WHAT DO SUBTITLERS TRANSLATE? PARTICULARITIES OF THE AUDIOVISUAL TEXTS WITH A SPECIAL VIEW ON THE SUBTITLING OF HUMOUR
WHAT DO SUBTITLERS TRANSLATE? PARTICULARITIES OF THE AUDIOVISUAL TEXTS WITH A SPECIAL VIEW ON THE SUBTITLING OF HUMOUR

Summary/Abstract: One of the branches of Translation Studies that has been the focus of interest over the past decades is audiovisual translation (AVT). This study aims at raising a few questions regarding the typology of the audiovisual text, which is a polysemiotic, multimedial text, deeply connected with and determined by extratextual markers, a dynamic, short-lived text, strictly governed by a series of technical, temporal and spatial constraints, a type of text that dramatically depends on how it is perceived by the audience. In order to tackle the typology of the audiovisual text this study focuses on the translation of humour, a situation in which the challenges encountered by the translator are even more specific. The main questions resulting from the analysis are: “What does one actually translate in AVT? Are these texts or pseudo-texts? How much of the original dialogue can be translated and what is left out? With all the constraints and challenges imposed by cultural references, puns, dialects, idiolects, taboo language, rhythm of speech, etc. how can audiovisual translators make sure the perlocutionary effect, i.e. the skopos of the original dialogue was maintained? Some of these questions can be partially answered, while a few will remain rhetorical. Yet the aim of this study is just to suggest a certain attitude for the translator, who is, when dealing with AVT, challenged by a new type of text.

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