figure 3–11: Fig. 3–11: Summary of the Appraisal System

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3.7.3.1 Attitude Attitude, which in Munday’s (2012) terms is the central plank of the appraisal system, is itself divided into three subcategories of feelings, which are affect, judgment and appreciation. These feelings can be positive or negative. Affect Affect is the expression of our emotional responses and according to Thompson (2014:81); it is the most ‘natural’ way to talk about our feelings. Examples of these feelings include: “angry”, “happy”, “sad”, “fast”, “slow”, etc. – I am really happy to hear that you have been successful. Judgment refers to the evaluation of the behavior, ethics, capacity, and tenacity. Examples: “brave”, “honest”, “polite”, “stingy”, etc. – She is honest. Appreciation is the evaluation of the phenomena and processes, according to Munday it also refers to aesthetics, the taste worth, etc. Examples: “lovely”, “pleasant”, “beautiful”, “authentic”, etc. – The picture is beautiful. The examples show that in these three subcategories, affect relates to personal matters and its response is mental and emotional. In other words, its focus is on the feeling of the appraiser. On the other hand, judgment and appreciation vary according to the individuals but presuppose a basis of shared community values, which may be institutionalized. Here the focus is on the quality of the appraised entity. If we appraise a person, we are using judgment and, if we are dealing with things, actions or events, appreciation is used. The following examples of judgment and appreciation are taken from ‘introducing functional grammar’ by Thompson (2014) Judgment: “My mother was always precise and authoritarian in shops” (2014:81). “He was dead bourgeois” (2014:81). “Should I quit my job because I’m not very reliable or punctual?” (2014:81).

Appreciation: “This is a warming, fragrant and very inviting supper dish” (2014:81). “Winter has every bit as much charm as the other seasons” (2014:81). “The mountains look stunning from the air” (2014:81).

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There might be overlaps between some expressions of appraisal that can be used either for people or things. But from the context we can understand that the quality that the appraisal involves will be different; a nice person is different from a nice book. Direct vs. Indirect Attitude In addition to the above categorization, attitude can be divided into ‘direct’ (inscribed) vs. ‘indirect’ (invoked) attitude. In fact, this categorization relates to the way in which attitude is expressed. When the attitude is expressed explicitly through using evaluative epithets, it is called ‘direct inscription.’ In contrast, when writers or speakers use indirect language to invoke an attitude, like in advertisements, tourist brochures, etc., it is called indirect (invoked) attitude. According to Munday (2012:25), it is not a difficult task to distinguish the direct inscription in a text, unless there is a clash between the values of the source culture and target culture. In other cases where it might be difficult to distinguish this type of attitude, we may refer to the collocations of a word in the text. As an example, he refers to the example of “vast park”, in an extract from a tourist text: “…, and what is more, it’s surrounded by vast parks, where you can forget all about the city and stroll for hours listening to the birds.”

Not only the word ‘park’ gives a positive value to the word ‘vast’, but also the second sentence, which brings about a pleasant atmosphere, confirms the positivity of the value of ‘vast.’ This example shows the effect of collocation in distinguishing the type of attitude. The other factor, which might be problematic in distinguishing the type of attitude, is cultural differences. What is pleasant in one culture might be disgusting in another, and it is the responsibility of the translator to handle the problem. The second type of attitude is indirect or invoked attitude. Evaluation is not always expressed directly. According to Thomson and White, in most of the cases, it is expressed indirectly and implicitly, using attitudinal tokens (2008). White and Thomson define two subcategories for this type of attitude: ‘evoked’ and ‘provoked.’ Evoked Attitude Jim R. Martin (2004) as is cited in Munday (2012) refers to the foregrounded ideational information and uses that to describe the reason why evoked attitude causes a positive or negative reaction. Therefore, when there is a positive or negative reaction caused by evoked attitude, the reason might be the foregrounded material. Evokedness according to Macken-Horarik (2003:299) is considered 79

to be a potent element of evaluation because it insinuates itself into the text. It “masquerades” itself as a fact or “commonsense” representation of the world, and therefore, can be more useful in manipulating the mind of the reader, while according to White (2003:10) it seems to be unique and incontestable. According to Munday (2012:28), this is why in many English speaking communities, newspaper editorials provide the writer’s opinion through the categorical statement of fact. The translator’s role becomes evident when we encounter such evokedness in the texts. Evokedness is subjective and does not reveal itself in the text; therefore, it is the art and responsibility of the translator to distinguish such evaluation in the ST and transfer it appropriately to the TT. As an example, we may refer to the translation of compliments from Persian into English. Like any other theories, the importing of such a model to the translation studies is not possible without modifications and adjustments. Munday (2012:324) points to the cultural differences that “may underpin differences of evaluation.” He refers to the conclusion of a study conducted by Kaltenbacher (2006). The study was the analysis of a small corpus of tourist websites in different locales that suggested appraisal might be realized differently according to culture. He concluded that “Scottish websites promote national identity (Scottish, Lothian, etc.), Austrian websites highlight affect and US websites investigated employ intense examples of appreciation.” What is more interesting for a translation theorist in this study would be the process under which such texts are translated. In recent research conducted by Munday on President Barack Obama’s inaugural speech, it is concluded that there is little variation in the type of attitude in the translation and it is graduation that shifts through translation. This conclusion means that shifts in attitude are strong signs of “translator intervention” or of “cross-cultural value difference.” In almost all the examples that have been analyzed, there has been a reduction of graduation in translation. As a step towards standardization, this hypothesis would be tested on Persian subtitles too, to check the status of graduation in Persian translations of the texts. Provoked Attitude The focus in this type of attitude is on the reader’s response to a text. Munday (2012) considers a continuum for attitude that can be visualized in figure 3–12: Fig. 3–12: Continuum of Attitude by Munday (2012)

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As is shown in the diagram, the position of the provoked attitude is between inscribed and evoked attitude. Martin and White (2005:223) use the term ‘invite’ for the evoked attitude and subdivide it into ‘flag’ and ‘afford.’ The illustration of strategies of inscribing attitude by Munday (adapted from Martin and White (2005) and Thomson and White (2008)) can be seen in figure 3–13. Fig. 3–13: The Illustration of Strategies of Inscribing Attitude by Munday (adapted from Martin & White 2005)

To describe and define provoked attitude, Martin and White (2005:65) focus mainly on lexical metaphor giving the example of “we fenced them in like sheep”, believing that metaphor can “provoke an attitudinal response in readers.” In Munday’s modification of the diagram, we can see that the category of evaluation is extended to counter-expectancy indicators and non-core lexis. Martin and White (2005:67) introduce counter-expectancy indicators as the indicators that alert the reader to the fact that “attitudinal values (positive/negative) are at stake.” “However”, “actually”, and “only two or three weeks” are examples of such indicators. Therefore, in the sentence: “I will stay only two days” shows that the speaker is breaking the expectations by staying for a short time. The other element that is related to provoked attitude, with less intensity, is non-core lexis. In Martin and White’s (2005:65) definition, it is described as “somewhat less provocative, but still indicating that an evaluation is being invoked…[it] has in

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some sense lexicalized a circumstance of manner by infusing it into the core meaning of a word.” Munday (2012) presents the example of “break”, which is core lexis, compared with “crack”, “smash”, and “demolish” which are non-core lexis and are more provocative than break.

3.7.3.2 Graduation As was mentioned before, the discourse semantic system of appraisal is composed of attitude, graduation, and engagement. In the previous section, attitude was introduced in detail to gain insight into it and its usage in translation studies. This section deals with graduation in more detail and in the next section, the third element of appraisal system engagement will be introduced and explained. Graduation functions through force and focus of the message. The elements that adjust the intensity of the text fall into the category of force and the words or expressions that control the ‘prototypicality’ or makes the message ‘sharp’ or ‘blare’ fall into the category of focus. The force or intensity of a word or expression changes by the following groups of words or expressions categorized by Leong Ping Alvin (retrieved in 2013) 1. 2.

Words with positive/negative meaning, including metaphors. • That angel/rascal is my tutor. • This is a heavenly/rotten day. • The prices shot through the roof / plunged. Repetition and synonymy that may increase the intensity. He tried and tried. The durians were terrible, just awful. 3. Intensifiers including subjuncts, that may increase or decrease the intensity. Alvin was a little/very disoriented. They are sometimes/always late. 4. Disjuncts (modal adjuncts) that may increase or decrease the intensity. He probably / clearly went home. Alvin refers to the point that force can cause a change of meaning or intensity; a positive statement may change into negative or a possible statement may change into definite by using force elements. On the other hand, the intensity of the word or statement is subject to change. To distinguish the force elements, Alvin (n.d.) proposes a rule of thumb:

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“Force carries the idea of more-or-less (more positive, less intense, more definite, more emphatic, etc.). It is usually, though not always, associated with gradable words (words that can be intensified) and words with positive or negative alternatives.”

The following examples are related to negative and positive force from SFG (systemic Functional Grammar) page: “Negative force

Positive force

He is a brat.

He is a highly-active child.

The team was thrashed.

The team put up a good fight but were no match for the highly-trained professionals.

He drove like a lunatic.

He drove in a curious way.” (SFG 2013)

As was mentioned before, the second component of engagement is “focus” which refers to the sharpening or blaring element. Alvin clarifies the point by considering “class membership” for words or expressions, and states that through focus we specify strength or weakness of that membership and in this way, we give a more precise meaning to the word. The following example makes the point clearer: “James is a true friend.

[sharp focus]

Gladys is a friend, kind’v.

[soft focus (or blurring)]” (SFG 2013)

In these examples true and kind’v, are focusing functions. The speaker shows that there are specific characteristics of a friend in his/her mind. The rule of thumb for distinguishing focus in a sentence is introduced by Alvin: “Focus carries the idea of (im)precision and deals with class membership -- how strongly or weakly an idea fits into its assigned class (“pure evil”, “about the same as a diploma”, etc.). It is usually, though not always, associated with non-gradable words.” (Leong Ping Alvin, n.d.)

3.7.3.3 Engagement Before elaborating on the concept of engagement, it is necessary to have a definition of dialogue and verbal communication. For this aim we refer to Volosinov et al. (1973:94):

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“The actual reality of language-speech is not the abstract system of linguistic forms, not the isolated monologic utterance, and not the psychological act of its implementation, but the social event of verbal interaction implemented in an utterance or utterances. Thus, verbal interaction is the basic reality of language. Dialogue … can also be understood in a broader sense, meaning not only direct, face-to-face, vocalized verbal communication between persons, but also verbal communication of any type whatsoever. A book, i.e. a verbal performance in print, is also an element of verbal communication. … [it] inevitably orients itself with respect to previous performances in the same sphere … Thus the printed verbal performance engages, as it were, in ideological colloquy of a large scale: it responds to something, affirms something, anticipates possible responses and objections, seeks support, and so on.”

Therefore, the connection between the speaker/writer to those who have declared their stance and position about a specific utterance or belief before falls into the category of dialogue or verbal communication. Martin and White (2005:93) clarify the concept of engagement in the following lines: “… We are interested in the degree to which speakers/writers acknowledge the prior speaker and in the ways in which they engage with them.”

The interesting points of reference according to Martin and White would be the areas in which the speakers or writers show that they are “standing with” or “standing against”, “undecided”, or “neutral with respect to these other speakers and their value positions.” As far as the dialogic nature is concerned, the reaction of the receiver of the message would be anticipated by the sender, and our concern would be the areas of the clash between the reaction of the receiver of the message to that message. Considering this fact, Martin and White present a framework with the purpose of showing the linguistic positioning of such elements in a systematic way. The focus of such outline is not on grammatical forms, rather on “meanings in context” and “rhetorical effects.” “As a consequence, it brings together a lexically and grammatically diverse selection of locutions on the basis that they all operate to locate the writer/speaker regarding the value positions being referenced in the text and regarding, in Bakhtin’s terms the backdrop of alternative opinions, points of view and value judgments against which all texts operate.”

Martin and White (2005:94) claim that their framework can take all the headings of modality, polarity, evidentiality, intensification, attribution, concession, and consequentiality under one heading which is called “engagement.” They further explain that:

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“The framework groups together under the heading of ‘engagement’ all those locutions which provide the means for the authorial voice to position itself with respect to, and hence to ‘engage’ with the other voices and alternative positions construes as being in play in the current communicative context.”

In a nutshell, engagement is one of the resources of intersubjective positioning and refers to the position that the text producer adopts for a phenomenon or object and the relative position of the text receiver allowed by the text producer. Another point that is worth mentioning here is that dialogism does not only refer to the face-to-face communication between the sender and receiver of the text, rather as Munday (2012:33) explains “any verbal text, spoken or written, is a communicative performance that can expand or constrict.” Following this definition Martin and White (2005:38) as is cited in White (2003:260), introduce two other elements of engagement that are ‘monogloss’ and ‘heterogloss.’ Monogloss closes the way for disagreement since it is related to the shared values. Categorical assertions (which assume shared values) and reporting verbs (like demonstrate, show, etc.) are categorized as monogloss. On the other hand, heterogloss acknowledges different viewpoints, oppositions, and alternative truth values (like reporting verb “claim”, modal particles such as “almost”, “nearly”, and modal adjuncts and auxiliaries like “possibly”, “should”), and in other words, opens the way for disagreement and other interferences. These resources make a connection between the speaker and the reader and the new concern that has been put forward in translation studies by Munday (2012:34) is first the point that the reader’s response to a text may sometimes be uncontrollable, and second, the question of the role of translator as an “additional agent” in the process; what happens in the communication? As was mentioned before, engagement deals with a systematic account of values and positions in linguistic terms and its focus is on the meaning in context and rhetorical effects rather than grammatical forms. In this section, the language resources within engagement, which are divided into four groups, will be introduced. These four groups are disclaim, proclaim, entertain and attribute. (The descriptions have been taken from Martin and White (2005) with modifications according to the requirements of the present study. Disclaim Disclaim refers to the language resources by the help of which the prior utterance or some alternative positions can be rejected entirely, replaced by other elements 85

or dismissed. Disclaim is subdivided into denial and counter-expectation. These two elements are explained with examples in the following lines: Denial: This element defines a position for the reader against what is present in the text. Sometimes the writer indicates a kind of disalignment with some third party. Example: In contrary to the teacher’s idea, the text is not a literary one.

The author of this sentence tries to indicate a disalignment with the teacher’s opinion. The denial can be completed by extra information and some following sentences which are support for the disagreement. Denial can also occur in the case of disagreement with the putative addressee especially against the beliefs of “mass audience” (2005:132) In this case, the writer gives some information that others may not know or about which they may have the opposite idea or expectation about that. Example: “Working beyond retirement age does not affect the chances of a long and healthy old age, according to a study, which said that the manner of leaving work has more impact on wellbeing” (Taken from the Times, Health news, Bennett 2013).

Some countering conjunctions are as follow: “although”, “however”, “yet” and “but”, and some adjuncts: “even”, “only”, “just”, and “still.” Proclaim Proclaim refers to the language resources that do not reject or suppress a contrary position or idea directly, rather, they restrict the scope of alternative positions in a discussion. Proclaim is divided into three subtypes: concur, pronounce, and endorse. When the “addresser” agrees with their partner in a dialogic utterance (with the addressee), we are involved with the category of concur. Some of the locutions that show the concurrence between the addresser and the addressee are as follows: of course, naturally, not surprisingly, admittedly and certainly. Example: If you study hard, certainly you will get a better result. Concurrence can also be realized by the rhetorical or leading question. The answers to these questions are so obvious to the writer that it is not necessary to be uttered. Example: Is it all right to tease a person just for having fun?

The reader has an “unavoidable” answer to this question i.e., no, of course, it is not all right!

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Pronounce Pronounce refers to the language resources which involve authorial emphases or intervention. The following expressions are introduced as pronounce elements: “I contend that…”, “you must agree that…”, “the fact is that…”, “we can conclude that….” Here, it is the author who is visible in the text and therefore, his/her footprint must also be visible in the translation. As an example of pronounce let’s refer to a part of dialogue from The Great Gatsby written by Fitzgerald (2002:136). “Well, the fact is--the truth of the matter is that I’m staying with some people up here in Greenwich, and they rather expect me to be with them tomorrow. In fact, there’s a sort of picnic or something. Of course I’ll do my very best to get away”(2002:136). In this example, “the fact is that”, “the truth of the matter is that”, are overt signs of authorial intervention. Most of the times pronounce is used as a counter view of the current situation. Therefore it is close to the subsystems of disclaim, deny and counter. Endorsement Endorsement is the third formulation within proclaim which refers to the formulations by which the authorial voice shows a sort of certainty in the text or utterance. The authorial voice in this formulation is correct, undeniable and is valid and warrantable. Entertain Entertain refers to the language resources in which the author considers a range of possible options for a proposition and takes the current proposition as one of these options. The introducing elements of entertain include: “it seems that”, “I believe that”, “in my opinion”, “probably”, etc. Attribute Attribute covers the language resources that refer the proposition to the external voices rather than the authorial voice. Attribute is divided into two subcategories: Acknowledge and Distance. When the authorial voice is not easy to distinguish in the proposition, it falls under the category of acknowledge: “X says”, “X believes”, etc. and when there is a clear distance between the authorial voice and the proposition the category of distance is at stake: “X claims that…”, “it is rumoured that…”, etc.

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The system of engagement can be summarized in figure 3–14: Fig. 3–14: The Engagement System (Martin and White 2005:122)

3.8 Appraisal and Translation Studies Any type of text needs to be evaluated to be valid and trustworthy. In fact, evaluation, which is the main subcategory of interpersonal meaning, is the core of meaning in different texts. Appraisal theory was first introduced as a criterion for the evaluation of our reactions in the different emotional situation (Scherer, Schorr, & Johnstone, 2001). It emerged in the field of psychology, and later it had several applications in different areas of knowledge. The application of the theory to the language studies was first developed in Australia to support literacy programs, and later it was used in English language researches. By referring to the studies of appraisal in English language, Munday 88

(2012:324) believes that it is possible that this theory cannot be imported wholesale to the translation analysis because it has been produced for other purposes. He refers to the variations that might occur in various genres because of different cultures. As an example he refers to Kaltenbacher’s (2006) analysis of a small corpus of tourist websites in different locations, and suggests that the realization of appraisal is different according to the cultural studies of appraisal in English language, including works by Coffin (2006) in analyzing history books and the language of newspapers (Bednarek 2006). As far as the interpersonal function of language deals with the communicative aspect of language, the communication may occur between different participants in a text. It might be between the author and the reader in the process of encoding and decoding of the text, and in case of translation it might occur between the author and translator, the translator, and the reader, and finally the TT reader. The process can be shown in the figure 3–15: Fig. 3–15: The Process of Interpersonal Communication in Translation

This model is very similar to the model of interpersonal verbal communication by Jakobson (1960), which takes communication as a process of sending a message from addressee to the addresser. Using Saussure’s concept of signifier and signified (see section 4–2), this communication can take place between the author, speaker or sender of the message in one side and the receiver can be the translator who is him/herself the sender of the message. The available codes for the sender of the message (that can be the translator as well) are unique to the person or group of people with shared beliefs and values. Therefore, the writer may have something in mind that is different from what the translator or the receiver of the message may have in mind. The important point for evaluation is considering this difference of the available codes and taking one fixed criterion as a standard of evaluation. In the case of appraisal as a subcategory of interpersonal metafunction, it should be noted that there are differences of cultures and differences of beliefs; 89

but the question is how we can come up with a model of evaluation that considers this differences and at the same time introduce the translator as a helper and connector of two cultures and languages rather than an intruder. In the appraisal analysis in translation studies, Munday (2012) suggests that there might be only little variation in the type of attitude in translation, and what changes in the process of translation is the intensity of evaluation, i.e., graduation. This is the result of Munday’s researches on different languages such as English, Albanian, Arabic, Bulgarian, Russian, Spanish, etc. One of the aims of the present thesis is to investigate the results in the Persian language too. Besides Mundays’ attempts to fix and modify the appraisal theory in translation studies there are many attempts by researchers to take advantage of this theory in different languages. The theory has also been applied to the Chinese language by some researchers. As an example, we may refer to the thesis by Hu Wenyuan (2011) that aims at providing a guideline for the analysis of evaluative resources in Chinese. From the analysis of two different translations of a text, he concludes that although English and Chinese vary in the linguistic realization of appraisal, they express similar evaluative meanings and concerning communicative function, they act in the same way.

3.9 The Focus of the Present Work According to the points and theories that were introduced in this chapter, the semiotic model of TQA for poetry (see 3.6.2) has been selected as a base to introduce a model of TQA for the Persian translation of English musical subtitles; chapter 4 deals with this model in more detail. Finally, a tentative model has been introduced in this respect. Appraisal theory (see 3.7.3) on the other hand has been considered to be the base of analysis for the TQA of English movie subtitles and their Persian translations which has led to the development of some criteria for the TQA of these subtitles. The details of the process will be discussed in chapter 5.

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4 Subtitles and TQA: A Model for the Evaluation of Musical Parts of the Persian Subtitles of English Movies 4.1 Overview In this chapter, a summary of the “Semiotic Model of TQA for Poetry” will be presented and attempts will be made to apply this model to the Persian subtitles of English musical movies. For this purpose, first musical movies and their translations will be discussed. Afterwards, the applicability of the model to the subtitles will be proved, and a tentative model, which is a modification of the Semiotic Model of TQA, will be introduced for the evaluation of Persian subtitles of musical movies.

4.2 Semiotics and TQA As was mentioned earlier, there are many TQA models for subtitles with their advantages and disadvantages. One of the branches that might be helpful in the analysis of subtitles is semiotics. Saussure (1959) proposes the concepts of signifier and signified that are connected by the interpreter. In fact, a signifier is what other signifiers are not and at the same time has some connections with other signifiers composing a code for interpreting the signifier. At a specific setting and for a specific interpreter, a signifier refers to a range of signifieds that are related to but different from other signifieds. Regarding this definition, the concept of semiotic codes has been used in the model of TQA for the musical subtitles. According to Daniel Chandler (2007), semiotic codes can be divided into three different codes: Social codes, textual codes, and interpretive codes, which will be briefly discussed here: 1. Social codes refer to the verbal language, bodily codes, commodity and behavioral codes. 2. Textual codes on the other hand deal with scientific codes, aesthetic codes, genre, rhetorical and stylistic codes and finally mass media codes “including photographic, televisual, filmic, radio, newspaper and magazine codes, both technical and conventional”(149). 3. Interpretive codes are divided into perceptual and ideological codes. The concept of codes is used in this study for the evaluation of musical subtitles. 91

4.3 Summary of the Semiotic Model of TQA for Poetry As was explained in chapter 3, “Semiotic Model of TQA” was developed by Vahid et al. (2011) as an update for a previous model by Vahid, Hakimshafaaii, and Jannesaari (2008) for the evaluation of poetry translation. The model considers two levels for a poem in subtitles to assess the quality of its translation. In Semiotic Model, different minds are considered to be involved as the interpreters of a translated poem at extratextual level: poet, readers of ST, translator, readers of TT, the critic and their readers. They are distinguished as different codes in the semiotic model. Textual level, on the other hand, focuses on different aspects of a text, which consist of the form, sound, words, images, tone, and finally the content of a text. The following categorization shows the aspects to be considered in the textual analysis (see chapter 3): Tab. 4–1: Elements for Textual Analysis of Poems according to Vahid et al’s (2011) Model FORM (The look of the text) 1. Rhythm & rhyme 2. Stanzas 3. Structural patterns 4. Punctuations 5. Kind: sonnet, song, etc

SOUND (The music of the text) 1. Alliteration (asonance, consonance) 2. Stress patterns 3. Rhythm & rhyme 4. Fast or slow

WORDS (The lexis of the text) 1. Simple or complex 2. Given or new (familiar, unfamiliar) 3. Concrete or abstract 4. Meaning suggestions

IMAGES (The figure of the text) 1. Connotations (implicature) 2. Similes, metaphors 3. Other tropes 4. etc.

TONE (The aura of the text) 1. Light or serious 2. Elegiac or panegyric 3. Lyrical or admonitory 4. Ironic, straightforward 5. etc.

CONTENT (The message of the text) 1. Realistic 2. Mythical 3. Time/ place 4. Descriptive 5. etc.

The criteria for translation of a poem according to the semiotic model of TQA can be summarized in the following table:

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Tab. 4–2: Criteria for the Evaluation of Translated Poem Conceptual Area Semantic translation

Criteria How successful is a translator in approaching the poet’s linguistic level? How closely has a translator rendered “expressive components” (Newmark 1988) such as neologisms, lexicon, syntactic structures, collocations, and metaphors in the translation? How intact are cultural terms transferred and footnoted in the translation? How closely are the semantic nuances preserved? Biography of the author, To account for the codes available to the author, translator, translator, and critic and critic, their biographies should be analyzed to determine the biographical factors shaping meanings, forms, and interpretations. Linguistic and extraForm, lexicon, syntax, semantics, message, images, tone, linguistic elements pragmatics, etc.

4.4 Musical Movies Films are divided into different genres, one of which is the musical genre. In these types of films, some parts are followed by music, and characters start singing a song that is interwoven with the narrative of the movie. This type of movie is interesting for the audiences; therefore, it should be cleverly subtitled to save the interest. One of the differences that may exist between the poems in musical movies and the ones in literary works is that in musical movies the poem is followed by image and voice which would be much easier for the receiver of the movie (i.e., the viewer), to understand the meaning and concept behind the poem.

4.4.1 Musical Films: History The Encyclopedia Britannica (2016) defines musical film as “motion picture consisting of a plot integrating musical numbers.” It is usually considered an American genre, but other countries such as Japan, Italy, France, Great Britain, and Germany have played a role in its development. The pioneer of musical films as they are presented today was Warner Bros., who released The Jazz Singer with words and music by Crosland, Taylor, and Newsom (1927) with seven songs and a few lines of screen dialogue. Many other companies tried to imitate it, but they encountered limitations that discouraged them from continuing the process. However, after the release of MGM’s first full-length musical, The Broadway Melody, by Farnsworth and Beaumont (1929) and the winner of an Academy Award for the best picture, the musical film could prove its worth to the history of cinema. 93

The 1930’s can be introduced as “the golden age of the musicals” (Dirks 2014). Hollywood alone released over one hundred musical films including The Vagabound King, The Rogue Song, Whoopee, King of Jazz, etc. As this period coincided with the height of Great Depression, this genre of the movie lost its popularity among people according to Hoffman (2014). After Warner Bros. acquired Busby Berkely, the dance director, musical genre was revived again (Dirks 2014). Berkely presented an interweaving of well-worn stories with dance sequences (Britannica.com 2016). As an obvious example, we may refer to his work with 42nd Street (Bacon 1933), which enjoyed critical success. The popularity of musicals continued until the late 1940s and 1950s. At this time a production unit of such a genre headed by Artur Freed was established (Hoffman 2014). This unit gave much more freedom from boundaries to the directors. After the establishment of the Freed unit, the most popular musical films were produced: Meet Me in St. Louis (Minelli, 1944), Easter Parade (Walters, 1948), An American in Paris (Minelli, 1951), Singin’ in the Rain (Kelly and Donen, 1952). The popularity and artistry of the musical movies suffered a decline in the late 1960s and early 70s, instead, according to Hoffman (2014), music itself (rock, disco or classical) as an inspiration of the movies such as Saturday Night Fever (1978), Grease (1978), Flashdance (1983), and Amadeus (1984) was the center of attention according to (Hoffman 2014). One of the strong turning points of modern musicals happened after “Disney’s animated blockbusters” in the early 1990s. According to Hoffman (2014) “Films such as The Little Mermaid (Clements and Musker, 1989), Beauty and the Beast (Trousdale and Wise, 1991), Aladdin (Clement and Musker, 1992) and The Lion King (Allers and Minkoft, 1994)” found great popularity among film fans. The most recent musicals that indicate the popularity of the genre in the 21st century are Chicago (Marsall, 2002) Rent (Columbus, 2005), Sweeney Todd (Burlon, 2007) and Les Misérables (Hooper, 2012) (The last two musicals are used as the data of the present work). Finally, as a closing point to this section, we may refer to the quotation by Hoffman (2014): “although musical films can teeter on the verge of being too camp at times, if properly executed, such films can be extraordinarily well done and quite deserving of critical acclamation” (Hoffman 2014).

4.4.2 Translation of Musical Movies: Problems Music accompanied with text usually involves the cooperation of a composer and a lyricist. In the case of translating such texts, the translator usually has a dilemma; whether to be faithful to the lyrics or music. The decision depends upon 94

the music and the purpose of the translation (Mekinová 2012:22). Translation of music has hardly been considered a branch of translation studies: “Musical material has mostly been considered somewhat outside the borders of translation studies, as traditionally conceived” (Susam-Sarajeva 2008:189). However, recently this type of translation has begun to attract the attention of some translation scholars (Jiménez 2010). The translation of musicals was considered a kind of subordinate translation and a type of AVT, since the products using the additives and visual code are known as AVT. According to Jiménez (2010), song translation possesses some main characteristics; first of all, it is a very creative task whose main aim is a symbiosis of poetic text and musical text. It is logocentric and at the same time music-centric. The translator, who deals with such a text, should have the following parameters in mind: music and its related characteristics such as melody, choirs, instrumentation, etc. Music can be modified and domesticated during translation by local artists or bands. The other point to be considered during translation of musicals is lyric. It consists of rhyme, rhythm, and semantic content that should be considered in the translation. According to Jiménez (2010), the last parameter to take into account during this type of translation is interpretation; singers and performers also play an important role. After comparing different translations, Jiménez has concluded that translators choose from the following choices: dubbing, subtitling or leaving it in its original version. In the first case, the translation is logocentric, and in the last, it is music-centric and more attention has been paid to the music. Before considering the translation of subtitles, first, it is necessary to know to which category does this type of translation belongs. Regarding the categorization of translation by Jakobson (1959:233), translation is of three types: 1. Intralingual translation or rewording is an interpretation of verbal signs by means of other signs of the same language. 2. Interlingual translation or translation proper is an interpretation of verbal signs by means of some other language. 3. Intersemiotic translation or transmutation is an interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of nonverbal sign systems. According to Tomaszkiewicz (2006), audiovisual translation is considered intersemiotic translation because this kind of translation consists of “out of language elements” such as picture, sound, and music, which mix and create a special translation. The problem in translating the musicals is the fact that the music is usually made before the lyrics; the music cannot be changed, and therefore the translator 95

has the constraint of translating the words in the frame of the music. “The translation of song has one of the highest degrees of constraint among the different types of communication acts. What is more, in a musical, songs are dramatized. This adds a further compilation to the translation process” (Mayoral, Kelly, and Gallardo 1988:357). After making a comparison between poetry translation and musical translation, Nida (1964:133) proposes that the translation of poetry is much easier than song-poetry because the translator has more freedom of action and is not constrained to the music. He lists the following restrictions for a song-poetry translation: 1. A fixed length for each phrase, with precisely the right number of syllables, 2. The observance of syllabic prominence (the accented vowels or long syllables must much correspondingly emphasize notes in the music), 3. Rhyme where required, and 4. Vowels with appropriate quality for certain emphatic or greatly lengthened notes. The constraints of such translation are the same as the existing constraints of opera translation as mentioned by Apter (1989:27). She believes that apart from “overall style”, “dramatic pacing”, and “characterization through diction”, there is another set of constraints for the opera translator, i.e. “the physical limitations of the vocal apparatus, the metrical patterns of a pre-set prosody, and the need to much verbal sense to musical color.” It is worth mentioning here that in translation of musicals, in spoken and singing expressions the word is not the most important part of the translation; rather, the whole phrase, uttered by reduction, pitch, sound, tone, stress, and intonation is the means by which the emotional and implicit message is conveyed (Sierosławska 2008). As the field of translation of musicals is a new field, and there has been no recent attempt in working on Persian musicals of English movies, this chapter is devoted to providing a model of TQA that applies to the Persian subtitles of English movies.

4.5 Summary of the Chapter As was mentioned in the first chapter, this dissertation consists of two main parts regarding the translation of movie subtitles: the first part, which will be dealt with in this chapter, focuses on the TQA of musical movie subtitles, and the second part, which is the main topic of the next chapter, tries to propose some criteria of evaluation to the translators, focusing on the omission of the interpersonal 96

elements in the Persian translation of English movies in general (not only musical movies). It should be noted here that the first part of this dissertation is a pilot study that has led to a tentative model of TQA for musical subtitles. A more precise and close look at translation of musical movies with a large amount of data is not the focus of the present work, as long as the main part of film production belongs to non-musical movies. TQA of musical movie subtitles is a new subfield of translation studies. As an attempt to improve this branch of translation studies, the present chapter deals mainly with the application of Semiotic Model of TQA provided by Vahid et al. (2011) to the Persian translations of English subtitles of musical movies. Afterward, a tentative model of TQA for Persian subtitles of English subtitles of musical movies will be introduced which is based on the analysis of the Persian translations of musical movies. Although there are a lot of TQA models that are all useful in a sense, attempts should be made to provide a more practical analysis, which can be categorized under descriptive translation studies. The data has been collected from three English musical movies that are subtitled and translated into Persian. This study aims at focusing on the translation of musical parts of the movies in Persian to focus on the existing problems. The results will show that the translation of many parts is ignored or changed in these movies. Finally, some strategies will be provided as criteria for the translation of musical parts of movies and a tentative semiotic quality assessment model will be suggested for them.

4.6 Methodology To investigate the translation of subtitles in musical movies, the Semiotic Model of TQA has been used as the theoretical framework. The model is relevant because it both concentrates on poems and, on semiotic aspects of language that are salient in the movies. The methodology of the present work consists of data collection and data procedures, which will be explained in more detail in the next sections. The selected data will be compared and analyzed using the Semiotic Model of TQA for Poetry (Vahid et al. 2011); points of mismatches will be analyzed, and further guidelines will be provided respectively. The semiotic model is divided into two levels: the textual level and the extratextual level. As the textual level has been tested in the previous works by Dastjerdi, Hakimshafaaii, and Jannesaari (2008) and Vahid et al. (2011), and it has been proved as useful for the translation of poems, here it will be analyzed only in one of the movies selected as the data to show how it works in subtitling context. Extratextual level, however, seems to need more attention because of its novelty in the field. The model that would be proposed in this chapter uses a 97

combination of textual level analysis and semiotic analysis concerning the extratextual elements of the text. The extratextual level would be applied to all the data to be modified and analyzed in more detail.

4.7 Data Collection The data has been selected from the melodic parts of three musical movies: Anastasia (cartoon), Les Misérables and Sweeney Todd with their Persian translations. To achieve a more authentic result, the analysis would be done on the longer melodic parts of these musical movies because a more consistent result can be achieved in this set of data; 25 subtitles of Anastasia, 18 subtitles of Les Misérables and 35 subtitles of Sweeney Todd have been selected as the data of the present work. The Persian subtitles are taken from the most available ones and not from very famous ones because the focus of the present work is on the problematic parts of subtitles that are available for the watchers to provide a model for their analyses.

4.7.1 Selection of the Movies As was mentioned in the previous section, three musical movies have been selected for the analysis section of the present dissertation. The rationale behind selecting these movies was to cover three popular genres in the analysis. All three are well-known movies; Anastasia among teenagers and fans of the cartoon, Les Misérables among both teenagers and adults, Sweeney Todd among fans of horror films. Anastasia, one of the most successful musicals adapted for teenagers, and the other two movies, recently released, have been consequently subtitled for Persian watchers. The following lines explain more about the movies and their background: 1. Anastasia is an animated musical released in 1997, directed by Don Bluth and Gary Goldman. The plot of the movie, which is written by Susan Gauthier, Bruce Graham, Bob Tzudiker, and Noni White, is based on a historical legend claiming that the youngest daughter of Nicholas II (the last emperor of Russia) who was named the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia, in fact survived the execution of her family (Goldberg 1997). Dimitri and Vladimir, two Russian con men, find her and seek the reward that her grandmother has offered for this purpose. But Rasputin, the evil mystic of the Tsar family has planned to kill the last member of this family and get rid of them forever. Roger Ebert (1997) explains how this animation interweaves the Russian revolution with natural elements to best present it best to the people:

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“The legend of Anastasia would seem like unlikely inspiration for an animated musical, but “Anastasia” picks and chooses cleverly, skipping blithely past the entire Russian Revolution but lingering on mad monks, green goblins, storms at sea, train wrecks and youthful romance. The result is entertaining and sometimes exciting--a promising launch for Fox’s new animation studio, which has declared war on Disney.”

Ebert (1997) believes that action, romance, and music go hand in hand in the film to make the best of the story into the form of a movie. Anastasia was the winner of several awards, including two Oscars for Best Original Song (“Journey to the Past”) and Best Original Musical or Comedy Score. The music of the movie was composed and conducted by David Newman whose song “Journey to the past was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song” (Bluth and Goldman 1997). 2. Les Misérables was released as a musical movie in 2012; it is based on a novel by Victor Hugo. The musical was directed by Tom Hooper (2012) and written by William Nicholson, Alian Boublil, Claude-Michel Schönberg, and Herbert Kretzmer. According to the announcement by the official website of the movie, Les Misérables Les Misérables has been watched in 44 countries by more than 70 million people and has been translated in 22 languages. It is a British-FrenchAmerican epic romantic musical period drama film produced by Working Title Films and distributed by Universal Pictures. The movie was a great success and the winner of several awards including several Golden Globe prizes in 2012 (Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, Best Motion Picture Musical, etc.) Les Misérables is the story of “broken dreams and unrequited love, passion, sacrifice, and redemption – a timeless testament to the survival of the human spirit” (“www.dewynters.com” 2016). The main story of the film is about a man called Jan Valjean, who has been imprisoned for decades and is now inspired by a bishop and has decided to change his way of living. From the beginning to the end of the story, the hero is afraid of being captured by the police officer, Javert, who believes that no human being can change for better. Valjean becomes the Mayor of a town in France and the owner of a factory, and he feels responsible for a girl, Cossette, who has lost her parents and tolerated child labor, and in this way, their lives change forever. “Featuring the songs “I Dreamed A Dream,” “Bring Him Home,” “One Day More” and “On My Own” – Les Misérables is the show of shows” (“www.dewynters.com” 2016). 3. Sweeney Todd is a dramatic musical featuring ample mystery and suspense. It was directed by Tim Burton as a British–American musical horror in 2007. The story is about a man, Benjamin Barker, who has a happy life with her 99

wife and daughter in London but gets falsely convicted and sentenced to penal transportation by judge Turpin who later abuses his wife. After 15 years, Barker comes back with the fake name: Sweeney Todd and understands that his wife has committed suicide after being raped and that his daughter has been adopted by Turpin. This incident is the reason why he vows revenge; he works as a barber and murders his customers with a razor, accompanied by Mrs. Lovett, who makes meat pies out of the corpses. (Filmstarts 2008) Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, and Alan Rickman, the three stars of the movie, play important roles for the movie to be the winner of some awards such as Golden Globe Award for best motion picture musical or comedy, Golden Globe Award for Best Actor-Motion Picture Musical, Academy Award for Best Art Direction (“www.rottentomatoes.com” 2016). Burton as the music producer of the movie prefers the simultaneous appearance of music and dialogue rather than the sequence of dialogue and then music. “We didn’t want it to be what I’d say was a traditional musical with a lot of dialogue and then singing. That’s why we cut out a lot of choruses and extras singing and dancing down the street. Each of the characters, because a lot of them are repressed and have their emotions inside, the music was a way to let them express their feelings” (“www. rottentomatoes.com” 2016).

4.7.2 Selection of the Subtitles Iran is considered to be a dubbing country, and consequently less attention has been paid to the subtitling of the films. Therefore, it is usually difficult or impossible to find evaluated subtitles for the films. For the present research, the subtitle of the first movie can be found online at https://zirnevisha2.com, which is a popular website for subtitling in Iran. The criterion for selecting this subtitle was the rating given by the viewers. Anastasia’s selected subtitle has been rated 10/10 by six users and has received no negative comment. The translator has introduced herself as Sepideh. The subtitles for the other two movies are available in the market in Iran but not sold officially; for this purpose, the researcher of the present work has personally received the movies and their subtitles from a well-known DVD and Computer store in Iran. Les Misérables is translated by Ali Khasheie (2013) who is both an author and a translator and the founder of a non-official company for subtitling and other activities, and Sweeney Todd has been translated into Persian by an anonymous translator.

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4.7.3 Data Procedures For the present research, first the subtitles have been selected (as was explained in the data collection section), and then their counterpart subtitles in the Persian language have been found. As was explained before, the semiotic model of TQA consists of two parts: textual and extratextual level. The semiotic model of TQA has been applied to the data mentioned above. Mismatches of translation have been distinguished and some concluding remarks have been provided regarding the analysis. At the extratextual level, it is necessary for the translator to read the reviews and comments about the movie, which are provided by experts and those who are interested in the field. Before analyzing the poems, it should be noted that the poems that exist in musical movies are much different from the poems that exist in the literary works; they may not be as literary as these types of poems. What distinguishes this type of poem from others is the fact that it is accompanied by the animated pictures and movie scenes; therefore, different interpretations that might exist in the poems of literary works, feature less in the poems of movies. As was mentioned before the textual part of the analysis is not the primary focus of this study. Therefore, it would only be considered in detail in one of the movies selected as the data, and in the other two movies, the general points would be considered. Instead, the extratextual analysis which is a new topic, and is the main focus of the present work, would be analyzed in detail in three movies. As far as the semiotic model of TQA is concerned, at the textual level the following elements have been analyzed both in ST and TT: form or look of the text (including rhythm & rhyme, stanzas, structural patterns, punctuations, kind: sonnet, song, etc.), words or lexis (including factors such as being simple or complex, given or new [familiar or unfamiliar], concrete or abstract), images or figure of the text (including connotations or implicature, similies, metaphors and other tropes), tone or aura (including factors as being light or serious, elegiac or panegyric, lyrical or admonitory, ironic or straight forward), content or message (including realistic, mythical, time and place, and descriptive). The extratextual level, on the other hand, focuses on the existing interpretations of the poems.

4.8 Data Analysis and Interpretation In this section, the three movies selected as the data have been analyzed regarding the procedures mentioned above. The first movie to be analyzed is Anastasia; Les Misérables and Sweeney Todd will be scrutinized afterward.

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4.8.1 Analysis of Anastasia As was mentioned before, the subtitles of Anastasia will be analyzed both at textual and extratextual levels.

4.8.1.1 Textual Analysis According to the semiotic model of poetry translation, textual analysis refers to the analysis of form, sound, word, image, tone and content. This section deals with this analysis. Tab. 4–3: English and Persian Subtitles of Anastasia NO English Subtitle 1 00:02:21,268 --> 00:02:23,463 On the wind 2 00:02:23,548 --> 00:02:25,857 ‘Cross the sea 3 00:02:25,948 --> 00:02:30,863 Hear this song and remember 4 00:02:31,628 --> 00:02:36,144 Soon you’ll be home with me 5 00:02:36,708 --> 00:02:41,782 Once upon a December 6 7 8

9 10 11 12

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00:17:36,268 --> 00:17:38,657 Dancing bears 00:17:38,748 --> 00:17:40,739 Painted wings 00:17:41,428 --> 00:17:46,343 Things I almost remember 00:17:46,428 --> 00:17:48,623 And a song 00:17:48,988 --> 00:17:51,263 Someone sings 00:17:51,628 --> 00:17:56,418 Once upon a December 00:17:56,788 --> 00:18:01,145 Someone holds me safe and warm

Persian Subtitles Baa/baad/i/ke:with/wind/nakare marker/that Az/daryaa/mi/gozarad: from/sea/present progressive marker/pass In/aahang/ro/gush kon/va/be/yaad/bespaar:this/ music/object marker/hear/ and/in/memory/keep Be/zud/i/baa/man/dar/xaane/xaahi/bud: in/soon/ adv. marker/with/me/in/home/future marker/was Dar/yek/i/az/ruz/haa/ye/maah/e/desaambr:in/ one/nakare marker/of/day/plural marker/ezafe marker/month/ezafe marker/December Xers/haa/ye/raghsaan:bear/plural marker/ezafe marker/dancing Baal/haa/ye/naqaashi/shode: wing/plural marker/ painting/passive marker Chiz/haa/yee/ke/taqriban/be/yaad/mi/aar/ am:thing/plural marker/nakare marker/that/ almost/in/memory/present cont. marker/bring/1st person pron. Va/aavaaz/i/ke: and/song/nakare marker/that Yek/nafar/mi/xund: one/person/continuous marker/sang Yek/i/az/ruz/haa/ye/desaambr:one/nakare marker/ from/day/ezafe marker/december Yek/nafar/man/ro/imen/va/garm/negah daashte:one/person/object marker/secure/and/ warm/pp marker/kept

NO English Subtitle 13 00:18:01,628 --> 00:18:06,383 Horses prance through a silver storm 14

00:18:06,948 --> 00:18:11,419 Figures dancing gracefully

15

00:18:11,508 --> 00:18:16,536 Across my memory

16

00:18:45,428 --> 00:18:50,058 Someone holds me safe and warm 00:18:50,388 --> 00:18:54,666 Horses prance through a silver storm

17

18

00:18:54,988 --> 00:18:59,345 Figures dancing gracefully

19

00:18:59,428 --> 00:19:04,183 Across my memory 00:19:04,788 --> 00:19:09,498 Far away, long ago 00:19:09,588 --> 00:19:14,218 Glowing dim as an ember

20

21

00:19:14,308 --> 00:19:19,018 Things my heart used to know

22

00:19:19,108 --> 00:19:25,377 Things it yearns to remember 00:19:26,188 --> 00:19:28,543 And a song 00:19:28,628 --> 00:19:33,702 Someone sings 00:19:37,148 --> 00:19:43,906 Once upon a December

23 24 25

Persian Subtitles Asb/haa/yee/ke/xaraaman/mi/gozarand/az/ miaan/e/tufan/e/noqre/yee:horse/plural marker/ nakare marker/that/pass/from/through/ezafe marker/storm/silver/adj. marker Peikar/haa/ye/raqsaan/e/baraazandeh/yee:figure/ plural marker/ezaafemarker/dancing/ezaafe marker/gracefull/nakare marker Dar/xaater/am/obur/mi/kon/and:in/memory/1st per.poss.pro/pass/present marker/do/3rd per. Pl. pro. Yek/nafar/man/ro/imen/va/garm/negah/ daashte:one/person/object marker/secure/and/ warm/pp. marker/kept Asb/haa/yee/ke/xaraaman/mi/gozarand/az/ miaan/e/tufan/e/noqre/yee:horse/plural marker/ nakare marker/that/pass/from/through/ezafe marker/storm/silver/adj. marker Peikar/haa/ye/raqsaan/e/baraazandeh/yee:figure/ plural marker/ezaafemarker/dancing/ezaafe marker/gracefull/nakare marker Dar/xaater/am/zaaher/mi/shan:in/memory/1st per. poss.pro/apprear/present marker+3rd per. Pl. pro. Dar/durdast/haa/modat/haa/qabl:in/faraway/pl. marker/time/pl. marker/before /be/tor/e/mobham/i/mi/deraxshan/mesl/e/ye/ tike/zoqaal/e/nime/suz:in/way/ezaafe marker/ vague/nakare marker/pr.cont.marker/sine+3rd per. Pl. pro./like/ezafe marker/one/piece/coal/ezaafe marker/half/burnt Chiz/haa/yee/ke/qalb/am/hamishe/be/yaad/ daasht: thing/plural marker/nakare marker/that/ heart/1st per. Poss./always/in/memory/had Chiz/haa/yee/ke/moshtaq/e/be/yaad/biaare:thing/ plural marker/that/eager/is/in/memory/bring Va/aavaaz/i/ke: and/song/nakare marker/that Kas/i/mi/xund: person/nakare marker/cont. marker/sang ruz/i/az/ruz/haa/ye/maah/e/desaambr:day/nakare marker/of/day/pl. marker/ezafe marker/month/ ezafe marker/December

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The Look of the Text The one to one matching of the source and target text shows that although the poem is not like regular poems existing in literary works, there is a one to one match between the most of the lines of the English and Persian Versions regarding the look or form of the text in a sense that there is a one to one translation for each word and sentence, which leads to the similarity of the form in English and Persian texts. The Music of the Text Since the text is accompanied by the sound, it is much easier to find the cases of alliteration and music of the text. – Cases of alliteration in the Original Text: Minutes 02:21–02:41 Alliteration (assonance): on, ‘cross, song, once, upon/ wind, sea, this, with, me/ the, remember, a, December. Alliteration (consonance): cross, this, song, soon, once, December, – Cases of alliteration in the Persian Text: Minutes 02:21–02:41 Alliteration (assonance): /baa/, /baadi/, /daryaa/, /yaad/, /bespaar/, /baa/, /xaane/, /xaahi/, /roozhaaye/, /maah/, /Desaambr/ Alliteration (consonance): /baa/, /baadi/, /be/, /bespaar/, /baa/-/aahang/, /goosh/-/xane/, /xaahi/- /dar/, /roozhay/, /desaambr/-/daryaa/, /migozarad/ Stress Patterns: Rhyme scheme unstressed syllable: -: da stressed syllable: /: dam On(/) the(-) wind(/): dam da dam Cross(/) the(-) sea(/): dam da dam Hear(/) this(-) song(/) and(-) re(/) mem(-) ber(/): dam da dam da dam da dam Soon(/) you’ll(-) be(/) home(/) with(-) me(/): dam da dam dam da dam Once (/) u(-) pon(/) a(-) De(/) cem(-) ber(/): dam da dam da dam da dam The last line is a refrain, which means is repeated throughout the poem. It functions as a metrical transition from one stanza to the other and at the same time maintains the poetic rhythm. The stem meter of the poem is Cretic, that is to say an unstressed syllable followed and preceded by stressed syllables. 104

This sort of rhythm is usually used in pastoral poetry as a result of which natural elements such as ‘sea’ and ‘wind’ are visibly employed by the poet. In the table below a comparison has been made between the rhyme pattern of English and Farsi texts. Tab. 4–4: The Comparison of Persian and English Rhyme Patterns English Sea, be, me

Persian

No. of cases in English

No. of cases in Persian

-

1

0

1

1

Remember, ‫بسپار‬ (Bespaar) December ‫( دسامبر‬Desaambr)

The Lexis of the Text The translation seems to be word for word; therefore, the choice of words in translation is almost the same as the source text. However, there are some points in the translation that are worth mentioning here. In English, there is a difference between hear and listen. Listening is an intentional activity in which the person tries to hear something. The case also exists in the Persian language where ‘shenidan’ means hear and ‘gush daadan’ means listen. Therefore, the translator should be careful in choosing the appropriate translation for the word; since the word is ‘hear’, the translation should be ‘beshno’ not ‘gush kon.’ The same problem exists for the word ‘paint’; in English, there is a distinction between ‘paint’ and ‘draw.’ Therefore, it should be considered in Persian translation as to choose ‘naqaashi shode’ or ‘rang shode.’ The better case for the translation would be ‘rang shode’ which is missing in the subtitle. There is a shift in the Persian translation of the word ‘gracefully.’ The English word is an adverb, whereas the Persian word ‘baraazande’ is an adjective. The word ‘know’ has been translated into ‘be xaater daashtan’ that means ‘remember.’ The correct translation is ‘daanestan.’ The Figure of the Text Several figures of speech can be seen in the poem, and almost all of them have been considered in the Persian subtitle.

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Tab. 4–5: Comparisons of Figures of Speech in English and Persian Subtitles of Anastasia Figure of Speech English Allusion December

Persian “Desaambr” (‫)دسامبر‬

Metaphor

Silver Storm

“Tufan/e/noqreyee” (‫وفاننقره ای‬ ‫)ت‬

Simile

Glowing dim as an ember

“be/tor/e/mobham/i/pr.cont. marker/deraxsh/and, mesl/e/ye/zoqaal/ezafe marker/nime/sooz” (‫مثلیه ذغالنیمهسوز‬،‫خشند‬ ‫)به طورمبهمی می در‬

Metonymy

Figures

Personification

Dancing bears “xers/haa/ezafe marker/raghsaan” (‫)خرس های رقصان‬ Things my heart “xers/haa/ezafe marker/raghsaan” (‫)خرس های رقصان‬ used to know, “chiz/haa/yee/ke/qalban/hamishe/be/yaad/daasht” Things it yearns (‫قلبمهمیشهبهیاد داشت‬ ‫)چیز هاییکه‬, to remember “chiz/haa/yee/ke/moshtaagh/e/be/yaad/biaare” (‫بیاره‬ ‫)چیز هاییکهمشتاقهبهیاد‬

“Peikar haa” (‫پیکر ها‬ )

The word “December” has connotations with the Russian revolution and is considered an allusion in this poem. “Silver storm” is a metaphor meaning a storm, which is like silver. “Glowing dim as an ember” is a similie: glowing like an ember. “Figures” refers to the present people in the ceremony and is therefore considered a metonymy and finally there is personification in sentences such as “dancing bears” and “things my heart used to know” which attribute human characteristics to an animal or inanimate object. The Aura of the Text The tone of the message seems to be love and hope giving. Words such as ‘wind’ (baad), ‘sea’ (daryaa), ‘dance’ (raqs), ‘heart’ (qalb), etc. can inspire love in the mind of the audience and sentences such as ‘soon you’ll be home with me’ is a symbol of hope. Although the tone has been transferred into the Persian poem because of the similar choice of words, it has been introduced more beautifully in the English poem because of the rhythmic pattern and the poetic form; the source text is in form of a poem and a poem can have more effect on the audience than a prose. “When you write in prose, you cook the rice. When you write poetry, you turn rice into rice wine. Cooked rice doesn’t change its shape, but rice wine changes both in quality and shape. Cooked rice makes one full so one can live out one’s lifespan … wine, on the other hand, makes one drunk, makes the sad happy, and the happy sad. Its effect is sublimely beyond explanation.” – (Wu Qiao as cited in Barnstone and Chou 1996). From this citation, one can conclude that poetry, which is the form of ST in this study is a more beautiful way of stating hope and love than prose, which is the form of TT here. 106

The Message of the Text The message and content of the poem is the fact that love always brings about a feeling of hope. The translator has also transferred this message to the Persian poem by using literal translation for the words that convey this message: “soon you’ll be home with me” (be/zudi/baa/man/dar/xaane/xaah/i/bud), “someone holds me safe and warm” (yek/nafar/man/raa/imen/va/garm/negah/daashte), “figures dancing gracefully” (peikar/haa/ye/raqsaan/e/baraazande), etc.

4.8.1.2 Extratextual Analysis As was mentioned before, the poems that are used in movies are much different from the ones that exist in the literary works. Therefore, fewer critics give their comments on these poems. This might be one of the factors that should be considered in the field of movie analysis. In the case of movie poems, it might be a good idea to read different reviews and comments about the movies and then scrutinize the translations accordingly. Another point that should be considered for the analysis is the setting, animated pictures and the scene of the movie that helps the translator avoid deviations and misunderstandings because of the feeling it transfers. The plot of the story is also important in realizing the meaning of the poem. In the case of Anastasia there seem to be few mismatches of translation when watching the movie. The name of the poem is Once Upon a December, and the word “December” has a special meaning to those who know about the Russian revolution. In December 1916, Rasputin, the advisor to the Romanovs was assassinated. It is believed that Rasputin helped to discredit the Tsarist family, leading to the fall of the Romanov Dynasty (Tiffnomics 2015). In the movie, Rasputin is the name of the villain who wants to kill the last member of the Romanovs, and Anastasia (the last member of the Romanovs) loses her grandmother in December. “December” may, therefore, refer to this point in the poem, and should be transferred to the Persian poem and it should not be changed to its equivalent month in the Persian calendar. The translator has done the job right regarding this word. When Anastasia talks to her grandmother at the beginning of the movie, her grandmother gives a musical box to her and starts singing the song. The atmosphere of the movie as is shown in the screenshot (min.: 01:20–02:02), indicates that there is a nice feeling between Anastasia and her grandmother. Using the words like wind, sea, and home, all give positive connotations that should be transferred to the target text. By referring to Dehkhoda, Persian monolingual dictionary, it seems that for the word ‘wind’, ‘nasim’ would be a better translation than ‘baad’, because it has a positive connotation and is more pleasant (figure 4–1). 107

Fig. 4–1: Screenshot from Anastasia min. 01:20–02:02

Another point that is worth mentioning here is the translation of “figures dancing gracefully, across my memory.” In the movie this part is depicted precisely (min. 15:30–17:28); it shows some people that are dancing gracefully and pass Anastasia’s memory. Although the poem matches exactly the animated picture, the translation gives another image. If we want to back translate the translator’s version, it changes into “graceful figures appear in my mind.” In fact v.+adv. in English has been translated as adj.+n. in Persian leading to the divergence of the TT from ST (figure 4–2). 108

Fig. 4–2: Screenshot from Anastasia min. 15:30–17:28

4.8.1.3 Concluding Remarks on the Analysis of Anastasia After textual analysis of the subtitle, the authors of the present work came to the following conclusions: As the translation is almost literal, the images have also been kept in translation; therefore, the form and meaning of the original have been reflected in the translation. Factors such as smoothness of the sound should also be considered. For example, the “s” sound can be seen very often in the source text (cross, sea, song, etc.), but in Persian translation this smoothness does not exist because of some harsh alliteration as “q” sound: (‘naqaashi’ (painting) and ‘raqsaan’ (dancing)). Other tropes such as metaphor, simile, etc. have also been transferred to the target text because of the literal translation. In the first part of the poem, there are four rhymed lines, but only two rhymes exist in the Persian poem. The rhythm pattern is also different in Persian translation. It seems that the Persian translation does not obey any rhythmical patterns, and the translation is closer to prose rather than a poem. 109

Another dimension that was considered for the translation of the poem was extratextual analysis that showed the translator and the critic of the subtitles need to watch the movie carefully before starting their jobs, and they should consider the setting and pictures of the movie. Other aspects of the extratextual analysis were mentioned in the previous section.

4.8.2 Extratextual Analysis of Les Misérables Table 4–6 contains the subtitles that have been analyzed for the present research: Tab. 4–6: English and Persian Subtitles of Les Misérables NO English Subtitle 1 01:35:50,052 --> 01:35:56,672 Do you hear the people sing? Singing a song of angry men 2 3

4 5

6 7

8

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Persian Subtitles Mi/shenav/i/aavaaz/e/maa/mi/xun/im/aavaaz/e/ xashm/e/mard:pr. cont. marker/hear/2nd per. Pron./song/ezaafe marker/we pr. cont. marker/ sing/1st per. Sing.pron./song/ezaafe marker/ anger/ezaafe marker/man 01:35:56,872 --> 01:36:03,172 In/aahang/e/mardom/i/e/ke/ne/mishe/barde/ It is the music of a people kard: this/music/ezaafe marker/nakare marker/is/ Who will not be slaves again! that/negative marker/is possible/slave/make 01:36:03,372 --> 01:36:09,572 Vaqti/zarb/e/qalb/e/to/baa/pejvaak/i/az/tu/ye/ When the beating of your heart tabl/sedaa/mi/daad: when/beating/ezafe marker/ Echoes the beating of the drums heart/ezaafe marker/you/echo/nakare marker/ from/in/drum/voice/past cont. marker/give 01:36:09,772 --> 01:36:15,872 Zendegi/qaraar/e/shoru beshe/vaqti/fardaa/ There is a life about to start biaad:life/time/is/start/when/tomorrow/come When tomorrow comes! 01:36:16,372 --> 01:36:22,772 Molhaq/mi/shi/be/jonbesh/am/aayaa/mohkam/ Will you join in our crusade? posht/e/maa/yee: join/pr.cont. marker/become/ Who will be strong and stand to/crusade/1st pers. Poss.pron./wether/firm/back/ ezaafe marker/we/you are with me? 01:36:22,972 --> 01:36:29,372 Posht/e/sangar/aa/aayaa/to/ham/did/i/donyaa/ Beyond the barricade yee: back/ezafe marker/trench/pl. marker/wether/ Is there a world you long to see? you/also/see/2nd per. Sing./world/nakare marker 01:36:29,572 --> 01:36:34,972 Pas/molhaq/sho/be/maa/tu/nabard/e/xodaa/taa/ Then join in the fight, That will zamaan/e/aazadi:then/join/become/to/us/in/ give you the right to be free! fight/ezaafe marker/God/till/time/ezaafe marker/ freedom 01:36:35,072 --> 01:36:41,172 Mi/shenav/i/aavaaz/e/maa/mi/xun/im/aavaaz/e/ Do you hear the people sing? xashm/e/mard:pr. cont. marker/hear/2nd per. Pron./song/ezaafe marker/we pr. cont. marker/ Singing a song of angry men? sing/1st per. Sing.pron./song/ezaafe marker/ anger/ezaafe marker/man

NO English Subtitle 9 01:36:41,372 --> 01:36:47,472 It is the music of a people Who will not be slaves again! 10 01:36:47,672 --> 01:36:53,372 When the beating of your heart Echoes the beating of the drums 11 12

13

14

15

16 17

18

Persian Subtitles In/aahang/e/mardom/i/e/ke/ne/mishe/barde/ kard: this/music/ezaafe marker/nakare marker/is/ that/negative marker/is possible/slave/make Vaqti/zarb/e/qalb/e/to/baa/pejvaak/i/az/tu/ye/ tabl/sedaa/mi/daad: when/beating/ezafe marker/ heart/ezaafe marker/you/echo/nakare marker/ from/in/drum/voice/past cont. marker/give Zendegi/qaraar/e/shoru beshe/vaqti/fardaa/ biaad:life/time/is/start/when/tomorrow/come

01:36:53,572 --> 01:36:59,472 There is a life about to start When tomorrow comes! 01:36:59,872 --> 01:37:06,072 Mi/zaar/i/unche/chante/daar/i/taa/bere/baalaa/ Will you give all you can give derafsh/e/por/saman:pres.cont.marker/put/2nd So that our banner may advance pers.sing. pron./what/pouch/have/2nd pers.sing. pron/till/go/up/flag/ezaafe marker/full/Jasmin 01:37:06,272 --> 01:37:12,272 mi/munan/chand/i/baaqi/aayaa/kenar/e/mun/ Some will fall and some will live mi/ist/i/va/molhaq/mi/shi/be/man: pr. cont. Will you stand up and take your marker/wait/some/nakare marker/rest/whether/ chance? near/ezaafe marker/ 1st per.poss.pl.pron./pr. cont. marker/stand/2nd per.sing.pron./and/join/pr. cont. marker/you become/to/me 01:37:12,472 --> 01:37:17,972 Alafzaar/e/sarzamin/am/mi/she/xun/e/shahid/ The blood of the martyrs aan/e/vatan: meadow/ezaafe marker/land/1st per. sing.poss.pron./pr.cont. marker/become/blood/ Will water the meadows of ezaafe marker/martyr/pl. marker/ezaafe marker/ France! home country 01:37:18,172 --> 01:37:24,172 Mi/shenav/i/aavaaz/e/maa/mi/xun/im/aavaaz/e/ Do you hear the people sing? xashm/e/mard:pr. cont. marker/hear/2nd per. Pron./song/ezaafe marker/we/pr. cont. marker/ Singing a song of angry men? sing/1st per. Sing.pron./song/ezaafe marker/ anger/ezaafe marker/man 01:37:24,372 --> 01:37:29,972 In/aahang/e/mardom/i/e/ke/ne/mishe/barde/ It is the music of a people kard: this/music/ezaafe marker/nakare marker/is/ Who will not be slaves again! that/negative marker/is possible/slave/make 01:37:30,172 --> 01:37:35,972 Vaqti/zarb/e/qalb/e/to/baa/pejvaak/i/az/tu/ye/ When the beating of your heart tabl/sedaa/mi/daad: when/beating/ezafe marker/ Echoes the beating of the drums heart/ezaafe marker/you/echo/nakare marker/ from/in/drum/voice/past cont. marker/give 01:37:36,172 --> 01:37:42,672 vaqti/fardaa/biaad/zendegi/qaraar/e/shoru There is a life about to start beshe/: when/tomorrow/come/life/time/is/start/ when tomorrow comes!

The selected part of the analysis is “Do you hear the people sing.” This poem followed by its movie scene is a great reflection of the French revolution. The 111

combination of the words used in the poem, adds to the effects of the movie. The scene shows several people that are on the street, singing a song together and want to change their circumstances. They are killed, wounded and troubled, but they encourage others to help them. They are singing with strong voices “singing the song of angry men.” The scene of the movie depicts the feeling of anger in people who are singing a song. Therefore, the Persian translation “mixunim aavaaz e xashm e mard” (back translated as singing the song: (that is called) angry man), is problematic in this part. It should have been translated as adj.+n. instead of n.+n. you can see the scene and its subtitle in figure 4–3: Fig. 4–3: Screenshot from Les Misérables min. 19:00–21:02

Another point that is worth mentioning here is the translation of “when the beating of your heart echoes the beating of the drums.” The government’s soldiers in the film beat drums and the reflection is clear in the faces of the civilians in the 112

street. Therefore, one might conclude that each beating of the drum is followed by the beating of the people’s hearts. The Persian translation has not shown this echo. The back translated version of this part of the poem is “when the beating of your heart, with an echo in the drums, produced a sound”; it might not seem to be a great problem, but what is important is the fact that the translator and the critic should both pay attention to the pictures on the screen, i.e., the semiotic aspect of the analysis (figure 4–4). Fig. 4–4: Screenshot from Les Misérables min. 19:00–21:02

TVtropes.org has also analyzed this poem and for this part the author believes that the poem is a “crowd” as well as a “setting off ” song. It encourages the people to take part in the revolution. Therefore, in the analysis of the words and expressions the critic should be aware of this fact. 113

If we go through the textual analysis for the part: “will you give all you can give so that our banner may advance”, we may conclude that the tone of the poem is encouraging, asking people to give all power they have, to advance their banner. Although the translation also has an encouraging tone, the phrase: “derafsh e por saman” may be problematic because in the movie we see that the soldiers are shaking their banners and the back translated version of the poem means: “the banner that is full of Jasmine flowers.” The banner in the poem is a simple red color. And the translator has used this expression to keep the rhyme of the poem at the expense of changing the image and expansion of the original. Although it may be more beautiful and poetic, it changes the image of the original text (figure 4–5). Fig. 4–5: Screenshot from Les Misérables min. 19:00–21:02

Sometimes because the scene is present, the translator may omit some words or replace it with something similar. In the scene of the movie, the banner of France 114

is in the hands of many people. Therefor when the translator replaces the word “France” with “Sarzaminam” (my land), there would be no problem for the readers of the subtitle. At the textual level this replacement may be a problem, but when it is paralleled with the extratextual level, the problem is removed. Therefore, the extratextual analysis should move hand in hand with the textual analysis.

4.8.2.1 Concluding Remarks of Les Misérables The analysis of Les Misérables was done with the focus on extratextual codes that exist in the movie and on some websites. Like Anastasia, there is no available analysis for this part of the movie. Therefore, the analysis should be done on the basis of the existing materials (or codes). The analysis showed some mismatches between the original text and the translation that could easily be removed after considering parallelism between the textual and extratextual analysis.

4.8.3 Extratextual Analysis of Sweeney Todd Before going through the analysis, let’s have a look at the subtitles of the movie in table 4–7: Tab. 4–7: English and Persian Subtitles of Les Misérables NO English Subtitle 1 00:12:29,885 --> 00:12:36,288 There was a barber and his wife, and he was beautiful, 2

3 4 5 6

Persian Subtitle Yek/aaraayeshgar/va/hamsar/ash/va/un/ aaraayeshgar/xeili/zibaa/bud:one/barber/and/ wife/1st pers.sing.poss.pron./and/that/barber/very/ beautiful/was 00:12:37,445 --> 00:12:43,539 yek/honarpishe/ye/chiredast/baa/chaaqu/sh/ a proper artist with a knife, ammaa/un/ro/ az/zendegi/sh/tard/kard/and: one/ but they transported him actor/ezafe marker/adroit/with/knife/1st per.poss. pron./but/he/obj.marker/from/life/1st per.poss. for life pron./reject/made/3rd per.pl.pron. 00:12:44,137 --> 00:12:48,250 Va/un/mard/e/zibaa/yee/bud: and/he/man/ And he was beautiful… beautiful/nakare marker/was 00:12:49,338 --> 00:12:53,440 Esm/esh/Barker/bud/Benjamin/Barker:name/3rd per.sing.poss.pron./Barker/was/Benjamin/Barker Barker, his name was – Benjamin Barker. 00:12:54,180 --> 00:12:56,104 Gonaah/esh/chi/bud:sin/3rd per.sing.poss.pron./ what/was Transported? What was his crime? 00:12:56,793 --> 00:12:58,950 hemaqat Foolishness

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NO English Subtitle 7 00:12:59,392 --> 00:13:01,455 He had this wife, you see, 8 00:13:02,151 --> 00:13:03,329 pretty little thing, 9 00:13:03,558 --> 00:13:04,247 silly little nit. 10 00:13:04,469 --> 00:13:07,500 Had her chance for the moon on a string11 12

13 14 15

16 17 18 19 20

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Persian Subtitle un/zan/daasht/mi/dun/i:he/wife/had/pr.cont. marker/know/2nd per.sing.pron. Yek/chiz/e/zibaa/va/kuchulu:one/thing/ezaafe marker/beautiful/and/small Ye/kam/ahmaq/va/naadaan:one/little/fool/and/ stupid Ammaa/shans/e/sh/mesl/e/ye/xat/e/naazok/e/ maah/bud: but/chance/ezaafe marker/3rd per.sing. poss.pron./like/ezaafe marker/one/line/narrow/ ezaafe marker/moon/was 00:13:08,560 --> 00:13:09,710 Bichaare/bichaare:poor/poor Poor thing. Poor thing. 00:13:16,091 --> 00:13:19,811 Yek/qaazi/ham/unjaa/bud/mi/dun/i/mesl/e/divune/ There was this Judge, you see, haa/xaaterxhaah/shode/bud:one/judge/too/there/ wanted her like mad. was/pr.cont.marker/know/2nd per.sing.pron./like/ ezaafe marker/crazy/pl.marker/in love/become/was 00:13:19,846 --> 00:13:21,753 Har/ruz/baraa/sh/gol/mi/ferestad:every/day/for/ Every day he’d send her a her/flower/pr.cont.marker/sent flower, 00:13:23,187 --> 00:13:25,451 Ammaa/un/ne/mi/xaast/az/tu/ye/borj/esh/payeen/ but did she come down from biaad: but/he/negative marker/ p.cont.marker/ her tower? wanted/from/in/ezaafe marker/tower/down/come 00:13:26,656 --> 00:13:31,239 Un/unjaa/neshast/va/saat/haa/gerye/kard/ahmaq/e/ Sat up there and sobbed by bichaare:she/there/sat/and/hour/plural marker/cry/ the hour, did/fool/ezaafe marker/poor Poor fool. 00:13:32,235 --> 00:13:35,031 Un/unjaa/neshast/va/saat/haa/gerye/kard/ahmaq/e/ Ah, but there was worse bichaare:she/there/sat/and/hour/plural marker/cry/ yet to come, poor thing. did/fool/ezaafe marker/poor 00:13:42,490 --> 00:13:45,321 Mostaxdem/e/baanezakat/esh/un/ro/seda The Beadle calls on her, all kard:waiter/ezaafe marker/polite/her/she/object polite, marker/called 00:13:45,866 --> 00:13:48,493 Bichaare/bichaare:poor/poor poor thing, poor thing. 00:13:49,039 --> 00:13:51,913 Qaazi/be/hesh/gofte/bud/ke/hame/chi/moratab/e: The Judge, he tells her, judge/to/her/said/was/that/all/thing/organized/is is all controlled, 00:13:52,294 --> 00:13:55,177 Va/un/xodesh/ro/baraa/ye/in/gereftaari/sarzanesh/ he blames himself for her mi/kone: and/he/himself/object marker/for/ dreadful plight ezaafemarker/this/plight/blame/ pr.cont.marker/ does

NO English Subtitle 21 00:13:55,652 --> 00:13:58,320 She must come straight to his house tonight! 22 00:13:58,763 --> 00:14:01,446 Poor thing, poor thing. 23 00:14:06,947 --> 00:14:09,337 Of course, when she goes there, poor thing, poor thing 24 00:14:09,846 --> 00:14:12,360 they’re having this ball all in masks. 25 00:14:12,824 --> 00:14:15,560 There’s no one she knows there, poor dear, poor thing. 26 00:14:15,871 --> 00:14:18,735 She wanders tormented, and drinks, poor thing. 27 00:14:19,045 --> 00:14:21,718 The Judge has repented, she thinks, poor thing 28 00:14:21,999 --> 00:14:24,803 Oh, where is Judge Turpin? She asks. 29 00:14:26,615 --> 00:14:27,720 He was there, all right 30 00:14:27,998 --> 00:14:29,388 Only not so contrite! 31 32 33 34 35

00:14:32,640 --> 00:14:35,366 She wasn’t no match for such craft, you see, 00:14:35,725 --> 00:14:38,288 And everyone thought it so droll. 00:14:38,658 --> 00:14:41,254 They figured she had to be daft, you see? 00:14:41,632 --> 00:14:44,316 So all of ‘em stood there and laughed, you see, 00:14:44,768 --> 00:14:45,818 Poor soul! Poor thing!

Persian Subtitle Motmaenan/un/shab/baayad/yekraast/mi/raft/be/ xune: sure/that/night/must/direct/p.cont.marker/ went/to/home Bichaare/bichaare:poor/poor Albate/vaqti/unjaa/resid/bichaare/bichaare:of course/when/there/arrivedpoor/poor Aan/haa/daasht/and/baalmaaske/bargozaar/mi/ kard/and:they/pl.marker/p. cont./3rd per.pl.pron./ balmosque/hld/p.cont.marker/did/3rd per.pl.pron./ :Hich/kas/ro/unjaa/ne/mi/shenaxt/bande/xodaa/ bichaareno/person/object marker/there/negative marker/pr.cont.marker/know/servant/God/poor Un/azaab/mi/keshid/va/mi/nushid/bichaare: she/ suffer/pr.cont.marker/drank/poor Un/fekr/mi/kard/qaazi/tobe/kard/e/bichaare:she/ think/p.cont.marker/did/judge/repent/did/pp. marker/poor Un/porsid/qaazi/Tropin/kojaa/ast:she/asked/ judge/Tropin/where/is Un/injaa/st/aare:he/here/is/yes Mi/dun/i/faqat/tobe/na/karde:present.cont.marker/ know/2nd per.sing.pron./just/repent/negative marker/has done Hich/raah/i/baraa/ye/hal/e/in/hile/na/ daasht:nothing/way/nakare marker/for/ezaafe marker/this/trick/negative marker/had Va/hame/fekr/mi/kard/and/ke/xeili/masxare/ ast:and/everybody/think/p.cont.marker/do/3rd per. pl.pron./that/very/ridiculous/is Unhaa/tasavor/mi/kard/and/ke/un/ye/ahmaq/e:he/ pl. markerthink/ p.cont.marker/do/3rd per.pl.pron./ that/he/one/stupid/is Hame/dore/ash/karde/bud/and/va/mi/xandid/and: all/surround/him/have done/3rd per.pl.pron./ p.cont. marker/laugh/3rd per.pl.pron badbaxt/bichaare:miserable/poor

117

In contrast to Anastasia and Les Misérables, many interpretations and references exist for the poems in Sweeney Todd movie. Therefore, there are many codes available for the analysis. For the sake of the present study, the analysis by Iede Snoek (2002) (critic 1) who has chosen the poem and music of Sweeney Todd as the topic of her thesis will be considered the available code. We will also have a look at the analysis done by Vincent Abramo, Rachel Peace, and Joseph Anodide of Brick Memorial High School (critic 2) (http://www.brickschools.org), who have scrutinized the music of the film. In the opinion of critic 2 of this movie, the music of the movie is an organized one, and the words have been selected accurately for this poem. They point to the word “nit” which is used by Mrs. Lovett (the seller of the pies): “She was silly little nit,” and state that “she could have picked any other words but she chose nit; in the play there is a character with a knit hat” (critic 2, 2009). Therefore, the translator should be careful to provide the best equivalent of the words. One of the points that is worth mentioning here is the fact that the opening scene of the movie shows that a woman has started telling a story; she prepares the audience by saying: “there was a barber and his wife…” but unfortunately this has been omitted in the Persian translation, and the audience does not experience such a preparation for the story. The other point that can be mentioned here is that English distinguishes between male and female pronouns, whereas in Persian there is not such a distinction. This might sometimes lead to ambiguities, and it is the translator who should consider this point in their works. There are many examples in this poem that needs clarification, and it is sometimes only possible by watching the movie and using the existing signs. As an example we may refer to the following sentence: “There was a barber and his wife and he was beautiful.” Here the translator has used a combination of pron.+n. to clarify the pronoun: “un” (he)+ “Arayeshgar” (barber) and we know that the barber is a man. The following sentence refers to another problem that is worth mentioning here: “they transported him for life.” By looking up the words in different dictionaries, it is understood that the barber has been transported to another place for the rest of his life, but the Persian translation purports the meaning in another way. The back translated version is “he was rejected from his life.” (“un ro az zendegish tard kardand.”) Let’s now have a look at the analysis done by Snoeck. She believes that in this part of the poem there is a conspiratorial tone, and Mrs. Lovett shows a kind of affection towards Todd who still doesn’t know the story. During the story, she tries to remember the name of the barber, and there is a sign of doubt both on her face and her voice. She shows this doubt by changing the place of the verb: 118

“Barker, his name was. Benjamin Barker.” However, this element of doubt cannot be seen in the Persian subtitle which is just like a regular sentence: (Back translated as: His name was Barker-Benjamin Barker) (figure 4–6). Fig. 4–6: Screenshot from Sweeney Todd min. 12:49–12:53

When Mrs. Lovett is telling the story. The scene, image and the sentences used by her show that Todd also sees what is in the imagination of Mrs. Lovett. She shows it by asking, “you see?” several times in the poem. However, the back translated version of this part is “you know” that seems different from the original. (It shows the scene as if Todd is absent and not seeing the imagination). This difference can also be seen in other parts: English sentence: “He had this wife” Back translated Persian sentence: “He had a wife” English sentence: “pretty little thing” Back translated Persian sentence: “something beautiful and small.”

In the sentence mentioned above the choice of words is problematic but, since the focus of the present work is extratextual analysis, it will not be dealt with here. Snoek (2002) believes that the music in this part shows a feeling of affection on the side of Mrs. Lovet. She repeats the phrase “poor thing”, several times to show her sympathy with Todd’s wife. Therefore, the translator should also be aware of this point and try to select the best equivalence. By referring to Dehkhoda (1998), monolingual of Persian terms, the Persian word “bichaare” 119

for “poor thing” does not contain the element of sympathy as much as the word “teflaki” shows this in Persian. The other point that is worth mentioning here is the shift from question form to affirmative form in translation. A question usually prepares the mind of the audience for an answer. The audience may think of different answers. But when in translation instead of the question, the answer is given, the minds of the audience will not experience such a preparation and one might say that its effect would be different from that of the original.

4.8.3.1 Concluding Remarks of Sweeney Todd As was mentioned earlier, in contrast to Anastasia and Les Misérables, there are many available analyses (codes) for the poems that exist in Sweeney Todd. The link between TQA and images of the film could be seen in a more tangible way during the analysis. Using the available codes, the authors of this paper found some mismatches between the source and the target texts. Attempts were made to remove these areas and to find solutions to prevent the future works of translation from such problems.

4.9 A Tentative Model for the Evaluation of Persian Subtitles of English Musical Movies The analyses done in this research confirm the importance of having a semiotic model of translation quality assessment for subtitles. There are different genres of movies and it is not possible to assess their subtitles in the same way. The data has been collected from musical films and the model that is provided here is a modification of the Semiotic Model of TQA for poetry translation that was proposed in 2011. It was a model of TQA that had considered two factors in the analyses: textual and extratextual factors. As the analyses showed in this research, the textual level analysis can also be used for the translation of musical subtitles (although it is possible to simplify it even more), but the extra textual analysis would be different in case of subtitles. Since the model is a semiotic one, it is very important to consider different codes that exist for the analysis. The previous model was based on Sojoodi’s semiotic model of TQA (2006) that believed the analysis should be done according to the codes available to the interpreter. According to the previous work (Vahid et al.) the interpreter can be anyone, from the poet, readers, etc. to the translator and reader of the translation. Vahid et al’s model can be simplified in case of musical subtitles. It has the element of implicature in the extratextual section which can refer to anything that is inferred from an utterance (that is, the code existing in the mind of the receiver). 120

Therefore, this part of the model can simply be omitted because it is contained in the interpretive codes in the present model. Another element of the previous model was coherence, which refers to the interrelation between what exists in the text on the one hand and the information inferred by the reader, on the other. If the text is a subtitle, it may be a good idea to add other elements such as the pictures and the voices that exist in the poem (as new codes). Therefore, there should be a connection between the pragmatics of a text and the codes involved. The process is depicted in figure 4–7: Fig. 4–7: The Interrelation of Available Codes

Code A

Code B

Animated Picture

Media

Sounds & music

Code N

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Media refers to the eyes, ears, and anything that helps the audience to receive the text. Codes, on the other hand, refer to any knowledge by which the movie can be interpreted. We may also consider coherence as a code, considering the definition by Green, who regards coherence “not only as a matter of textual properties” but also as a matter of “likelihood that the text’s audience will be able to make whatever inferences are necessary to relate the content of the individual sentences to each other in such a way that they support the inference of an orderly an inferred plan to achieve an inferred objective”(1996:108). According to this definition, coherence can be considered an element that connects the text receiver’s codes to the codes that exist in the text. The process can be shown in figure 4–8: Fig. 4–8: Codes and Coherence

As was mentioned by Sojoodi, (2006) any combination of signifiers can act as a text. There are different layers of signifiers, which are not necessarily hierarchical. All the layers interact with each other. Therefore, the codes considered in the model are all interrelated. Regarding the points mentioned above and the three-partite frameworks of codes provided by Chandler (2007), one might conclude that the following model can be the most simple and the most efficient one regarding the translation of Persian subtitles in the musical movies. The model opens the hands of the translators and critics to be creative, as translation itself is the product of creativity. A rule-based and one to one model of TQA is just a barrier for both translator and the critic. Figure 4–9 is an approval for the Hypothesis 1 of the present research: The Semiotic Model of TQA developed by Vahid et al. in 2011, which is used to evaluate the quality of poems, applies to the translation of musical subtitles to evaluate the quality of their translation.

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Fig. 4–9: Tentative TQA Model of Musical Film Subtitles

As far as the semiotic aspects of the film are concerned, it should be noted that Vahid et al.’s model of TQA for poetry translation applies to the translation of subtitles of course with modifications that was explained in this chapter.

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5 Evaluation of Subtitles Regarding the omission of Interpersonal Elements of Language 5.1 Overview To start this chapter, which includes the main part of the present research, first a summary of appraisal theory will be presented in order to be used as the theoretical framework of the analyses. Afterwards, fansubs and the problem of evaluation, which is also the case for most Persian subtitles, will be explained. Then a summary of the whole chapter will be provided to see what is to be done to solve the existing problems regarding the omission of interpersonal elements of language. In order to shorten the process of analysis, some parts of the analysis have been automated, the process of which will be explained in this chapter. After explaining the methodology and data procedure of the work, tentative reasons for the omission of interpersonal elements will be introduced.

5.2 Summary of Appraisal Theory Apart from being an interesting field, evaluation is an “essential component of discourse” according to Hunston (1994:191). Evaluation can be used as a tool to scrutinize the feeling and emotion behind an expression, the behavior of human and state of affairs. The purpose of evaluation as is confirmed by Birot (2008:4), is not to determine different aspects as good or bad, rather to “construe the overall value of a given message which eventually leads to construction of the perspective of the agent behind the message.” Martin (2000:142) is one of the pioneers of application of evaluation as a system to reveal the opinion of the speaker or writer. To him “the overall system of choices to describe this area of meaning potential is called appraisal.” The system of appraisal according to Martin (1994:28) is a cover term for three different systems, which are “resources for modalising, amplifying, reacting emotionally (affect), judging (judgment) and evaluating authentically (appreciation).” Appraisal framework is especially used as an approach to explore, describe and explain the way language is used to adopt stances and to manage the interpersonal relationships. It is a way of exploring how the reaction of the receiver of 125

the text changes when they agree with the producers of it or when they disagree with them. How do judgments affect their understanding of a text? Do they ally with the content or simply keep their distance, because it is against their beliefs? It also explores the situations in which differing views are challenged by managing an utterance. After discussing the concept of metafunction, as a follower of functional approach of language, Halliday defines three metafunctions of language, which are the main elements of systemic functional linguistics. They are ideational, interpersonal and textual. Halliday (1994) has made a comparison between ideational and interpersonal function of language: “If the ideational function of the grammar is language as reflection” the interpersonal metafunction “is language as action” (1994:30). The word interpersonal consists of interactive and personal. Finally, the last function of language is textual, which refers to the organization of a text by using thematic structure and cohesive devices. (Halliday 1994) The function, which deals with the relationship between the writer and the reader, is mainly the interpersonal function. This metafunction is divided into three subcategories by Halliday (1994): 1. Mood: it can be realized through different forms of structure: declarative, interrogative, and imperative. 2. Modality: Halliday considers four dimensions for the mood system. They are modality type, orientation, value and polarity, and he describes modality as the language resource, which expresses the intermediate meaning lying between negative and positive polarity. 3. Evaluation (termed by Thompson, Hunston, and others 2000) For more information about the details of the appraisal theory please refer to Martin and White (2005). The subtypes of appraisal include attitude, engagement and graduation, which will be explained in more detail later in this chapter. As was mentioned in chapter3, appraisal itself is technically defined as “one of the major discourse semantic resources construing interpersonal meaning” (Martin and White 2005). The other resources include involvement and negotiation, which are not the focus of the present research.

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The system of appraisal can be summarized in figure 5–1: Fig. 5–1: The System of Appraisal

By referring to Martin and White (2005) the elements of appraisal theory can be explained as follows. 1. Attitude consists of three elements, which are affect, judgment and graduation. Attitude as the first subtype of appraisal “is concerned with our feelings” (Martin and White 2005:35). Affect refers to the expression of our emotional responses and according to Thompson (2008) the most ‘natural’ way of talking about our feelings. Examples: angry, happy, sad, fast, slow, etc. Judgment is the evaluation of the behavior, ethics, capacity, and tenacity. Examples: brave, honest, polite, stingy, etc. Appreciation refers to the evaluation of the phenomena and processes, according to Munday (2012) it also refers to aesthetics, taste worth, etc. Examples: lovely, pleasant, beautiful, authentic, etc. 2. Graduation refers to the force and focus of a word or structure. Force refers to the elements adjusting the intensity of the text Example: That angel is my tutor. Focus refers to the words or expressions that control the ‘prototypicality’ or make the message ‘sharp’ or ‘blare’ fall into the category of focus. 3. Engagement can be summarized in figure 5–2 taken from Martin and White (2005:134):

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Fig. 5–2: Summary of Engagement

Systems of appraisal that is the theoretical framework of the analysis in this chapter, have been explained in more detail in chapter 3.

5.3 Fansubs and the Problem of Evaluation Before going through the analysis, it is important to discuss what is going on in the process of fansubbing and why it is difficult to evaluate these types of subtitles. Nowadays with the advancement of new technologies and with the spread of computer related and audiovisual products such as DVDs and videogames, new possibilities for subtitling have emerged. With the help of the Internet and new freeware it is now possible for amateurs to provide their subtitles to interested audiences. Fansubbing as a subcategory of amateur subtitling was first developed in 1980’s as subtitles “of various Japanese anime productions made unofficially by fans for non-Japanese viewers” (Munday 2009:151). 128

In contrast to professional subtitles, fansubs deviate more from the regulations, making use of colors and other unfamiliar features. Knowing these facts about fansubbing clarifies why it is difficult to evaluate such subtitles created by fans of a movie. The process of fansubbing is done by fansubbers and a team whose members are each responsible for one part of the process. As was explained earlier, Iran is a dubbing country and therefore, in this country, less attention has been paid to the translation of subtitles. Fansubbing is usually preferred for the Persian translation of English movie subtitles. As far as the above-mentioned points are concerned, there should be at least some guidelines available online or in subtitling software to function as a barrier for the spread of badly written subtitles. The analysis done on fansubs can lead to the distinguishing of the existing problems in the subtitling process and can lead to a series of descriptive guidelines based on trial and error.

5.4 Summary of the Chapter As was mentioned in the previous section, this dissertation considers two types of evaluation for the Persian subtitles of English movies. The first type was explained and analyzed in the previous chapter that was devoted to the translation quality assessment of Persian subtitles of English musical movies. The second type in which non-musical movies are considered the data, is the subject of present chapter. In the following sections, 1,250 English subtitles, together with their Persian counterparts taken from two movies, have been analyzed using appraisal theory as the theoretical framework. The theory has previously been used as the theoretical framework in a study by Munday (2012), whose central focus was the appraisal theory and its application to the translation studies. With the aim of uncovering the translator’s decision-making process, Munday (2012) has picked the appraisal theory of evaluation as a framework centering on the realization of the interpersonal meaning. To achieve this aim he has applied the analysis to a case study of two of President Barack Obama’s speeches in different languages. His analyses have been used as a sample for Persian subtitles of English movies. Cases of omission of interpersonal elements have been spotted in Persian translation, and tentative reasons have been suggested for them. Regarding the results, some tips have been proposed in chapter 6 as criteria for TQA to prevent future cases of omissions in translation of subtitles. Although omission happens very often in case of subtitling where restriction of space exists, attempts have been made in this study to make the best of existing space and avoid the cases of omissions that are not inevitable.

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5.5 Methodology As was mentioned earlier, the focus of the present section is on the omission of interpersonal elements in Persian subtitles of English movies. For this purpose, 1,250 subtitles have been taken from two movies, and two Persian counterparts have been selected as the data; appraisal theory has been applied to the English subtitles and the three interpersonal metafunctions have been spotted with three different colors to make the analysis easier. Red has been picked for attitude, green for graduation and blue for engagement (see appendices II & III/Online resources). The following sections explain the data collection process and data procedures, which are part of methodology in more detail.

5.5.1 Data Collection The data has been selected from: 1. First 500 subtitles of the movie Prisoners 2. The whole subtitles of the first part of the movie Houdini (750 subtitles) 3. Two Persian counterpart subtitles for each of the above-mentioned subtitles to authenticate the analyses. For each movie, one of the subtitles has been taken from the movie bought for the purpose of this research (available in the market) and one ranked higher by viewers among the available online subtitles. The rationale behind this selection was the fact that many viewers in Iran prefer to use online subtitles to avoid the constraints of subtitling that was explained before.

5.5.1.1 Selection of the Movies Prisoners (Prisoners 2013. Alcon Entertainment)and Houdini (Houdini 2014 A & E Television Networks, Cypress Point Productions), selected as the data of the present work, were both recently released and have found lots of fans and viewers in a short time. They consist of different conversations and dialogues among different characters, which are useful for the purpose of the present work which is interpersonal elements of language. The following lines explain more about the movies and their backgrounds: 1. Prisoners is an American thriller released in 2013 and directed by Denis Villeneuve. The film was nominated for Best Cinematography at the 86th Academy Awards. The story is about the kidnapping of two girls, which drives their families to the brink of madness. The story is written by Aron Guzikowski and 130

the film stars Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Viola Davis, Maria Bello, Terrence Howard, Melissa Leo, and Paul Dano (Kissell and Kissell 2014). The father of one of the girls cannot wait for the slow process of detection, and he steals a suspected person with the IQ of a ten year old and tortures him to find a clue, but they are not successful. The movie is full of dialogues among different people, which is worth using for the purpose of the present work. (Prisoners n.d.) 2. Houdini (2014) is a two-part historical drama, which is written by Nicholas Meyer and directed by Uli Edel. The movie stars Adrien Brody, who plays Harry Houdini. It is the story of “a man behind the magic as he finds fame, engages in espionage, battles spiritualists and encounters the greatest names of the era from U.S. president to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Grigori Rasputin” (Houdini 2014).

5.5.1.2 Selection of the Subtitles Considering the points mentioned in chapter 4 about the selection of the subtitles, two Persian subtitles have been selected for each movie; one from the existing subtitles in the market and the other from subtitles ranked higher by the viewers. For Prisoners there exist 118 online subtitles in subscene.com, which is one of the most popular providers of subtitles in Iran. The subtitle that was ranked highest by the viewers was selected as the data. The same website had provided 8 subtitles for the movie Houdini, and the one that was ranked highest (TV Show Translation Team) among others was selected as the data.

5.5.2 Data Procedures (Visual Basic and Automation) The theoretical framework of appraisal system was selected as data analysis tool in this study. The interpersonal elements were first distinguished in the English text and then were compared to their counterparts in Persian, focusing on the omission of the interpersonal elements in the translations. To calculate the frequency of the cases of interpersonal elements, their Persian translations and cases of omission, Visual Basic programing language has been used as useful piece of software for this study. To facilitate the comparisons and to count different reasons for the omission of the interpersonal elements, some functions in MS Excel were also developed.

5.5.2.1 Data Analysis and Interpretation The section consists of two sets of analysis: the first part relates to the application of appraisal theory to the Persian subtitles of Prisoners and the other to 131

the Persian subtitles of Houdini. In the following sections, some examples of the cases of omission of the interpersonal elements will be distinguished and tentative reasons for the omission of these subtitles will be provided. To keep the work to the point and to save space, not all the cases of the omission of the interpersonal elements, analyzed for the purpose of this research will be listed in the following section. As was mentioned before, to facilitate the process of analysis, three different colors have been chosen for three different interpersonal elements; red for attitude, green for graduation and blue for engagement.

5.5.2.2 The Application of Appraisal Theory to the Persian Subtitles of Prisoners The conversations in first 500 sentences of Prisoners have been divided into 27 parts, the interpersonal elements have been found in English subtitles, cases of the omission of interpersonal elements have been distinguished in Persian subtitles and exclusive analysis has been provided for each part. The following tables and their descriptions are some examples that represent the analysis of the subtitles of Prisoners. “✓” means that the interpersonal element is translated, “×” means that the interpersonal element has been omitted and “✓✓” means that the interpersonal element has been added to the existing element in TT (emphasize), and “+” means that the interpersonal element has been added as a new element in TT. For more detailed analysis please see the data analysis available on the online resources, and for the mentioned subtitles and their translations please see appendix II (online resources). The complete data is also available online (Appendices IV and V). Part 1: Religious Part 1. The word “father” is a metaphor for God, which has been translated by both subtitlers as (pedar: father) in Persian, which is also a metaphor. Therefore, the interpersonal element of provoked attitude has been kept in both translations. The archaic word “art” is non-core lexis, which is element of provoked attitude on the one hand and force element of graduation on the other. This word has been translated with (-yee which is the second person singular ending of to be in Persian) which is a simple word. Therefore, provoked attitude and graduation have been lost in the translations. The same case has happened to the word “thy” which is non-core lexis. The reason for this lost and omission is that there is not a one to one translation for these archaic words in English and the translator must either omit them or 132

compensate them in another way. Here the translators have compensated the problem with the Persian archaic word (baad: to be) to increase the effect and graduation in this way. In this case we cannot claim that we have a loss of graduation. The following table is the presentation of the above-mentioned points: Interpersonal element Father (metaphor) Provoked attitude

S1 (first subtitler) (pedar: father) provoked attitude: ✓

S2 (second subtitler) (pedar: father) provoked attitude: ✓

Art (non-core lexis) provoked attitude and (force) graduation

(yee: to be) provoked attitude: × graduation: compensated: ✓

(yee: to be) provoked attitude: × graduation: compensated: ✓

Thy (non-core lexis) provoked attitude and (force) graduation

(to: you) provoked attitude: × graduation: compensated: ✓

(to: you) provoked attitude: × graduation: compensated: ✓

2. Instead of “today”, the author has used “this day”, which is non-core lexis. However, none of the translators has considered this point in their works. The reason for this shift can be the translators’ focus on the TT rather than the structure of the ST. “Daily bread” is a metaphor referring to the food and other requirements of human being. This element of provoked attitude has been translated like a metaphor and the interpersonal element has been preserved by both translators. Interpersonal element This day (non-core lexis) provoked attitude and (force) graduation

S1 (first subtitler) (emruz: today) provoked attitude: × graduation: ×

S2 (second subtitler) (emruz: today) provoked attitude: × graduation: ×

Daily bread (metaphor) provoked attitude and (force) graduation

(naan/e/kafaaf: bread/ezafe marker/enough) provoked attitude: ✓ graduation: ✓

(naan/e/rouzaneh: bread/ ezafe marker/daily) provoked attitude: ✓ graduation: ✓ graduation: ✓

3. “Now and forever” is an element of force (graduation). S1 has used a simple word disregarding the element of force, but S2 has used a forced phrase. Both translators have omitted the word “now” may be because it has been implicitly stated in the used verbs. 133

Interpersonal element now and forever (force) graduation

S1 (first subtitler) (abad: forever) graduation: ×

S2 (second subtitler) (abadelaabad: forever) graduation: ✓ graduation: ✓

Part 2: Radio News This part is translated only by one of the subtitlers may be because of the lack of quality in the original movie. 4. There are two “some”s in this sentence but only one of them has been translated. Therefore, element of graduation is once preserved and once omitted. In “some refreeze”, the reason of omission is that there is no direct phrase for that in Persian and it should be transferred by using some kind of creativity. Therefore, one can say that lack of creativity is the reason of this omission. This point is one of the elements that should be considered in the framework of translation analysis. Interpersonal element Some refreeze (force) graduation

S1 (first subtitler) __

S2 (second subtitler) No translation graduation: ×

Some of the roads (force) graduation

__

(barxi: some) graduation: ✓

Part 3: Father, Son Conversation 5. The phrase “most important thing” contains the element of attitude (appreciation) and graduation (force) that has been directly translated into Persian. “Ever” is an element of focus (graduation) that has been omitted in both Persian translations. The reason for this omission is the carelessness of the translator, because the exact equivalence for “ever” exists in Persian language. Interpersonal element Most important thing (appreciation) attitude, (force) graduation

S1 (first subtitler) (mohem/tarin/chiz: important/superlative suffix/ thing) attitude: ✓ graduation: ✓

S2 (second subtitler) (mohem/tarin/chiz: important/superlative suffix/ thing) attitude: ✓ graduation: ✓

Ever (focus) graduation

Not translated graduation: ×

Not translated graduation: ×

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6. “No more food gets delivered” contains the element of denial (engagement) that has been preserved by both translators. “more” contains the element of force (graduation) that has been preserved by S2 but with another word, and it has been omitted by S1 because of the carelessness of the translator. S2 has also added another element of graduation (un moqe: that time) which has caused an increase in graduation. “Dry up” is a non-core lexis which is an element of provoked attitude and force element of graduation it has been preserved by S2 but omitted by S1. Interpersonal element no more food gets delivered (denial) engagement, (force) graduation

S1 (first subtitler) (mahmule/ye/qazaayee/be forushgah/haa/ne/mirese: cargo/food shop/plural marker/negative marker/ arrive) engagement: ✓ graduation: ×

S2 (second subtitler) (un/moqe/dige/qazaayee/ vaase /xaar-o-barforooshi/ne/ miaaran:that/time/more/food/ for/grocery/negative marker/ bring) engagement: ✓ graduation: ✓✓

Dry up (non-core lexis) provoked attitude, (force) graduation

(xaali shodan: empty) provoked attitude: × graduation: ×

(xoshk shodan: dry up) provoked attitude: ✓ graduation: ✓ graduation: ✓

7. “Just” is an element of force (graduation) in the sentence that has been omitted by both translators. “Turn on each other” is a non-core structure (provoked attitude), which means stop liking each other. S2 has used the correct translation with a simple structure and has caused a loss of provoked attitude and graduation and S1 has preserved the provoked attitude and graduation but there is a loss of meaning. Here the best translation could be the one that preserved both interpersonal elements and the meaning. Interpersonal element Just (force) graduation Turn on each other (non-core structure) provoked attitude (force) graduation

S1 (first subtitler) Not translated graduation: ×

S2 (second subtitler) Not translated graduation: ×

(dast/be/daaman/e/hamdige/ (baa/ham/doshamn/mishan: mishan: hand/to/lap (ezafe together/enemy/get) marker) each other/get (meaning: provoked attitude: × ask each other for help) graduation: × provoked attitude: ✓ graduation: ✓

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Part 4: Musical Part 8. “Differently” limits the scope of “look”ing “at others” therefore, it can be considered the focus element of graduation. It has not been translated by the second translator at all and the first translator has directly transferred it into Persian. Interpersonal element Differently (focus) graduation

S1 (first subtitler) (Motafaavet: differently) graduation: ✓

S2 (second subtitler) __

Part 5: Family Conversation 9. “Hold on a second” is an expression and a non-core structure which is an element of provoked attitude. There is also the force element of graduation in this structure. S1 and S2 have both used direct translation, which has preserved the elements of provoked attitude and graduation. But S2 has used a colloquial language (vasta: stop), which adds the degree of force element of graduation. Therefore, we can say that graduation has increased in this translation. Interpersonal element Hold on a second (expression) provoked attitude, (force) graduation

S1 (first subtitler) (ye/lahze/sabr kon: one/ moment/wait) Provoked attitude: ✓ graduation: ✓

S2 (second subtitler) (ye/lahze/vaysta: one/moment/ stop) Provoked attitude: ✓ graduation: ✓✓

10. Barely is a counter-expectation adjunct, which is an element of engagement. It also contains the force element of graduation and is also an aspect of provoked attitude. It has been translated as (be zur: with force) which contains all the three elements of engagement, graduation and provoked attitude. Keep up with (expression) has not been translated by S1 and has been translated as a simple structure by S2. The force element of graduation has not been kept in Persian translation.

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Interpersonal element S1 (first subtitler) Barely (counter-xpectation (be/zur: with/force) adjunct) engagement, (force) Provoked attitude: ✓ graduation, provoked engagement: ✓ attitude graduation: ✓ Keep up with (expression) provoked attitude, (force) graduation

__

S2 (second subtitler) (be/zur: with/force) Provoked attitude: ✓ engagement: ✓ graduation: ✓ (taa/betunam…: so that/I can…) Provoked attitude:× graduation:×

Part 6: Mixed Conversation 11. “Hell” in “get the hell in here” is a metaphor, an element of provoked attitude. It also includes the force element of graduation. None of the translators has used a metaphoric equivalence for this word; rather they have used some elements that add to the intensity and force of the sentence. This kind of compensation changes the meaning but still keeps the feeling of the sentence. Interpersonal element S1 (first subtitler) Hell (metaphor) Not directly translated, provoked attitude, addition of (digeh: this element (force) graduation adds to the emphasize of the sentence in Persian) Provoked attitude: × graduation: ✓

S2 (second subtitler) Not directly translated, addition of (bebinam: I see (this element adds to the emphasize of the sentence in Persian)) Provoked attitude: × graduation: ✓

12. “Us veterinarians” focuses on the job of “us” S1 has transferred this into Persian, but S2 has used the Persian equivalence for “vegetarian” instead of “vegetarian.” This is because of the carelessness of the translator. “Lousy” in “lousy butchers” is a judgment element of attitude. It is translated as a judgment element in Persian by both S1 and S2. However, S2 has used an intensifier that is an element of graduation. This element is followed by a simple adjective i.e., (bad: meaning bad also in English). This combination produces a phrase, which is similar in meaning and intensity of the original word: “lousy.”

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Interpersonal element S1 (first subtitler) Us veterinarians (focus) (maa/daampezeshk/ha:us/ graduation veterinarians/plural marker) graduation: ✓ Lousy (judgment) attitude

(eftezaah: very bad) attitude: ✓

S2 (second subtitler) (maa/giaahxaar/aan: us vegetarian/plural marker) meaning:× graduation: ✓ (xeili bad: very bad) attitude: ✓

Part 7: The dialogue between the Boy and the Girl + Musical Part 13. “Do you feel bad for the cows when you go to McDonald’s” is a rhetorical question which is a proclaim element of engagement. S1 and S2 have both transferred it into Persian by using a non-core structure (expression) that is the element of provoked attitude and force element of graduation. Interpersonal element S1 (first subtitler) S2 (second subtitler) Do you feel bad for the (vaqti/miri/resturan/e (vaqti/miri/resturan/e cows when you go to McDonald’s/delet/baraaye/ McDonald’s/delet/baraaye/ McDonald’s (rhetorical gaav/ha/misuzeh?: when/you gaav/ha/misuzeh?: when/you question, proclaim) go to/ restaurant /ezafe marker/ go to/ restaurant /ezafe marker/ engagement Mc Donald’s/ your heart/for Mc Donald’s/ your heart/for the/cow/plural marker/burns?) the/cow/plural marker/burns?) provoked attitude: + provoked attitude: + graduation: + graduation: + engagement: ✓ engagement: ✓

14. “That’s what my dad says” belongs to the category of attribute because the speaker refers to the words of his dad and not himself directly. Therefore, it is considered the proclaim element of engagement. It has been directly translated into Persian by both S1 and S2. Too many is an intensifier, force element of graduation. S1 has used a direct translation for this element but S2 has omitted the intensifier “too” in the translation that leads to a distortion of graduation. “You gotta keep the population down” is a pronounce, subcategory of proclaim element of engagement. It has been directly translated by S1 and S2 into Persian. Although S2 has transferred the element of engagement, he has changed the meaning of the sentence. The back translation is: “you gotta lower the population” which has a different meaning from the original sentence.

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Interpersonal element S1 (first subtitler) That’s what my dad says (in/o/baabaa/m/mige: this/ (attribute), proclaim object marker/dad/2nd person sing. poss. Pron./says) engagement engagement: ✓

S2 (second subtitler) (baabaa/m/ino/mige: 2nd person sing. poss. Pronoun this/object marker/says) engagement: ✓

Too many (intensifier, force) graduation

(xeili/ziaad: too/many) graduation: ✓

(ziaad: many) graduation: ×

You gotta keep the population down (pronounce, proclaim) engagement

(bayad/jamiateshun/ro/ kontorol/kard: should/their population/object marker/ control/make) engagement: ✓

(baayad/jamiateshun/ro/kam/ kard:should/their population/ object marker/low/make) engagement: ✓ meaning: ×

Part 8: Dialogue between two Girls 15. “He doesn’t speak” is a disclaim (denial) element of engagement. S1 has transferred it directly into Persian, but S2 has added an intensifier “(kollan: generally)” to the sentence that is a force element of graduation. Interpersonal element He doesn’t speak engagement (disclaim, denial)

S1 (first subtitler) (un/harf nemizaneh: he/ doesn’t speak/) engagement: ✓

S2 (second subtitler) (un/kollan/harf/nemizaneh: he/in general/doesn’t speak) engagement: ✓ graduation: +

Part 9: Mixed Conversation 16. “Actually” is the subcategory of proclaim (affirm, concur) which is itself a subcategory of engagement. S1 has omitted this element in the translation and S2 has directly translated it into Persian. Interpersonal element Actually (affirm, concur, proclaim) engagement

S1 (first subtitler) __

S2 (second subtitler) (raastesh: in fact) engagement: ✓

Part 10: Family Conversation 17. “Probably” is an entertain (proclaim) element of engagement. The direct equivalence for that has been transferred into Persian by both translators.

139

Interpersonal element Probably (proclaim, entertain) engagement

S1 (first subtitler) (ehtemaalan: probably) engagement: ✓

S2 (second subtitler) (ehtemaalan: probably) engagement: ✓

Part 11: Mixed Conversation 18. “I couldn’t find them” is a denial (disclaim) element of engagement. This element has been transferred by both translators. However, S2 has omitted the modal form. “Mess around” is an expression (a non-core structure), which is defined by free dictionary as “to pass time in aimless puttering” (Mess Around 2014). S1 has not transferred the interpersonal element correctly. He has omitted the provoked attitude and also graduation. In contrary, S2 has transferred it directly into the Persian. Interpersonal element I couldn’t find them (denial, disclaim) engagement

S1 (first subtitler) (peidaashun/na/kard/am: find them/negative marker/1st person sing. marker) engagement: ✓

S2 (second subtitler) (na/tunestam/peidashun/ konam: negative marker/I could/find/them) engagement: ✓

Mess around (expression, (mozahem/e/in/xune/shodin: (daashtin/tu/in/xune/ non-core structure) disturb/ezafe marker/this/ masxare bazi dar miovordin: provoked attitude, (force) house/you did) cont. tense marker/in/this/ graduation graduation: × house/making fun) provoked attitude: × graduation: ✓ provoked attitude: ✓

Part 12: Dialogue between the Waitress and the Policeman 19. “Monkey” in “I’m a monkey” is a reference to Chinese astrology, which is an element of provoked attitude. Both translators have used explicitation for the translation by adding the word “saal: year” and therefore, it has not been translated as a metaphor and the element of provoked attitude has been omitted. Here the omission of provoked attitude has caused the loss of surprise in translation. This can be called unnecessary clarification at the expense of losing the effect.

140

Interpersonal element I’m a monkey. (metaphor) Provoked attitude

S1 (first subtitler) (sal/e/meymun: year/ezafe marker/monkey) Provoked attitude: ×

S2 (second subtitler) (man/saal/e/meymun/be/donia/ umadam: I/year/ezafe marker/ monkey/to/world/have come) Provoked attitude: ×

Part 13: Dialogue between the Thief and the Policeman 20. “This fucking guy” contains the judgment element of provoked attitude. None of the translators have preserved the adjective + noun structure. Rather they have both transferred the meaning implicitly as a metaphor. Therefore we can see a shift of direct attitude into provoked attitude in translations. Interpersonal element This fucking guy (judgement) direct attitude

S1 (first subtitler) (in/martikeh: this/asshole) direct attitude: × provoked attitude: ✓

S2 (second subtitler) (in/lanati: this/fucking) direct attitude: × provoked attitude: ✓

Part 14: The Cop and the Arrested Man 21. “Little” in “little girls” is considered the effect element of direct attitude. S1 has used the same adjective in Persian and therefore, the element of attitude has been preserved. But S2 has omitted the adjective and has changed it into a compound noun in Persian, which is not an element of attitude. Interpersonal element Little girls (affect) direct attitude

S1 (first subtitler) (doxtar/kuchulu: girl/little) direct attitude: ✓

S2 (second subtitler) (doxtar/bache: girl/baby) direct attitude: ×

Part 15 & 16: The old woman and the Cop & Dialogue between the Cop and the RV Detector 22. “I’m just glad to know where he is.” In this sentence, “just” is the denial, disclaim element of engagement. S1 has transferred it directly into Persian but S2 has omitted it without any justifiable reason (carelessness of the translator).

141

Interpersonal element I’m just glad to know where he is (denial, disclaim) engagement

S1 (first subtitler) (faqat/xoshhaalam/ke/ midunam/ koja/st: just/I am happy/that/I know/where/is) engagement: ✓

S2 (second subtitler) (xoshhaalam/ke/fahmidam/ koja/st: I am happy/that/I understand/where/is) engagement: ×

Part 17 & 18: Conversation between the Cop and the Family Friends & Conversation between the Detective and the Family 23. “There is no way someone…” contains the denial, disclaim, element of engagement. This is also an expression, which is considered a non-core structure, an element of provoked attitude. The engagement element has been considered by both translators. But provoked attitude have been omitted by S2, because of the translator’s tendency towards simple structure. Interpersonal element There is no way someone… Denial, disclaim Engagement Expression, non-core structure Provoked attitude

S1 (first subtitler) (omran/raah/nadaare/ke/ yeki: never/way/doesn’t have/that/someone) engagement: ✓ provoked attitude: ✓

S2 (second subtitler) (emkaan/nadaare/ye/nafar: possibility/doesn’t have/ one/person) engagement: ✓ provoked attitude: ×

24. “Did you give him one?” the repetition of a concept with different paraphrases is considered a force element of graduation here. S1 has transferred it directly into Persian but S2 has stated the concept with totally different words which has caused the reduction of emphasize (force) element of graduation, maybe to avoid repetition. Interpersonal element Did you give him one Repetition, force graduation

S1 (first subtitler) (be/un/am/vasl kardin: to/him/too/connect) graduation: ✓

S2 (second subtitler) (un/o/ham/aazmaayesh kardin: he/ object marker/too/test) graduation: ×

25. “They said he tried to get away” contains the acknowledge, attribute, proclaim element of engagement. This element has been transferred into Persian by both translators. Get away is an expression (non-core structure), an 142

element of provoked attitude, which has been transferred as an expression by S1 and not S2. Interpersonal element They said he tried to get away acknowledge, attribute, proclaim engagement non-core structures provoked attitude

S1 (first subtitler) S2 (second subtitler) (goftan/say karde/dar (goftan/say karde/faraar bere: they said/has tried/ kone: they said/has run away) tried/escape) engagement: ✓ engagement: ✓ provoked attitude: ✓ provoked attitude: ×

Part 19 & 20: dialogue between the cop and the father & dialogoue between the cop and his boss 26. “Positive” in “you are positive” is non-core lexis, element of provoked attitude. This has been translated as core lexis by both translators and therefore, the element of provoked attitude has been omitted. “Innocent” in “he is innocent” is a judgment element of attribute that has been transferred directly into Persian by both translators. “But you want to hold him” is a rhetorical question because the answer to that is clear. Rhetorical question is categorized under concur, proclaim element of engagement that has been translated as a rhetorical question by both translators. Interpersonal element Positive Non-core lexis, Provoked attitude

S1 (first subtitler) (motmaen: sure) provoked attitude: ×

S2 (second subtitler) (motmaen: sure) provoked attitude: ×

Innocent Judgment, attribute attitude

(bi gonaah: innocent) judgment, attribute attitude: ✓

(bi gonaah: innocent) judgment, attribute attitude: ✓

But you want to hold him? Rhetorical question Concur, proclaim Engagement

(vali/mixai/baazdaasht/ negahesh daari: but/you want/arrested/keep him) engagement: ✓

(vali/mixai/baazdaasht/ bemune: but/you want/ arrested/remain) engagement: ✓

27. “Shit” in “you have exactly shit” is a metaphor, element of provoked attitude. This word has been replaced by “nothing” by S1, which is not a metaphor. Therefore, we have a loss of provoked attitude in translation. S2 has changed the structure of the sentence by using a denial, disclaim element of engagement. The meaning is there, but the element of provoked attitude has been omitted. “Level-three sex offenders” contains the judgment, affect 143

element of attitude, which has been directly transferred into Persian by both translators. Interpersonal element Shit Metaphor Provoked attitude

S1 (first subtitler) (hichi: nothing) provoked attitude: ×

S2 (second subtitler) (ye/chiz/e/be dard boxor: one/ thing/ezafe marker/useful) provoked attitude: × engagement: ✓

Level-three sex offenders attitude

(motajavez/e/jensi/e/ daraje/se: offender/ezafe marker/sexual/level/three) attitude: ✓

(motajavez/e/jensi/e/sath/e/se: offender/ezafe marker/sexual/ level/ezafe marker/three) attitude: ✓

Part 21: Dialogue between the Cop and the Big Man 28. “Brag” is a non-core lexis, element of provoked attitude. S1 has used noncore lexis as equivalence and S2 has used a non-core structure, which is also an element of provoked attitude. Small changes like the shift from non-core lexis to non-core structure do not have any effect on the translation. Interpersonal element Brag Non-core lexis Provoked attitude

S1 (first subtitler) (poz daadan: brag) provoked attitude: ✓

S2 (second subtitler) (be xod baalidan: be proud of oneself) provoked attitude: ✓

Part 22 & 23: Telephone Conversation between Husband and Wife & Mixed Conversation 29. “They didn’t cry until I left them” is a denial, disclaim element of engagement. The element of denial has been omitted in translation by S1. This omission has no effect on the meaning but it has caused a shift in the image of the text. S2 has transferred this element directly and literally into Persian. Interpersonal element They didn’t cry until I left them Denial, disclaim engagement

144

S1 (first subtitler) (vaqti/az/pisheshun/ raftam/gerye kardan: when/from/their side/ I went/they cried) engagement: ×

S2 (second subtitler) (taa/vaqti/az/pisheshun/ naraftam/gerye nakardan: till/ when/from/their side/didn’t go/didn’t cry) engagement: ✓

Part 24: Conversation between the Cop, his Boss and the Father 30. “Grab” is a non-core lexis, element of provoked attitude, which is also considered a force element of graduation. S1 has used a core-lexis, and therefore has omitted the interpersonal element in translation. S2 has used a corelexis+ expansion, which has led to keep the force element of graduation. Here the element of force and provoked attitude has been compensated by expansion. Interpersonal element Grab Non-core lexis Provoked attitude

S1 (first subtitler) (gereftam: I took) provoked attitude: ×

S2 (second subtitler) (yaqash/ro/gereftam: his collar/ object marker/I took) provoked attitude: compensated

31. “They didn’t cry until I left them” is a denial, disclaim element of engagement. S1 has changed the negative structure of denial into a positive structure leading to the loss of engagement. However, S2 has correctly transferred this element into Persian. “Fucking” in “fucking face” is an appreciation, element of attitude. S1 has simply omitted the adjective (carelessness of the translator), but S2 has used an equivalent adjective for that. Interpersonal element They didn’t cry until I left them Denial, disclaim engagement

S1 (first subtitler) (vaqti/az/pisheshun/raftam/ geryeh kardam: when/from/ their side/I went/ they cried) engagement: ×

S2 (second subtitler) (taa/vaqti/az/pisheshun/ naraftam/gerye nakardan: till/when/from/their side/I didn’t go/didn’t cry) engagement: ✓

Fucking Appreciation attitude

-

(sahebmordeh: dead owner) attitude: ✓

Part 25: Dialogue between the Cop and the Accused 32. “Sweetie” is a metaphor, element of provoked attitude. It has been transferred into Persian but with different wording. “I’ll be right in the next room” contains the focus element of graduation. S1 has used the element of force, but S2 has omitted it (carelessness of the translator.)

145

Interpersonal element Sweetie Metaphor provoked attitude

S1 (first subtitler) (azizam: my darling) provoked attitude: ✓

S2 (second subtitler) (azizam: my darling) provoked attitude: ✓

I’ll be right in the next room Focus graduation

(man/tu/hamin/otaaq/ baqali/hastam: I/in/this/ room/near/am) graduation: ✓

(man/tu/otaaq/kenaari/ hastam: I /in/room/near/am) graduation: ×

Part 26 & 27: Dialogue between the Cop and the Father & Father, Son Dialogu 33. “Just keep an eye on your mother” contains a counter-expectancy indicator, element of provoked attitude. Both translators have omitted this element, although the form exists in Persian. This omission can be known as the carelessness of the translator. Interpersonal element Just keep an eye on your mother Counter-expectancy indicator Provoked attitude

S1 (first subtitler) -

S2 (second subtitler) -

5.5.2.3 Omission of the Interpersonal Elements in Persian Version of Prisoners: Tentative Reasons After having a close look at the analyses, some of the omissions of the interpersonal elements, seem to have the same cause. By analyzing the data and considering the tentative reasons for omission of interpersonal elements in translations, 9 bases for omission of these elements were suggested. The frequencies of the omissions are shown in chart 5–1. The horizontal line shows the reason number and the vertical line represents the frequency of the cases of omission of the interpersonal element. The left column shows cases of omission by the first subtitler (S1) and the second column shows the cases of omission by the second subtitler (S2).

146

Chart 5–1: The Frequency of Tentative Reasons of Omission of the Interpersonal Elements in Prisoners by two Translators

Here is a list of the tentative reasons (Rn) of the omission of interpersonal elements: R1 Lack of the word or structure in TL and/or TT: Sometimes a word or structure does not exist in the target text; in such cases the translator may prefer to omit the unknown case in translation. As an example, we may refer to the archaic word “art” in English which refers to the to be form: “are.” In Persian there is no archaic word for “to be” verbs as far as the author’s knowledge is concerned. R2 Being uncommon in TL and/or TT: Sometimes a TT word or structure is used commonly in ST but rarely in TT; in such cases the translator may have several choices one of which is the omission of the element. As an example we may refer to the subtitle 342 of Prisoners: “for a fucking second.” Here the author has used an adjective to modify a noun that refers to time (second). But it is not common to use adjective with these types of nouns in Persian. Therefore, we can see that both translators have omitted the adjective in Persian translation. R3 Tendency towards simple lexis and structure: this category which can sometimes overlap with the ‘taste of the translator’ refers to the cases where the translator selects a simpler lexis or structure for a complicated word or structure in ST in order to make it understandable for the readers or audiences. 147

R4

R5

R6

R7

R8 R9

148

For example in sentence 135 of the Prisoners, “Whup” is an informal equivalence for “beating”, and is non-core lexis, which is an element of provoked attitude. S1 has used “davaa kardan” which is a core-lexis and has led to the loss of provoked attitude. This has happened because of the translator’s tendency towards simple lexis. Translator’s lack of creativity: sometimes there is not a direct equivalent for a certain word or structure in ST but the translator can translate it correctly by using creativity in their work. In such cases if the translator omits the case, it is because of their lack of creativity. As an example we may refer to sentence 453 of Prisoners “What did I ‘fucking’ tell you” contains the force element of graduation. S1 has used a forced structure too, but S2 has translated it without considering the force element. Here the translator must use his talent and creativity in order to be able to transfer the interpersonal element. Taste of the translator: some of the choices by translators are not the matter of correctness or incorrectness; rather they are the matter of the taste of the translator. It falls on the translator to select among different available options. As an example we may refer to the cases of attitude where the translator omits one type of attitude and replaces it with another type in translation without making considerable change of meaning. Carelessness of the translator: sometimes the reason of omission is simply the carelessness of the translator. Sometimes it may be because of the translator’s lack of concentration, lack of knowledge in a specific field or only a slip of the pen. Other translators or critics or the translators themselves can distinguish these cases when they are revising their works. Omission at the expense of preserving the meaning: sometimes the translator is forced to omit the interpersonal element at the expense of preserving the meaning; for example, in sentence 20 of Prisoners, “Turn on each other” is a non-core structure (provoked attitude), which means stop liking each other. S2 has used the correct translation with a simple structure and has caused a loss of provoked attitude and graduation and S1 has preserved the provoked attitude and graduation, but there is a loss of meaning. Here, the best translation could be the one that preserved both interpersonal elements and the meaning. Total omission of the sentence: in this case, for whatever reason, the translator omits the whole sentence, which may also contain the interpersonal element. Clarification of the text: sometimes omission of an interpersonal element may lead to the clarification of the text. For example we may refer to the sentence 174 of Prisoners: “Monkey” in “I’m a monkey” is a reference to Chinese

astrology, which is an element of provoked attitude. Both translators have used explicitation for the translation by adding the word “saal: year” and therefore, it has not been translated as a metaphor and the element of provoked attitude has been omitted. Here the omission of provoked attitude has caused the loss of reader’s surprise in translation. This can be called unnecessary clarification at the expense of losing the effect. Based on this reasons the frequency of occurrence of omission in Prisoners can be summarized in table 5–1: Tab. 5–1: Reasons of the Omission of the Interpersonal Elements in Prisoners

Reason of the omission of interpersonal element R1

Lack of word or structure in TL and/or TT

R2

Being uncommon in TL and/or TT

R3

Tendency towards simple structure or lexis

Cases of Cases of Omission of the Omission of the Interpersonal Interpersonal Elements by S1 Elements by S2 2 3 2

1

18

20

R4

Translator’s lack of creativity

4

4

R5

Taste of the translator

9

4

R6

Carelessness of the translator

7

6

R7

Omission at the expense of preserving the meaning

0

2

R8

Total omission of the sentence

4

5

R9

Clarification of the text

1

1

5.5.2.4 The Application of Appraisal Theory to Persian Subtitles of Houdini To authenticate the analysis appraisal theory was applied to 750 subtitles of Houdini and two of its translations. The following tables and their descriptions represent the analysis of the subtitles of Houdini (see Appendix III/Online resource). Part 1: Harry’s Monologue 1. “Ordinary” in “ordinary life” is an adjective, appreciation element of direct attitude. S1 has used the exact equivalence for the word “ordinary”, i.e. (ruzmare: everyday). But S2 has used a simpler synonym for that (mamuli: normal) although the interpersonal element has been transferred directly by both 149

translators; the force element of graduation has been reduced in the second translation because of using a simpler word. The verb “shackle” is also noncore lexis whose core is “restrain.” Both translators have used expressions, which are considered non-core structure in Persian and is again an element of provoked attitude and force element of graduation. We can here conclude that the replacement of non-core lexis with a non-core structure has no effect on the type of interpersonal element. Interpersonal element ordinary life (appreciation) direct attitude

S1 (first subtitler) (zendegi/e/ruzmare: life/ezafe marker/every day) direct attitude: ✓

S2 (second subtitler) (zendegi/e/mamuli: life/ ezafe marker/normal) direct attitude: ✓ graduation: ×

Shackle (non-core lexis) provoked attitude

(dast/va/pa/ra/bastan: hand/ and/foot/object marker/close) provoked attitude: ✓

(qeid/o/band: constraint/ and/rope) provoked attitude: ✓

2. “Need to” in “we need to get away” is a proclaim, pronounce element of engagement and “get away” is non-core lexis, element of provoked attitude and also a force element of graduation. Both S1 and S2 have transferred the pronounce element into Persian, but in case of provoked attitude it should be mentioned that S1 has omitted this element by using a core-lexis equivalent. Interpersonal element Need to (proclaim, pronounce) engagement

S1 (first subtitler) (baayad: have to) engagement: ✓

S2 (second subtitler) (baayad: have to) engagement: ✓

Get away (non-core lexis) provoked attitude, (force) graduation

(faraar kardan: to scape) provoked attitude: × graduation: ×

(qeser dar raftan: get away) provoked attitude: ✓ graduation: ✓

3. “Alive” in “I know I am alive” is an affect element of attitude. S1 has shifted the adjective to a noun (life), which has led to the omission of the interpersonal element. S2 in contrary has transferred the interpersonal element directly into Persian. Interpersonal element Alive (affect) direct attitude

150

S1 (first subtitler) (zendegi: life) direct attitude: ×

S2 (second subtitler) (zende: alive) direct attitude: ✓

4. “Almost” in “from almost anything” is a focus element of graduation. S1 has omitted this element, and the reason of this omission can be the carelessness of the translator. S2 in contrast has directly transferred the element into Persian. Interpersonal element Almost (focus) graduation

S1 (first subtitler) graduation: ×

S2 (second subtitler) (taqriban: almost) graduation: ✓

Part 2: Dialogue between Harry and his Wife 5. “Entertainment” in “we are the entertainment” is a metaphor which is an element of provoked attitude. Both translators have used the expansion technique in order to avoid misunderstanding but this has led to the loss of metaphor and consequently loss of provoked attitude, which is an interpersonal element. S1 has used (masuliat daashtan: having responsibility) and S2 has used the verb form for (sargarm kardan: to entertain). Interpersonal element Entertainment (metaphor) provoked attitude

S1 (first subtitler) (masuliat/e/sargarm kardan/ ra/dashtan: responsibility/ ezafe marker/amusing/object marker/to have) provoked attitude: ×

S2 (second subtitler) (sargarm kardan: to entertain) provoked attitude: ×

6. The repetition of “no” here is again the force element and also a denial, disclaim element, which has been directly transferred into Persian. “Hold on” is an expression meaning wait. Expression is a non-core structure, which is also an element of provoked attitude and a force element of graduation. Both translators have omitted the interpersonal elements by using a simple (core) equivalence. This omission can be considered the translator’s tendency towards simple structure or lexis. Interpersonal element No, no (denial, disclaim) Engagement, (force) graduation

S1 (first subtitler) (na/na: no/no) engagement: ✓ graduation: ✓

S2 (second subtitler) (na/na: no/no) engagement: ✓ graduation: ✓

Hold on (expression, non-core structure) provoked attitude

Provoked attitude: ×

Provoked attitude: ×

151

7. “Whiskey” in “whiskey breath” is an adjective. It defines an object, which is “breath.” This is considered the appreciation element of direct attitude. The translators have changed this adjective into a noun, because this adjective is not common in Persian. Therefore, here there is a loss of attitude. Interpersonal element Whiskey breath (adjective) direct attitude

S1 (first subtitler) (bu/ye/whiskey: smell/ezafe marker/wiski) attitude: ×

S2 (second subtitler) (bu/ye/whiskey: smell/ezafe marker/wiski) attitude: ×

8. “Make such a big deal out of everything” is an expression, element of provoked attitude and also a force element of graduation. The translators have used the expression (gonde kardan: make big). This is also an element of provoked attitude, but the meaning is not complete. There is an exact equivalence in Persian that is (az/kuh/kaah/saaxtan: from/mount/straw/make), but unfortunately none of the translators have used it. Therefore, the force element of graduation, have not been considered in the translation. Interpersonal element Make such a big deal out of nothing (expression) provoked attitude, (force) graduation

S1 (first subtitler) S2 (second subtitler) (bu/ye/whiskey: smell/ezafe (bu/ye/whiskey: smell/ezafe marker/wiski) marker/wiski) provoked attitude: ✓ provoked attitude: ✓ graduation: × graduation: ×

Part 3: Harry Continuing to Tell his Story 9. “Get away” is a non-core structure, which is an element of provoked attitude and also the force element of graduation. The first translator has used a core structure (faraar kardan: to scape), leading to the omission of provoked attitude and graduation. In contrast, the second translator has directly transferred the interpersonal elements into Persian. The reason of the omission of the interpersonal element by S1 is the carelessness of the translator, because the equivalent structure exists in Persian. Interpersonal element Get away (non-core structure) provoked attitude (force) graduation

152

S1 (first subtitler) (faraar kardan: to scape) provoked attitude: × graduation: ×

S2 (second subtitler) (qeser/dar raftan: unproductive/escape) provoked attitude: ✓ graduation: ✓

10. “Mesmerized” is a non-core lexis, which is considered provoked attitude and also a force element of graduation. S1 has also used non-core lexis in his translation, but S2 has used a core lexis, which has led to the omission of the interpersonal elements. The reason for this omission is the translator’s tendency towards simple structure or lexis. Interpersonal element Mesmerized (non-core lexis) provoked attitude (force) graduation

S1 (first subtitler) (xire: amazed) provoked attitude: ✓ graduation: ✓

S2 (second subtitler) (taht-e-tasir: influenced) provoked attitude: × graduation: ×

Part 4: Dialogue between Harry and his Mama 11. The repetition of the word “mama” is considered the force element of graduation; the word has also been repeated in both translations. Interpersonal element Mama, mama (repetition, force) graduation

S1 (first subtitler) (maamaan/maamaan: mama/mama) graduation: ✓

S2 (second subtitler) (maamaan/maamaan: mama/mama) graduation: ✓

Part 5: Harry’s Family Talking Together 12. “Brachot” is non-core lexis, meaning “blessings” and is considered a provoked attitude element. It can be also considered a force element of graduation. the translators have not been successful in translating this word, and they have both replaced it with a simple word (doa: prayer) because the word does not exist in Persian and instead of explaining it into Persian, they have replaced it with a simple lexis (tendency towards simple lexis). Interpersonal element Brachot (non-core lexis) provoked attitude, (force) graduation

S1 (first subtitler) (doa: prayer) graduation: ×

S2 (second subtitler) (doa: prayer) graduation: ×

13. “A magician is not really a magician” contains two interpersonal elements: one is denial, disclaim element of engagement, which has been directly transferred into Persian, and the second one is repetition, force element of graduation, unfortunately both translators have omitted this element and have replaced 153

the second word with an equivalent word. This has led to the clarification of the sentence in one hand and the omission of its force in the other. Interpersonal element S1 (first subtitler) A magician is not really a magician (shobadebaaz/dar vaaqe/ (denial, disclaim) engagement jadugar/nist: magician/in (force) fact/wizard/is not) graduation engagement: ✓ graduation: ×

S2 (second subtitler) (shobadebaaz/vaaqean/ jadugar/nist: magician/ really/wizard/is not) engagement: ✓ graduation: ×

Part 6: Men Talking to Harry’s Papa 14. “We can no longer …” contains the denial, disclaim element of engagement which has been directly transferred into Persian. Interpersonal element We can no longer (denial, disclaim) engagement

S1 (first subtitler) (dige/ne/mitunim: anymore/ negative marker/we can) engagement: ✓

S2 (second subtitler) (dige/ne/mitunim: anymore/ negative marker/we can) engagement: ✓

Part 7: Harry Talking about his Decision 15. “Some things can hit you in the gut worse than any punch” is an expression, a non-core structure, element of provoked attitude. Both translators have used a literal translation for this expression; although the meaning has been transferred, the interpersonal element has been omitted because of the translator’s lack of knowledge and their tendency towards simple structure. Interpersonal element S1 (first subtitler) S2 (second subtitler) Some things can hit (bazi/vaqtaa/zarbeyee/behet/mixore/ (bazi/vaqtaa/chizi/be/ you in the gut worse ke/badtar/az/har/moshti/be/ shekamet/mixore/ke/ than any punch shekamet/e: some/times/a hit/ badtar/az/har/moshti/e: (expression, non-core indefinite marker/to you/hit/that/ some/times/a thing/to structure) provoked worse/from/any/fist/to/your belly/is) your belly/hit/that/worse/ attitude provoked attitude: × from/any/fist/is) provoked attitude: ×

154

Part 8: Harry talking to People and Telling his Story as a Monologue 16. “A punch to the gut” is an expression, a non-core structure, and element of provoked attitude. Both translators have transferred the meaning but they have not preserved the expression and this can be considered their tendency toward simple structure on the one hand and lack of creativity on the other. Interpersonal element S1 (first subtitler) “A punch to the gut” (moshti/ke/be/shekam/mixore: (expression, non-core a fist/that/in/belly/hits) structure) provoked attitude provoked attitude: ×

S2 (second subtitler) (ye/mosht/tu/ye/ shekam: one/fist/in/ ezafe marker/belly) provoked attitude: ×

Part 9: Harry’s Monologue 17. “Hit the road” is an expression, non-core structure, and element of provoked attitude. Using a literal translation S1 has omitted the interpersonal element. But S2 has used the correct equivalent expression in Persian. Interpersonal element Hit the road (expression, non-core structure) provoked attitude

S1 (first subtitler) (tu/jaade/raah oftaadim: in/road/we started) provoked attitude: ×

S2 (second subtitler) (zadim/be/jaade: hit/to/road) provoked attitude: ✓

18. “Cash on the barrel head” is an idiom, non-core structure, and element of provoked attitude. S1 has avoided translating the idiom and has only translated the meaning. S2 has transferred the meaning more completely but again without considering the idiomatic style of the sentence. The reason for the omission of this element is that such a structure is not common in Persian language. Interpersonal element Cash on the barrel head (idiom, non-core structure) provoked attitude

S1 (first subtitler) (naqd: cash) provoked attitude: ×

S2 (second subtitler) (naqd/aamaade: cash/ready) provoked attitude: ×

19. “Weren’t even calling me” is a denial, disclaim element of engagement. The engagement element has been directly transferred into Persian but the word 155

“even”, which is considered a force element of graduation has been omitted in both translations. The reason for this omission is the carelessness of the translator. Interpersonal element Weren’t even calling me (denial, disclaim) engagement, (force) graduation

S1 (first subtitler) (man/ro/xataab nemikardan: I/object marker/didn’t address) engagement: ✓ graduation: ×

S2 (second subtitler) (berim/bache/haa: let’s go/ child/plural marker) engagement: ✓ graduation: ×

Part 10: Dialogue between Harry and Jim 20. “State of the art” is an expression, a non-core structure, and element of provoked attitude. This expression has been transferred non-expressively into Persian; although the meaning is there, the interpersonal element has been omitted because of the translator’s lack of creativity and their tendency towards simple structure or lexis. Interpersonal element State of the art (expression, non-core structure) provoked attitude

S1 (first subtitler) (pishrafte/tarin/model: advanced/superlative marker/model) provoked attitude: ×

S2 (second subtitler) (jaded/tarin/model: new/ superlative marker/model) provoked attitude: ×

Part 11: Conversation between Harry and the Cobs 21. “Just” in “just to be sure”, is a force element of graduation. Both translators have carelessly omitted this element. Interpersonal element Just (force) graduation

S1 (first subtitler) (-) graduation: ×

S2 (second subtitler) (-) graduation: ×

22. “I believe…” is considered entertain, proclaim element of engagement. This element has been directly transferred into Persian.

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Interpersonal element I believe… engagement

S1 (first subtitler) (gamun konam: I guess) engagement: ✓

S2 (second subtitler) (gamunam: in my opinion) engagement: ✓

23. “Come on” has been repeated and it can be considered a force element of graduation. S1 has repeated the structure and has directly transferred the force element into Persian, but S2 has used an equivalence, which has led to the loss of the force element. This omission can be considered the taste of the translator and is not a mistake, because the translator has used a non-core lexis, which is an element of provoked attitude and in this way the use of one interpersonal element for another, has led to the compensation of the omission. Interpersonal element Come on, come on (repetition, force) graduation

S1 (first subtitler) (zud baashid/zud baashid: hurry up) graduation: ✓

S2 (second subtitler) (zud baashin/yalla: hurry up/ya+Allah: oh+God meaning hurry) graduation: × provoked attitude: ✓

Part 12: Harry Talking to the Audience 24. “Let’s face it” is pronounce, proclaim element of engagement, it is also an expression, non-core structure, which is considered a provoked attitude. S1 has transferred the pronounce element directly into Persian, but instead of non-core, he has used a core lexis, and this has led to the omission of the provoked attitude, this omission can both be considered the translator’s tendency towards simple structure and lexis and his lack of creativity. S2 has transferred both interpersonal elements directly into Persian. Interpersonal element Let’s face it (pronounce, proclaim) engagement (non-core lexis) provoked attitude

S1 (first subtitler) (biaaid/qabul konim: come/ accept) engagement: ✓ provoked attitude: ×

S2 (second subtitler) (biaain/vaqegaraa/baashim: come/realistic/to be) engagement: ✓ provoked attitude: ✓

Part 13: Dialogue between the Man and his Boss 25. “But when all is said and done” contains firstly the denial, disclaim element of engagement and secondly non-core structure, element of provoked 157

attitude. The denial element has been transferred directly into Persian but the idiomatic part of the sentence has been translated non-idiomatically by S1 and expressively by S2. The omission of the idiomatic part has led to the omission of the interpersonal element, which emerges from translator’s lack of creativity and his tendency towards simple structure and lexis. “Just” is a force element of graduation, which has been directly transferred into Persian by both translators. Interpersonal element But when all is said and done (denial, disclaim) engagement (non-core structure) provoked attitude

S1 (first subtitler) (ammaa/dar/aaxar: but/ in/end) engagement: ✓ provoked attitude: ×

S2 (second subtitler) (ammaa/faareq/az/hame/ ye/masaael: but/free/from/ all/ezafe marker/matters) engagement: ✓ provoked attitude: ✓

Just (force) graduation

(faqat: just) graduation: ✓

(faqat: just) graduation: ✓

Part 14: Houdini’s Monologue 26. “Pull off ” is a non-core structure, element of provoked attitude. The translators have used a simple equivalent for this non-core structure and because of their lack of creativity and their tendency towards simple structure and lexis, the interpersonal element has been omitted. Interpersonal element Pull off (non-core structure) provoked attitude

S1 (first subtitler) (anjaam bedam: I do) provoked attitude: ×

S2 (second subtitler) (anjaam bedam: I do) provoked attitude: ×

Part 15: Dialogue between Houdini and his Boss 27. “Tall order” is an English expression meaning a difficult demand. From the interpersonal perspective it is considered a non-core structure and element of provoked attitude. S1 has transferred the meaning into Persian but by stating it in a simple way, has led to the omission of the interpersonal element. This omission can also be categorized as the translator’s lack of creativity.

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Interpersonal element Tall order (expression, non-core structure) provoked attitude

S1 (first subtitler) (dastur/e/saxt: order/ezafe marker/difficult) provoked attitude: ×

S2 (second subtitler) (-) provoked attitude: ×

Part 16: Harry’s Monologue 28. “I guess” at the beginning of the sentence is the sign of the translator’s doubt about what he says. This is categorized under entertain, proclaim element of engagement. This element has been directly transferred into Persian. Interpersonal element I guess (entertain, proclaim) engagement

S1 (first subtitler) (be/nazaram: in/my opinion) engagement: ✓

S2 (second subtitler) (gamunam: my guess) engagement: ✓

Part 17: Dialogue between the Man and the Child 29. “Beautiful” and “pale” have been used as adjective for “girl.” These adjectives are considered judgment element of attitude and they have been directly transferred into Persian. S2 has made a mistake in choice of words and has caused the omission of the interpersonal element because the meaning has also been changed, the reason of this omission can also be orthographic problem, because there is correct equivalence for this word in Persian with a slight difference in writing. Interpersonal element S1 (first subtitler) S2 (second subtitler) Beautiful & pale (judgment) (zibaa: beautiful)(baa/pust/e/ (zibaa: beautiful)(baa/pust/e/ attitude roshan: with/skin/ezafe zir/ berenji: with/skin/ezafe marker/light) marker/light) attitude: ✓ attitude: ×

Part 18 & 19: Harry’s Monologue & Dialogue between the Man and the Child 30. “Blow off ” is a non-core lexis element of provoked attitude. Both translators have used a simple equivalence for this word and in this way have caused the omission of the interpersonal element. S2 has compensated this omission by using synonymy in his translation, which considered the force element of graduation.

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Interpersonal element Blow off (non-core) Provoked attitude

S1 (first subtitler) (terekundan: burst) provoked attitude: ×

S2 (second subtitler) (terekundan/paashidan: burst/scatter) provoked attitude: compensated graduation: +

31. “Best” is a force element of graduation. This element has been transferred wrongly by S1 due to an orthographic problem. S2 on the other hand has transferred it correctly into Persian. Interpersonal element Best (force) graduation

S1 (first subtitler) (behtar: better) graduation: ×

S2 (second subtitler) (behtarin: best) graduation: ✓

Part 20: Harry’s Monologue 32. “Embrace” is a non-core lexis, element of provoked attitude. None of the translators have transferred this interpersonal element into Persian, due to their tendency towards simple lexis and their lack of creativity. Interpersonal element Embrace (non-core lexis) provoked attitude

S1 (first subtitler) (paziroftam: I accepted) provoked attitude: ×

S2 (second subtitler) (qabul kardam: I accepted) provoked attitude: ×

33. Using “cover” as an adjective for “story”, is considered the focus element of graduation, the shift from adjective to noun (because of the lack of the form in Persian language) has led to the omission of the interpersonal element. Interpersonal element Cover story (focus) graduation

S1 (first subtitler) (pushesh: cover) graduation: ×

S2 (second subtitler) (pushesh: cover) graduation: ×

34. “Oberstleutnant der kaiserlichen armee” is a structure expressed in German language. This can be consider a non-core structure, element of provoked attitude and also the force element of graduation, both translators have translated this sentence into Persian in order to clarify the sentence to the audience and in this way have caused the omission of two interpersonal elements in Persian. 160

Interpersonal element S1 (first subtitler) S2 (second subtitler) Oberstleutnant der (sotvaan/e/artesh/e/homayuni: (sotvaan/e/artesh/e/homayuni: kaiserlichen armee lieutenant/ezafe marker/army/ lieutenant/ezafe marker/army/ (non-core) ezafe marker/royal) ezafe marker/royal) Provoked attitude provoked attitude: × provoked attitude: × graduation: × graduation: ×

Part 21: Dialogue between Harry and the Man 35. “Not at all” is denial, disclaim engagement, and an expression that is used as a polite answer to requests. The denial element has been directly transferred into Persian but only S1 has translated the sentence in an expressive way. Interpersonal element Not at all (denial, disclaim) engagement, (expression) provoked attitude

S1 (first subtitler) (moshkel/i/nadaare: problem/ indefinite marker/doesn’t have) engagement: ✓ provoked attitude: ✓

S2 (second subtitler) (aslan: never) engagement: ✓ provoked attitude: ×

36. “Never” is considered the denial, disclaim element of engagement, and also a force element of graduation. Both translators have transferred the negation element into Persian, but the force element of graduation has been omitted by S1. The reason of this omission can be consider the carelessness of the translator. Interpersonal element Never (denial, disclaim) engagement, (force) graduation

S1 (first subtitler) (natunid: not be able) engagement: ✓ graduation: ×

S2 (second subtitler) (emkaan/nadaare: possibility/ doesn’t have) engagement: ✓ graduation: ✓

By comparing the works of the two translators and by analyzing the data, 11 different options could be introduced as the reasons for omission of interpersonal elements in translations. 9 reasons were similar to the previous analyses. By repeating the analysis on a new set of data, two more reasons were added to the previous reasons for the omission of the interpersonal elements shown as R10 and R11.

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R10 Translator’s lack of knowledge about a specific word or structure, which leads to the omission of the interpersonal element R11 Orthographic mistake, which causes the omission of the correct form of the word or structure Table 5–2 summarizes the results of the analyses. Tab. 5–2: Reasons of the Omission of the Interpersonal Elements in Houdini Reason of the omission of interpersonal element

Cases of omission of the interpersonal elements by S1 6

Cases of omission of the interpersonal elements by S2 4

6

5

34

22

R1

Lack of word or structure in TL and/ or TT

R2

Being uncommon in TL and/or TT

R3

Tendency towards simple structure or lexis

R4

Translator’s lack of creativity

7

6

R5

Taste of the translator

5

5

R6

Carelessness of the translator

16

15

R7

Omission at the expense of preserving the meaning

2

0

R8

Total omission of the sentence

1

0

R9

Clarification of the text

9

9

R10 Translator’s lack of knowledge

1

1

R11 Orthographic mistake

1

1

The frequency of the cases of omission of interpersonal elements in Persian translation of Houdini can be seen in chart 5–2; the left column in dark gray represents the number of the cases of omission of interpersonal elements by S1 and the right one shown by light gray represents these cases of omission by S2:

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Chart 5–2: The Frequency of Tentative Reasons of Omission of the Interpersonal Elements in Houdini by the two Translators

5.5.2.5 Results of the Analysis and Comparison in two Movies From the available data we can come to the conclusion that most occurring cases of omission in Persian translations of English movies happen when the translator has a tendency towards simple structure or lexis. Simplification is an appropriate strategy in translation but it should not happen very often, because in this case it seems that the translator is avoiding the translation challenges. A comparison of the works of the translators in both movies can be summarized in chart 5–3. Distinguishing the cases of omission of interpersonal elements and finding reasons and background of these omissions helps the translators to use their creativity and knowledge to avoid the omission of a word or structure as much as possible. The above-mentioned analysis leads to some guidelines for the translation of English subtitles into Persian as a framework which will be introduced in the next chapter.

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Chart 5–3: The Comparison of the Frequency of Tentative Reasons of Omission of the Interpersonal Elements in Prisoners and Houdini by the two Translators

5.5.2.6 Automating the Process of the Analysis As was mentioned before, analyzing the subtitles in the framework of appraisal theory is a time consuming process. To simplify this process of analysis, some functions have been modified in Excel, and Visual Basic programing language has been used as a useful tool to shorten the process of data analysis, which will be explained in detail in this section (Khosravani 2017). Preparing the Analysis Results For the analysis of the translations, the subtitles and their corresponding translations are inserted into a table. The interpersonal elements within the subtitles are then identified and marked by the analyzer. Moreover, the analyzer has to determine the reasons why the interpersonal elements are possibly omitted in each translation; the reason of the omission is selected from the 11 reasons introduced in this chapter and is shown by Rn in the analysis. Fig. 5–3 depicts an extract of such automation, tested on 100 subtitle sentences of Houdini that has been used as the data of the present work. The green rectangle is the user interface for automatically processing of the analysis results.

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6 00:00:25,302 --> 00:00:28,137 Get away (repetition, force) graduation from boredom.

NO

NO

‫کنیم‬ ‫ بایدفرار‬R2

5 00:00:22,299 --> 00:00:25,184 we need to (proclaim, pronounce) engagement get away (non-core lexis) provoked attitude, (force) graduation. NO

NO

‫ وقتیزندگی روزمرهدست و‬NO ،‫پامون رو میبنده‬

4 00:00:19,179 --> 00:00:22,181 When ordinary (appreciation) direct attitude life shackles (non-core lexis) provoked attitude (force) graduation us,

‫از م�تفرارکنیم‬

NO

‫ همهمونمیخوایم هرجورشده‬NO ‫کنیم‬ ‫فرار‬

3 00:00:11,171 --> 00:00:14,707 One way or another (expression: non-core structure) provoked attitude, we all (intensity, force) graduation want to escape.

2 00:00:02,783 --> 00:00:04,230 Can you hear me?

NO

Engagement Omission

‫ صدام رو میشنوی؟‬NO

Attitude Omission NO

‫هري؟‬

Persian Subtitle 1 NO

1 00:00:00,578 --> 00:00:01,778 Harry?

English Subtitle

NO

R2

NO

NO

NO

NO

Graduation Omission NO

Attitude Omission

‫از م�تفرارکنیم‬

NO

.‫سر دربریم‬ ِ‫ق‬ ِ ‫ باید‬NO

‫ وقتي درقید وبندزندگي‬NO ‫معمولي‬ ،‫یگیریم‬ ‫قرار م‬

‫ همهدلمون‬،‫ یه جورایي‬NO ‫میخواد‬ .‫فرارکنیم‬

‫ صدامو میشنوي؟‬NO

‫هری؟‬

Persian Subtitle 2

NO

NO

NO

NO

R4, R4, R2

NO

NO

NO

R3

NO

NO

NO

Engagement Graduation Omission Omission

Fig. 5–3: Table Generated for the Analysis of Translations. Subtitles are Inserted in Column 1 (Attitude, Engagement and Graduation as Interpersonal Elements are Identified and Marked by Different Colors), Corresponding Translations in Columns 2 and 6, and the Reasons of the Omission of Interpersonal Elements in Columns 3 to 5 and 7 to 9. “NO” stands for “No Omission” and Buttons Marked by the Green Rectangle are Used as the User Interface for Automatically Processing of the Analysis Results (see the next section)

Processing the Analysis Results Using Microsoft Visual Basic programing language, which was developed within this work, the analyzer can automatically extract and separate the interpersonal elements existing in each subtitle. The automatic separation of the interpersonal metafunctions helps the analyzers to focus on each element separately and on the other hand helps them understand the frequency of each element in the subtitles and count them automatically in the analysis. Moreover, for a further statistical analysis, the frequency of each omission reason occurred within different translations, is counted by the same program, and a chart is created based on this information (see fig.  5–4). This chart helps the analyzers to compare the frequency of omission of special interpersonal elements in translation and makes it possible for them to see which tentative reason is hidden behind the omission of such elements and in this way they can try to prevent such omissions by suggesting some tips as criteria to the translators. The other advantage of this chart is that it enables the analyzer to refer directly to a specific element in a text, since it presents the number of the subtitle in which the interpersonal element exists. Fig. 5–4: Separation of Interpersonal Elements Using the Developed Program

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Finally, a presentation of the analysis can be provided in an Excel file as is shown in fig. 5–5. Fig. 5–5: Frequency of Interpersonal Elements Omission Reasons within the two Translations

5.6 Main Findings of the Chapter The analysis of 1,250 subtitles of two English movies and two of their Persian translations for each movie has made it possible for the researcher to define different categories for the cases of omission of the interpersonal elements in Persian translation of English subtitles. These cases have been closely analyzed in the translated subtitles and attempts have been made to put the similar cases in the same groups; this has led to the development of eleven tentative reasons for the omission of interpersonal elements that can be useful for the translators of subtitles and the TQ testers. Evaluation of subtitles and other findings of the study will be discussed in more detail in chapter 6.

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6 Results and Conclusions 6.1 Overview In this closing chapter, the findings of the study and their analysis will be compared and focused in detail once more to open ways for further guidelines as criteria for the evaluation of Persian subtitles of English movies. The major findings of the study will be presented, and implications of the study will be introduced. Like all other research in the field of translation, the present study has encountered some limitations, which will be explained under the heading “limitations of the study”, and finally, suggestions will be offered for further research in this.

6.2 Concluding Remarks on the Evaluation of the Translation of Persian Subtitles of English Movies The application of semiotic model of quality assessment for poetry translation to the Persian musical subtitles of English movies, followed by the application of appraisal theory to the Persian subtitles of English movies, has led to a model for evaluating the subtitles of musical movies and a set of tips as criteria for subtitlers for the evaluation of Persian subtitles of English movies. These points will be explained in detail in the following subsections from general to specific. It is worth mentioning here that the general points are similar to the translation strategies provided by translation scholars such as Newmark (1988).

6.2.1 Concluding Remarks Regarding the Application of Semiotic Model of TQA to the Persian Subtitles of English Musical Movies The model described in chapter 4, can be considered a descriptive one in a sense that it has been drawn from the analysis of three musical films. The following definition can explain descriptive approach in more details: “linguistics takes a descriptive approach to language: it tries to explain things as they actually are, not as we wish them to be.” (Descriptive vs. Prescriptive | Polysyllabic n.d.) Semiotics and the concept of codes can be helpful in the analysis of movies because of the existence of the sounds and the images in the movies. By analyzing three sets of translation from three different movies, a model could be provided for the translation of subtitles in musical movies. Attempts were made to

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provide a model that is as simple as possible, and this led to some points that the translator and the critic should both be careful about1: 1. Translation Strategies: The critic should be aware of the point that a translator is allowed to use translation strategies like expansion, reduction, compensation, etc. (Newmark 1988) and not all the mismatches between the original and the target texts are mistakes. The mismatches might be compensated in another part by the translator. 2. Word-for-word translation: adhering to the source text is not always admirable, but the translator should consider the correct usage of words. The translator should be aware of the reason for using a specific word in the text and try to transfer it to the target language as well. 3. Speed and alliteration: Sometimes the author of the original text uses some alliteration with “s” or “r” sounds to provide the reader with a smooth poem; therefore, the translator should be aware of this point and keep the alliterations in their works. It would not be pleasant to replace them with harsh sounds (that could be seen in the poems studied here.) This will also affect the speed of reading the text. 4. Back translation: in a previously conducted research (Khosravani and Vahid 2013), it was concluded that back translation could be a useful technique for the assessment of subtitles, but it might be time-consuming to apply to all parts of a movie subtitle. Now, it should be added that it is not necessary to use this technique in all the parts of a movie, but in parts where the critic understands that a sentence is not appropriate. This might seem to be subjective, but its usage is unavoidable in some cases. 5. The consistency of the words: at a textual level, the translator should obey the consistency rule suggested by Newmark (1988); if the translator provides a certain definition or equivalent for a word, they should keep the word without any changes until the end of the text. 6. Knowledge of the translator: It is not expected of the translator to know everything while translating. But if the translator does not have enough knowledge in a special field, in words, or in other aspects, they should check the problem in the dictionaries or consult an expert to avoid wrong decisions; the greater the knowledge of a translator or a critic, the more the number of codes and therefore the better the product of translation.

1

These points are derived from the problems that were encountered during the analyses of the Persian subtitles in the musical films.

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7. Repetitions: Although many words may not attract the attention of the audience, the repeated ones are always the center of attention. Therefore, the translator should be careful to use the correct equivalence for them, and not to omit them because they are repeated. 8. Grammar: Although it seems to be evident that the translator should be careful about the grammar and the tenses of the original text, there are still large amounts of grammatical mismatches in the texts. Translators should be aware that the grammar of the source and the target language should be the same or at least produce the same effect on the reader.

6.2.2 Concluding Remarks Regarding the Application of Appraisal Theory to the Persian Subtitles of English Musical Movies After applying Appraisal theory to the Persian subtitles of two English movies, and after investigating the cases of omission of the interpersonal elements in Persian translations of these movies, tentative reasons could be suggested for the omission of these elements. Having these reasons in mind, the translator and the critic can have the following points as criteria of analysis for their works: 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

The analysis of the data showed that lack of word or structure in TT might encourage the translators to omit it in their works; in such cases, it is suggested that the translator take advantage of compensation technique. For example, if an archaic word in ST does not exist in TT, the translator can use the old style of writing to transfer the feeling of the ST to the reader or viewer. Sometimes the word or structure exists in the TT, but it is not common; in such cases, instead of omission, the translator can replace the word with a more common one in translation. The reference used to recognize the commonness of a word for the present study is Collins dictionary. The tendency towards simplicity as another reason for the omission of interpersonal elements has occurred in many cases in the analysis of the present work. In such cases, the translator should keep it in mind that if the author of the original text had wished to use simple language in their work, they would have done it themselves. If the translator’s aim is to be faithful, they should avoid using simple words or structures in translating complicated texts. A translator must be creative. Language is not straightforward. It is full of techniques to express ideas indirectly and effectively. Before starting to work, the translator should be aware of this fact and try to use their creativity as much as possible to avoid undue omissions in their works. In some cases, translators do not like to be bound to the form of ST; they want to use their taste and style to produce a free translation. However, they 171

should know that sticking to this point can lead to a text written by the translator rather than the original author. 6. Translators are obliged to do their works with full concentration. Some of the cases of omission in this study were the direct effect of the translator’s lack of concentration and attention to the text. For example, the omission of “even” in “weren’t even calling me” maybe because of the translator’s carelessness in his job. 7. The analysis in this study showed that sometimes translators use omission at the expense of preserving the meaning. This happens more often in the translation of expressions and idioms. It is here suggested that the translators give priority to the meaning and use their creativity to compensate the loss of form, which sometimes leads to the loss of interpersonal elements. 8. In some cases of this research, it has been observed that the translator has avoided translating a whole sentence. The reason for that can be anything, including translator’s lack of concentration. This can lead to the omission of an interpersonal element, which is suggested, to be avoided in translation. 9. Sometimes the author of the original text tries to prepare the reader for a surprise by using a specific interpersonal element. The translator should be aware of this fact and avoid unnecessary clarification of the text at the expense of losing the effect (see R9, chapter 5). 10. If the field of translation is unknown to the translator, the translator’s lack of knowledge in that field leads to the misunderstanding of some parts, which may lead to the omission of the interpersonal elements. Therefore, it is suggested that translators only translate texts of which they have some knowledge, or at least read some texts in that field in the original language to avoid this type of omission in translation. 11. Translators should check their translations orthographically because orthographic mistakes replace the correct form of the original word or sentence and avoid the transference of the interpersonal elements into the target text. The points mentioned above can be used as criteria for the evaluation of subtitles; i.e., the more the translators avoid using inappropriate omissions, the better their translations become.

6.2.3 Application of Appraisal Theory and Semiotic Model of TQA to the Subtitles: a Comparison The two approaches to the translation quality assessment of subtitles used in this study can work in a parallel way in translation quality assessment of subtitles. The Semiotic Model of TQA can be used as a tool for the assessment of Persian 172

subtitles of English musicals, and appraisal theory can be used to assess the quality of translation in other types of movies. The focus in the former approach is on the poetic plus other aspects of the songs, textual and extratextual factors used in a musical, whereas the latter concentrates mainly on the omission of the interpersonal elements in a translation because of their important role to convey the message to the viewer of the movie. It is also possible to apply appraisal theory to the subtitles of musical movies, but the factors used in the Semiotic Model of TQA can analyze a poem in more detail because a poem is usually more indirect. These two approaches can be summarized in the following figures: Fig. 6–1: Tentative TQA Model of Musical Film Subtitle

Fig. 6–2: The System of Appraisal

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As was discussed in chapter 4, the first figure is a summary of the codes, which should be considered in the translation of musical movie subtitles (social codes, textual codes, interpretive codes). These codes should be distinguished in the source text and analyzed in the target text to enable the analyzer to provide appropriate comments on the translation. On the other hand, as was explained in chapter 5, the consisting elements of appraisal system (attitude, engagement, graduation) can be considered the elements to be investigated in the translation of non-musical subtitles. This study has shown how the omission of such elements in translation can lead to the loss of meaning of the text in translation.

6.3 Major Findings of the Study The analysis of the poems showed how semiotics could affect the interpretation of the critic. It can also be concluded that the reason for misinterpretation or multiple interpretations of text may arise from the lack of semiotic signs in them. The hypothesis and research questions stated in chapter 1 could be checked and answered in this research as follows: Hypothesis 1. The Semiotic Model of TQA developed by Vahid et al. in 2011, which is used to evaluate the quality of poems, applies to the translation of musical subtitles to evaluate the quality of their translation. This hypothesis was investigated in chapter 4 of this research and can be confirmed with a slight change, in the sense that “the semiotic model of TQA developed by Vahid et al. in 2011, which is used to evaluate the quality of poems, applies to the translation of musical subtitles to evaluate the quality of their translation with modifications proper for subtitling.” Hypothesis 2. Appraisal Theory can be used as a tool to evaluate the quality of Persian subtitles of English movies. This hypothesis was also confirmed in chapter 5 of this research. Hypothesis 3. The combination of semiotic model of TQA and appraisal theory can provide some strategies as criteria of TQA for the translation of subtitles. The combination of the results of the application of the two models to the Persian subtitles of the English movies could come up with a model for quality assessment of Persian subtitles of English musicals, and some points as criteria for the

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quality assessment of Persian subtitles of English movies that were investigated in chapter 4 and 5 of the present research. Research Question 1. Regarding the defined categorizations in Appraisal Theory, what are the tentative reasons for the omission of the interpersonal elements of language in Persian subtitles of English movies? After analyzing the data, eleven tentative reasons were proposed as the reasons of the omission of interpersonal elements in Persian subtitles of English movies in chapter 5 of the present research. These reasons are the results of analyzing two translations of 1,250 subtitle sentences in two movies and knowing them may help the translator to avoid them whenever it is possible (see chapter 5). Research Question 2. Assuming that the first hypothesis is correct, is there a way to automate the process of analysis to save time in evaluating the quality of Persian translations of English movies? To save time in the process of evaluating the quality of subtitles, the process of counting and separating the interpersonal elements in ST distinguished by the critic and listing the translation of the subtitles was automated by developing a program in Visual Basic Programing language within the work.

6.4 Implications of the Study Unfortunately, many of the Persian subtitles for English movies are not provided by experts or professional translators. This point did not have negative effect on the present work, and in contrast, helped the author to find more problems in the subtitles that led to more detailed tips as criteria for the translators. But it is highly recommended to establish some organizations that check the quality assessment of the subtitles to avoid the huge amount of mistakes that exist in them. The findings of this study can be used as criteria both for the translators and critics in order to evaluate the quality of their works. The results can also be used for translator training courses at Universities. As an important metafunction of language, interpersonal metafunction, proposed by Halliday (1994), has been ignored in research in the field of translation. By focusing on the omission of the elements of this metafunction in the translation of subtitles, the importance of such elements was highlighted and proved in this study. In fact, among metafunctions of language (textual, interpersonal and functional) the interpersonal metafunction is the basis and the other metafunctions are subordinate to it; according to Munday (2012:15) “the metafunctions 175

operate simultaneously, but it is the interpersonal that serves to construct or negotiate solidarity, and value judgements between participants.” This metafunction has also been taken as similar to the wheels of social intercourse by Butler (1996:151). The analysis done in this research can be used in future research in the field of translation studies, and is a step forward in investigating interpersonal metafunction of language proposed by Halliday (1994). Finally, it should be noted that although the quality assessment of translation seems to be a subjective task, attempts should be made to reduce the subjectivity to the possible extent. This can be done through providing documentary criticism and relating the assessments to special and available codes (see chapter 4). The set of strategies proposed at the beginning of this chapter can be used as a framework by the translator agencies and fan subtitlers as help to improve their works. The analysis and results of this study can be compared in other languages rather than Persian, to add to the standards of translation.

6.5 Limitations of the Study Like all other researches, the present work has had its own limitations. One of the most outstanding problems was the lack of standardized Persian subtitles for the movies. This limitation was the reason why the researcher did not have an open hand in selecting the best subtitle out of many others. As was mentioned before, Iran is a dubbing country and therefore, less attention has been paid to subtitling and its translation. This problem was both considered a limitation of the study in finding enough data and a motivation to research in this direction. From the beginning of the research attempts were made to create distance from subjectivity in quality assessment of subtitles, but as translation is done by human beings, subjectivity in this field is inevitable. The translator’s subjectivity is defined as “the subjectivity that the translator displays during the translation process, includes such features as the translator’s cultural consciousness, reader awareness, personal traits, social and ideological positions, linguistic competence, aesthetic tendency and creativity, all of which may manifest themselves through textual appropriation, adaptation and intervention”(Chen 2011:1). This definition can be generalized to the critic and the reader of the translation. Therefore, in spite of attempts, the reasons provided for the omission of interpersonal elements of language can only be tentative reasons for them. However, one of the advantages of such attempts is that they bring evaluation, which is the product of human mind to a certain framework that can move towards standardization of the process. 176

6.6 Suggestions for Further Research The results of the analysis in the present work and the model and the criteria provided for TQA of Persian subtitles of English movies can also be tested on other languages including German to be able to provide a standard and universal framework for more than one language. The same analysis may also be done on more Persian subtitles to improve the authenticity of the present work for future applications. It is suggested that in future works, more parts of the analysis including the recognition of interpersonal elements in subtitles and their counterparts in translation become automated to save time in the process of evaluating the subtitles. Finally, the analysis done in this research should also be investigated in the evaluation of other types of texts to see if they can be generalized to areas other than subtitling.

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List of Analyzed Movies 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Anastasia 1997 20th Century Fox. Don Bluth. US. Houdini 2014 Hitory. Lions Gate Television. US. Les Misérables 2012 Universal Pictures. Tom Hooper. US. Prisoners 2013 Alcon Entertainment. Denis Villeneuve. US. Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street 2007 Dream Works Pictures. Tim Burton. US.

List of Used Dictionaries 1. Collins Dictionary https://www.collinsdictionary.com/de/worterbuch/eng lisch. 2. Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/laptop?s=t. 3. The Free Dictionary http://www.thefreedictionary.com/. 4. Merriam-Webster http://www.thefreedictionary.com/. 5. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionar ies.com/. 6. Urban Dictionary http://www.urbandictionary.com/.

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Appendix I Transcription Guide Persian Form a aa b ch e f g h i j k l m n o p q* r s sh t u

English phonetics /æ/ bat /^/ under /b/ bat /t∫/ chair /ε/ bet /f/ fake /g/ game /h/ house /I/ sit /dƷ/ juice /k/ cake /l/ lamb /m/ man /n/ new /o/ OK /p/ pink /q/ Quran /r/ ring /s/ sing /∫/ wash /t/ table

/Ʊ/ book v /v/ voice x* /x/ Munich y /ī/ yard z /z/ zero Ezafe marker (ezafe structure): in Persian language is an unstressed vowel that connects two words together. Nakare marker: marker of indefiniteness in Persian language

* “Q” and “X” have special pronounciations in Persian that do not exist in English. “Q” is pronounced as German “R” like “Richtig” and “X” is pronounced as German “ch” like “auch.”

193

SPKG 19

SPRACHE – KULTUR – GESELLSCHAFT 19

Translation Quality Assessment (TQA) of Subtitles theoretical framework. The theory is applied to the subtitles of two movies, Prisoners and Houdini leading to criteria for the evaluation of Persian subtitles of English movies.

Yasamin Khosravani has studied English Language Translation at the University of Isfahan (Iran) and has received her Ph.D. degree in Translation Studies from the Institute of Applied Linguistics and Translation Studies at Leipzig University. Her scientific research focuses on translation quality assessment of subtitles. Her main research interests also include Translation Studies, Translation Theories, Linguistics, Appraisal Theory, Cultural Studies and Semiotics. She works currently as a Business English teacher and translator.

Yasamin Khosravani

Translation Quality Assessment (TQA) of Subtitles Criteria for the Evaluation of Persian Subtitles of English Movies Focusing on Semiotic Model of TQA for Poetry Translation and Appraisal Theory

Yasamin Khosravani

Translation quality assessment (TQA) is a growing topic in the field of Translation Studies. The present book focuses mainly on the translation quality assessment in Persian subtitles of English movies as an almost ignored topic in Translation Studies. The aim is to propose criteria for the evaluation of subtitles. To reach this goal, the author divides the case studies of the present research into two subcategories, i.e., musical movies and non-musical ones. The base for the quality assessment of musical movies is the Semiotic Model of TQA for poetry applied to three movie subtitles, Anastasia, Sweeney Todd and Les Misérables. This leads to a tentative model for the evaluation of Persian subtitles of English musical movies. The second part of the book focuses mainly on the omission of the interpersonal elements in Persian subtitles of English movies using appraisal theory as the

Translation Quality Assessment (TQA) of Subtitles

Yasamin Khosravani

www.peterlang.com

SPKG 19_277010 Khosravani_JA_A5HCk new GlobalL.indd 1

15.04.19 18:07