The publication deals with the problem cultural realia and terms in translation. The empirical part is a case study that investigates challenges in subtitling when rendering the subtitles of the ...Lithuanian memory film
(2017) from Lithuanian into German and English. Subtitling, the oldest form of Audiovisual Translation, is both a process and a result when a source text is translated into the target text in a synchronized manner with the original verbal message. Serious translation problems can arise because the subtitles are supposed to convey the verbal or non-verbal message in a compressed form. Cultural realia and terms are cultural elements that structure human life from the time of birth to the extent that they shape our behavior and worldview. Moreover, since the areas referred to by real property descriptions can be very diverse, they are subject to different classifications depending on the character and the object. Accordingly, monocultural, infracultural and transcultural references can be subdivided more precisely into socio-political, geographical, ethnographic and non-verbal realia. When transferring realia, three large groups of translation strategies can be identified: the unchanged adoption of the realia in the target language, the omission and the replacement by an equivalent. Since most translation techniques in the corpus studied appear as strategies of change, the central question is to what extent linguistic and cultural-specific items can be reflected in the subtitling movies about traumatic historical experiences.
The present article focuses on some reflectionsabout the process of translation into Italian of the well-known Russian fairy tale by Aleksey Nikolaevich Tolstoy(1882-1945) Zolotoy klyuchik, ili ...Priklyucheniya Buratino(The Little Golden Key, or the Adventures of Burattino, 1935). Basing from the methodological point of view on some recent acquisitions of international TranslationTheory, we will examine the main “difficulties” or “challenges” for the translator present in the source text, such as anisomorphisms, linguistic connotations, neologisms, cultural realia and phraseologisms. We willalso consider the employment of different stylistic registersin the tale, often connected to the characters’ “expressiveaura” and to thick intertextual allusions to Russian Silver Age. Our lexical and stylistic choices in the translated text will be analyzed with regard to the dominants of the original work and to the specific characteristics of Russian(and Soviet) children literature of the time. Some solutionsproposed in the two published Italian versions of the 1980swill be also taken into account, questioning the opportunityand the main orientations of a new translation in relation to the kind of “implied readers” expected.
Since the advent of the cinema, films started playing an important role in promoting knowledge about different countries and peoples. Russian cinematography, in spite of its richness and unique ...style, is not familiar to the Arab audience and few Russian movies have been dubbed or subtitled into Arabic. Taking the film Утомленные Солнцем (Burnt by the Sun) as a case study, I aim to describe translation strategies for transadapting cultural realia in my own Arabic dubbing script, and to look at them from the perspective of the translation norms that are operational in the Arab society. The methodological approach used for this study is primarily qualitative; however, quantitative methods are also employed while singling out instances of culturally bound items from the corpus of the film and identifying the patterns of translation. For the analysis of strategies of transadapting cultural realia into Arabic, I use the taxonomy developed by Pedersen (2005). I also employ the concept of norms by Toury (1995/2012) since they take into account cultural and social constraints of the community, which have an impact on the translator’s choices. The results of the study show that mostly source text-oriented strategies were used for transadapting the Soviet Russia cultural realia, with the exeption of the realia belonging to the category of linguistic culture. It is true, however, that the norms operating in the Arab society and the constraints of the dubbing and subtitling modes can impact the translator’s choice to a large extent. مستلخص منذ ظهور السينما، بدأت الأفلام تلعب دوراً مهماً في نشر المعرفة عن البلدان المختلفة وشعوبها. الأفلام الروسية، رغم ثرائها وأسلوبها الفريد، لا يعرفها الجمهور العربي، ولم يترجم أو يدبلج إلا عدد قليل منها. ولقد أخذت فيلم (المتعبون من الشمس) كدراسة حالة، أسعى من خلالها لتوصيف استراتيجيات الترجمة المستخدمة لتكييف المفاهيم الثقافية في النص العربي الذي أعددته للدبلجة، ولتحليلها من وجهة نظر المعايير السائدة في المجتمع العربي. ولقد استخدمت المنهج الوصفي في الجزء الأكبر من هذا البحث، لكنني استخدمت أيضاً الأساليب الكمية لاستخراج أمثلة المفاهيم الثقافية من محتوى الفيلم وتمييز أنماط الترجمة. ومن أجل تحليل استراتيجيات ترجمة المفاهيم الثقافية إلى اللغة العربية، استخدمت تصنيف (بيديرسين 2005) كما استخدمت مفهوم المعايير لـ(توري)لأنه يأخذ بعين الاعتبار قيود المجتمع الثقافية والاجتماعية. وتشير نتائج البحث إلى أنه من الممكن ترجمة كل المفاهيم الثقافية الروسية الواردة في الفيلم للمشاهدين العرب، رغم أن الأمر يتطلب كثيراً من الإبداع من المترجم. ومع ذلك فمن البديهي أنّ قيود الدبلجة وترجمة الشاشة، إضافة إلى المعايير العاملة في المجتمع العربي، قد تؤثر على اختيارات المترجم على نطاق واسع. الكلمات المفتاحية: المفاهيم الثقافية، المعاييير، الأفلام الروسية، الدبلجة من اللغة الروسية إلى اللغة العربية، التكييف.
