BA-projektAnders Brandt KristensenEksamensnr. 283600
Subtitling ”The Simpsons”
An Analysis, Assessment and Revision of Subtitles with
“The Simpsons” as an Empirical Example
By Anders Brandt Kristensen
Supervised by Carmen Heine
BA 2 languages 2010
Character count: 31,231 (thesis) and 1,756 (abstract)
Table of Contents
- Introduction
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….3
- Problem Statement
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….4
- Theory, Method and Empirical Data
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….5
- About “The Simpsons”
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….6
- Subtitling in General
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….8
- Analysis, Assessment and Revision
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..11
- Conclusion
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..21
- List of References
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..22
- Abstract
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..23
- Introduction
Almost everybody seems to know the Simpson family. The name “Homer” itself is often connected with the star of the tv show “The Simpsons” rather than the ancient Greek poet who wrote “The Odyssey” and “The Iliad” and shares a name with him. Along with millions of people around the world I, myself, have been a big fan of the show for many years which is one of the reasons for choosing it as the empirical example for this thesis.
Furthermore, the fact that so many people know at least a little about Matt Groening’s “The Simpsons” makes it easier using it as empirical data seeing as it spares one from having to thoroughly describe the show in depth in order for the reader to comprehend the data being analysed. Also, the show has been broadcast outside of English speaking countries for a number of years which provides easy access to both the shows on tv and the material available on Digital Versatile Disc – the latter being the data selected for this particular thesis. Actually, the amount of eligible data when analysing “The Simpsons” is so comprehensive that I have had to restrain myself from using more than one season (there are currently twelve available on DVD with Danish subtitles).
What I experience when discussing the subject of subtitling with, for example, my fellow students is a general concern about the quality of subtitles. Rarely does one hear another person giving complements to the translator who has, figuratively speaking at least, bled in the process of generating the subtitles. But people do often have an opinion about the particular subtitles that stand out – in a negative fashion, that is – and comment on them. As a consequence of my passion for and interest in words, language, translation and subtitling especially, I have, however, tried to place myself in the translator’s stead and more thoroughly assess the work performed.
So, a combined interest for both “The Simpsons” and subtitling makes it extremely relevant for me personally to write this thesis, but what makes is relevant for the reader to go through it, and what is it I am trying find out? For these questions I will give an account in the following chapter.
- Problem Statement
With this thesis I will try to exemplify how difficult it is to perform a translation when the translator only has a certain amount of physical space and time to write and show his/her translation as is the case with subtitling. As mentioned above, people are often in a hurry to criticise subtitles negatively, but most of the times they find it difficult coming up with a sollution to the specific translation problem.
After giving a quick account for the show “The Simpsons”, I will go on describing subtitling in general and name some of the problems that come with this particular type of translation. perfom in-depth comparative analyses and assess the subtitles from various scenes from the tv show “The Simpsons” in order to give an account for the difficult task that lies upon the translator. To have an adequate background knowledge about the empirical data one has to go in depth with it and analyse the data using relevant theory and the correct method (theories and method are described in the next chapter: “3. Theory, Method and Empirical Data”).
Additionally, other than analysing and assessing various translation problems from different episodes of “The Simpsons”, I will offer new translations which, in my own opinion, are more adequate and congruate better with the original voicing done by the actors of the show. Adequacy (“the truthfulness of the target text vis-à-vis the source text”[1]) being, of course, a question of definition. Hereby, I will attempt to generate a higher level of understanding for the show itself as it surely does deserve to be understood.
Now, how will I ensure a qualitative analysis and assessment, and how can I see to it that the personal translations offered by me are even valid as new translations? For this I will need proper theory and method, which are described and explained in the following part of the thesis.
- Theory , Method and Empirical Data
The theories which I will be applying in this thesis come mainly from Anne Gram-Schjoldager[2] and Henrik Gottlieb[3]. Nevertheless, a few of Viggo Hjørnager Pedersen’s theories[4] will also be taken into consideration. Anne Gram-Schjoldager’s theories of macrostrategies and microstrategies will be used to analyse the given subtitles and to give an account for the strategies applied by the translator. Henrik Gottlieb and Viggo Hjørnager Pedersen’s theories will mostly be taken into consideration regarding the chapter on subtitling in general.
Although the theories applied in the analyses and assessments are described by Anne Gram-Schjoldager, the method used for analysing the various scenes from “The Simpsons” is not hers. It is derived from Henrik Gottlieb’s manner[5] of showing the reader his translation problems, and I find this particular method very adequate and not at all confusing as some ways of putting forward the lines from a tv show along with two translations could be. However, I will replace the right column originally named “Back-translation” with my own alternative solutions for different translations.
The shere volume of the data available on “The Simpsons” constitutes another reason for choosing it as my empirical example. As I mentioned in the introduction, it is this vast amount of data that has forced me to settle with only analysing scenes and lines from one single season. One could, in fact, have selected any one of the seasons, but the season chosen is season two, which contains 22 episodes and originally aired in the United States of America between October 1990 and May 1991, even winning an Emmy for one of the episodes. Season two of “The Simpsons” was releasedon DVD in July 2002 by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.[6] To give a background for the thesis, here follows a little more on the show “The Simpsons”.
- About “The Simpsons”
To reach some level of knowledge about “The Simpsons” as a show I will in the following provide information about the world famous situational comedy.
In April of 1987, “The Simpsons” came to life. However, it was initially as a series of very short animated movies which were broadcast on the sketch show “The Tracey Ullman Show”. The American people were able, then, follow “The Simpsons” for three seasons on the aforementioned sketch show before airing in December 1989 on the tv channel Fox as an independent show. “The Simpsons” has stayed on Fox ever since and is still running and developing new episodes – the count is on 461 episodes as this thesis is being written. In 2007, there was even released a “The Simpsons Movie” which played in movie theatres around the world and it, too, became a huge success.
Creator of “The Simpsons” is the critically acclaimed American cartoonist Matt Groening[7] (born 1954). The beloved tv family all have names after Groening’s own family members – he did, though, switch “Matt” with “Bart” not to make the resemblance too obvious. Also, he has stated that his family is not of the dysfunctional kind that we see in “The Simpsons”, and that the inspiration for Bart actually came from his older brother, Mark.
The five characters in the closest Simpson family are the stupid and irrational though lovable father, Homer, the understanding mother, Marge or Marjorie, the oldest trouble-making child, Bart (an anagram for “brat”), the intelligent and socially conscious middle child, Lisa, and the non-verbal baby, Maggie. Furthermore, there are tons of more or less consistent characters in the fictional town of Springfield in which the show takes place, and, in addition to this, “The Simpsons” holds the world record for being the television series with most guest stars featured.
Perhaps there are a gargantuan number of characters in “The Simpsons”, but actually the primary cast only consists of six actors. However, the people behind the show have managed to find actors who possess such a wide range of voices that some of them are able to master more than twenty characters on the show. The popularity of “The Simpsons” and the talent of the actors doing the characters’ voices are factors which have resulted in a current salary of around $400,000 per episode for the six main members of the cast withouth whom the show could not go on.
Often having constituted itself via its many episodes as a satirical situational comedy, the themes in “The Simpsons” vary notably. The fact that a whole town is the stage of the show makes it easy to satirise all of the big themes in the United States of America and in life in general: Politics, religion, environment, culture, the economy, consumer society and many more. As the people behind “The Simpsons” from the beginning made a deal with Fox that the network could not interfere with the contents of the various episodes, possibilities of satirising anyone or anything have been and are still endless.
Although satire is an important tool for “The Simpsons”, the humour also counts slapstick and physical comedy, returning gimmicks and a wide variety of cultural references from movies, television, music, literature etc. Also, being an animated show creates many different opportunities within physical comedy which are not present for a show with “live” actors. The catchphrases in the show are notable too. The catchphrases from “The Simpsons” are widely known around the world, and some expressions have even made it into the dictionaries.
The awards which “The Simpsons” has won are many. To name a few the show has won 25 Emmy Awards, it has been named the 20th century’s best television series by Time Magazine, and the same magazine gave Bart Simpson an entry in their list of the 20th century’s 100 most influential people. Furthermore, in 2000 the Simpson family were awarded their own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It cannot surprise that “The Simpsons” is the longest-running prime-time animated series in the United States of America.[8]
After explaining a little about the data being used as the empirical example for this thesis, the time has come to focus on subtitling.
- Subtitling in General
Henrik Gottlieb describes subtitling as follows:
“Diamesic 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.”[9]
This means subtitling is a translation from a source-language speech to a target-language writing (diamesic translation), and that the translation appears on screen together with the source text. This means, again, that subtitling is not “the transfer of written text in one language into written text in another”[10] as is the case with the “regular” term of translation. So, the language mode shifts from speech to writing which creates a completely different kind of translation. Also, the factors of time and space play their part in differentiating subtitling from “normal” written translation seeing as the translator producing the subtitles only has a limited amount of space and time on the screen to his disposal[11]. This factor makes condensation[12] a common microstrategical choice for subtitlers along with that of deletion[13].
Diagonal Translation
The concept of “diagonal translation” emerges when we speak of subtitling. As seen in Gottlieb’s figure[14]below, subtitling moves diagonally from a source-language speech to a target-language writing as opposed to for example interpreting, written translation and intralingual translation. Interpreting is represented by the upper of the two horizontal arrows, as it moves from one language to another, but is isomesic. The lower of the horizontal arrows constitutes written translation which is also isomesic, but interlingual. The vertical arrow represents intralingual (from source language to source language) diamesic translation as used in subtitling for the hard-of-hearing. So, “regular” subtitling from one language to another is diamesic and interlingual which creates a diagonal arrow in the figure.
SL SPEECHTL SPEECH
INTERPRETING
WRITTEN TRANSLATION
SL WRITING TL WRITING
Fig. 1: Translation process – diagonal arrow represents the process of subtitling.
Changing Strategies
What sometimes makes viewers who understand quite well the source language of a particular movie or tv show frown upon the subtitles is one of the most difficult aspects of subtitling. Due to linguistic differences between the source language and the target language the translator will often experience problems with translating directly on a sentence-to-sentence level as it is so brilliantly exemplified by Gottlieb[15]. In other words, the microstrategy is changed in order to make the macrostrategy function work – even though the particular lines will catch the eye of the viewer who knows what is originally meant in the source language (the viewer “processes dialogue and subtitles as ‘diamesic twins’, while oscillating between (I) using subtitles as an aid to understanding the original dialogue, and (II) using the original dialogue to evaluate, and often criticize, the subtitles”[16] as I will more or less objectively be doing later on in the thesis). More on microstrategies and macrostrategies in the following chapter (named “6. Analysis, Assessment and Revision”) in which the various translation problems are analysed and assessed.
From Spoken to Written Language
Gottlieb mentions the difference between written and spoken language and lists a number of points in which the two differ. They all more or less constitute an obstacle for the translator when following the diagonal arrow (from fig. 1 above) of the diamesic, interlingual translation. For instance, the many pauses and self-corrections and self-interruptions in spoken language differentiate it from the written one. So do phenomenons such as contradictions, unfinished sentences and two or more people talking simultaneously, and these are just some of the differences. On a word level, for example, the pronunciation of some words can be so unclear that the different words cannot be identified and included in the written translation. Subtitling is not just a translation of a transcript and, therefore, the translator should try to eliminate the most impractical features of the more unstructured and colloquial spoken language and adapting the original dialogue to the more “manageable” and formal written language; otherwise the subtitles will be met with wondering and will be too noticeable.[17]
Next chapter will deal with the analysis, assessment and revision of the various scenes from second season of “The Simpsons” selected for just that purpose.
- Analysis, Assessment and Revision
The analysis, assessment and revision part of this thesis will be carried out as follows:
First, a short description of the episode being analysed will follow each subheading of this chapter.
Second, I will list a table containing the dialogue from the given scene of the episode (the name of which will be the heading for the subchapter containing dialogues from it). The left column will contain the original dialogue as spoken in the episode; the middle column will enclose the Danish subtitles from the DVD, and the right column will contain my personal, alternative translation. Also, the precise minute and second of the original dialogue is listed in the left column in parenthesis.
Third, the analysis, assessment and the explanation of my revision will follow just after the table of each example.
“Simpson and Delilah”
The name of this episode is a play on words on the classic story of Samson and Delilah in which Samson’s strength is located in his hair. So, obviously, in this episode hair and power go hand in hand. Homer buys a hair growth formula and charges it to his employer, Mr. Burns, owner of the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. The formula works, Homer is promoted and is a success – helping him succeed is his new assistant, Karl. As seen in the first example from the episode in the table below, one of Homer’s achievements as an executive is gaining more tartar sauce for the employees.[18]
ORIGINAL DIALOGUE / DANISH SUBTITLES / ALTERNATIVE TRANSLATION(3:12) Homer: “D’oh! I’m out of tartar sauce!” / “Der er ikke mere remoulade.” / ”Jeg har ikke mere tartar!”
(10:39) Homer: “Well, you only get this tiny, little cup of tartar sauce to dip them in…” / “Vi får altid for lidt remoulade.” / ”Altså, vi får kun den her lille smule tartar at dyppe dem i…”
”Tartar sauce” occurs a lot of times (more times than the two examples used in the table above) in this episode, and in my opinion a direct translation[19] in both subtitles would not be a microstrategy that would make a noticeable translation – on the contrary. Noticeable is exactly what the Danish subtitles become when using the Danish counterpart “remoulade”. The context of the first line is that Homer is sitting in the cafeteria eating fishsticks, and right before the second line he has told Mr. Burns about these fishsticks, which are, in fact, translated with “fish sticks” in the Danish subtitles. I cannot see the point of substituting “tartar sauce” with “remoulade” when “tartar” is plenty understandable for the Danish viewers.