任姝玥
武警工程大学，陕西西安 710086
1.Introduction
When Internet slangs first appeared in the English-Chinese film subtitling translations, numerous people showed preference. Comments like funny, trendy and familiar were commonly seen. However, with the passage of time, such behaviour has drawn criticism. As one of the opponents of using those catchwords, I will analyse from the aspect of Internet slangs, film subtitling translation, the advantages and disadvantages of using Internet slangs in the English-Chinese film subtitling translations. Finally, propose several possible suggestions to improve the situation.
2.Internet Slang
Unfortunately, a standardized definition of “Internet slang” is lacking. At present, in China, various views concerning “Internet slang” are widely accepted. The first kind is terms in computer technology, the second kind can be expressions relating to the Internet, and the third kind refers to popular languages Internet users using online, for instance, “高大上”(high-end, grand and classy), “火钳刘明”(leave comments before it becomes a hot tweet), “LOL”(laughing out loud), “萌萌哒”(lovely) and the likes. The last one is applied in this essay.
According to Xiao Sun (2011, pp.154-155), Internet slangs have five characteristics as follow: creativity, conciseness, visualization, humour and colloquialism. The majority of Internet users is young people, who always chase after new things and make themselves unique. Thus they will create new and trendy words. For example, “赞”(like), “斑竹”(the first person who post a new topic), “顶”(support) are all newly invented words from the Internet. When chatting online, people all want to be fast. Therefore, there are a number of abbreviations invented on the internet, like the example used before, “高大上” is the abbreviation of “高端大气上档次”, meaning high-end, grand and classy;“3Q” stands for “thank you”. Punctuations are very much likely to be combined as emoji. For example, “:D”(laugh), “^ ^”(happy) etc. Besides, from year 2007, several classical Chinese characters have been laid great attention, just because of the appearance, including “槑”(ancient Chinese character, out of use, however due to looking like two Chinese character “呆”combined together, becoming popular on the Internet to describe someone being very silly), “囧”(another old-fashioned classic Chinese word, looks like a embarrassed face, thus gained many interest online to show the feeling of embarrassment) etc. People may use dialects to sounds interesting. In Taiwan, people will say “zheyangzi” (in this way) in the sound of “jiangzi”, then the expression “酱紫” becomes popular on the Internet. Onomatopoeia will also be used to add humour in the conversation. For instance, “喵星人”(cat) “汪星人” (dog) are created using the meow and bark; more commonly, laughter sounds “嘻嘻 哈哈 嘿嘿” are often used when chatting online. The words using on the internet may not be grammatically or logically correct as long as it can be understood by the person or people the one is talking with. For example, “这都不知道，你也太out了！自己百度一下吧。
”(You even do not know this. So out of fashion! Please use the search engine Baidu.)
3.Film Subtitling Translation
According to Díaz-Cintas and Remael (2007, p.8), “Subtitling may be defined as a translation practice that consists of presenting a written text, generally on the lower part of the screen, that discursive elements that appear in the image (letters, inserts, graffiti, inscriptions, placards, and the like), and the information that is contained on the soundtrack (songs, voices off).” Film subtitling can be more specifically divided into interlingual, intralingual and bilingual subtitling. The first kind will be laid main attention in this essay.
3.1. Features of Film Subtitling Translation
3.1.1. Multimedia
In film subtitling translations, multiple verbal and visual elements exist in the same time, for instance, source dialogues, lyrics, music, natural sounds, subtitles, written signs, images and the like.
3.1.2. Synchronization
The subtitles must keep pace with the images, in emotion, content and tone. If the actor is very furious, it would much better translate the words with a quite harsh tone and more spoken form than so formal or beautiful like a great literature.
3.1.3. Colloquialism and Nativeness
As more films are about the stories in daily life, people will talk normally. Formal expressions will be too solemn for everyday dialogues. Besides, translating a film from English to Chinese, the subtitler should consider the understandability and acceptability in the audience. The original content or culture may not be rendered effectively if the message is not properly tailored.
3.1.4. Legibility
Besides nativeness in the linguistic aspect, subtitlers also need to pay attention to the length and number of the subtitles on per screen. Dr. Fotios Karamitroglou (1998, pp.2-3)concludes “A maximum of two lines of subtitles should be presented at a time. This would guarantee that no more than 2/12 of the screen image would be covered by subtitles at a time.” and “Each subtitle line should allow around 35 characters in order to be able to accommodate a satisfactory portion of the (translated) spoken text and minimise the need for original text reduction and omissions. An increase in the number of characters, attempting to fit over 40 per subtitle line, reduces the legibility of the subtitles because the font size is also inevitably reduced.”
3.2. Constraints of Film Subtitling Translation
3.2.1. Space and time limitation
No matter how big the screen is, the subtitles can only take up the maximum of two lines at the bottom of it. Furthermore, due to the talking speed of actors and actresses, every subtitle will not stay very long on the screen. More precisely speaking, “No subtitle should appear for less than one second or, with the exception of songs, stay on the screen for longer than seven seconds.” (Carroll and Ivarsson, 1998)
3.2.2 Vulnerability
With the increasing number of people can master both English and Chinese at the same time, the on-screen presented subtitles are prone to be criticised. All the audience will scrutinise the subtitles, some of them even more than once.
4.Internet Slangs in English-Chinese Film Subtitling Translation
As the Internet spread increasingly wide, some subtitlers put Internet slangs into the English-Chinese film subtitling translation. After weighing all the pros and cons of using Internet slangs in English-Chinese film subtitling translation, I do think it is more like gilding the lily rather than icing on the cake.
4.1.Advantages of Internet Slangs in English-Chinese Film Subtitling Translation
4.1.1. Localization
Using some popular slangs in the translation may make the Chinese audience feel more familiar. Proper localisation can help the target audience eliminate the feeling of too Western. Sometimes, a certain culture does not have a perfect match in Chinese, therefore, using some trendy words can get the alien concept sounds understandable and acceptable. For example, in movie Rio, Blu said “But just for argument sake, what are you doing?” The subtitles of the former part were translated into “弱弱的问一句”, which smartly avoid the very Western expression “for argument sake”.
4.1.2. Humour
Most commonly, the Internet slangs are used to add humour to the dialogue. The subtitling translation of Kungfu Panda won a good reputation for funny and trendy. Plenty of Internet slangs were used to make it sounds more hilarious to Chinese audience. For example, the source sentence “So, I only need to do, just get this thing going” was translated into “神马都是浮云”; “Impressive, Dragon Warrior.” to “太给力了，神龙大侠”. All of these increase the amusement, giving the original text more humour.
4.2. Disadvantages of Internet Slangs in English-Chinese Film Subtitling Translation
Although many years ago the Chinese audience are very happy with using some Internet slangs in the subtitles, recently nearly half of the Chinese audience do not like this (南方都市报, 2012). China Daily reported that “Poor subtitles may deal blow to superhero film”(2014). It said that the low quality subtitles affected the movie Guardians of the Galaxy, which is a big hit in the rest of the world. Many people complained about the translation has ruined the original humour and doubt the capability of the translator. There are a lot of problems existing when using Internet slangs in the film translations.
4.2.1. Incompatibility
The intention of using Internet slangs is to localise the unfamiliar concept, however, sometimes it is the Internet slangs that make the film become more alien. When Agent J of the movie Men in Black 3 talks like “天长地久有时尽 此恨绵绵无绝期 ”, plenty of Chinese audience cannot accept a foreigner in one science fiction action film suddenly speaks classical Chinese poetry. The incompatibility of Internet slangs is the most intolerant element most audience may have.
4.2.2. Loss of Original Culture
The movie Men in Black 3 is criticised a lot for the poor subtitles translation. Many people said the translation lost the original message and spoil the entire film. For instance, Agent J said “I think I just saw a tooth in that thing, or claw, a hoof.” in the movie, which was translated into “我真怀疑他们用的是地沟油、瘦肉精。” in the Chinese subtitle. However, if translated literally, it should be like “我好像看到里边有颗牙，还是爪子、蹄子什么的。” The translator may intend to add humour to the subtitle, yet she lost the original meaning. Agent J was implying that it may contain some parts of an alien.
4.2.3. Casualness and Overuse
Aside from the above two flaws, using Internet slangs in translating English films as well has problems of casualness and overuse. The subtitler just translates lines in the way of his or her own understanding, which may deviate from the source context. Very often, the translator will use considerable Internet slangs just for adding amusement without taking loyalty to the original meaning into consideration.
4.3. Cause of the Problems
Due to various reasons, all the mentioned weakness have taken shapes now. The most obvious causes are as follows.
4.3.1. Limited TimeAccording to the only professional subtitling translator in Shanghai film dubbing studio, Yaorong Lu, the duration of translating the subtitles of a movie commonly is around a week. (王晓晶, 2012) Being classified, some movies even cannot be watched by the translator. The translator may only get pieces of papers with all the scripts on it and is asked to finish the work in just a few days.
4.3.2. Low Pay
The earning of translating a film is not very substantial no matter how much the investment of making the film is. On one hand, the toil of translating a film is conspicuous. The translator needs to collect all the background knowledge beforehand, translate the film effectively. On the other hand, the pay of subtitling translation is only 4,000 Yuan (around ￡400 ) maximum per work. (陆姝, 2014)
4.3.3. Untrained Subtitlers
With the very low pay and great work pressure, few professional translators are willing to be a subtitler. Thus, numerous untrained translator are appointed or recommended to work as a subtitling translator. The most famous one nowadays in China is Xiuyan Jia, the subtitler of plenty criticised translations, such as Men in Black 3, Guardians of the Galaxy and Pacific Rim. She used to be a publicity agent and was found by a staff in August First Film Studio due to her good command of English. Without sound accumulation of translating skills and strategies nor enough knowledge of western culture, the translation is prone to be not perfect.
4.4. Advised Solutions
As most of the opponents of using substantial Internet slangs in English-Chinese film subtitling translation have a relatively high level of English language, it may be better give both English and Chinese subtitles at the same time to give them the freedom of tasting the original flavour. Furthermore, the part of film making should pay higher attention to the special problem in Chinese market and raise the investment of subtitling translation to guarantee the quality of the translation. Lastly, every translation film studio should make sure that all the translation work need to be carefully scrutinised by a group of professionals.
5.Conclusion
Due to time, payment and profession constraints, huge amount of Internet slangs in the English-Chinese film subtitling translations have formed some disadvantages and started to lose interest in the target audience. To change the situation, translators are well advised to maintain properly localising and loyally adding amusement while avoiding the downsides.
References
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Díaz-Cintas, J. and Remael, A. (2007). Audiovisual translation. Manchester, UK: St. Jerome Pub., p.8.
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