As discussed above, linguistic varieties have long been used as a filmic resource for the depiction of characters, the interpersonal relationships established between them and in discursive situations (Hodson, 2014; Kozloff, 2000; Lippi-Green, 1997). Producers and screenwriters take advantage of the sociocultural meanings associated with linguistic varieties which organise linguistic varieties according to a continuum of prestige and position their speakers accordingly. The standard variety, supported by the education system and its well-defined rules, conventions and orthography, is normally taken as ‘correct’ and as the more prestigious use of language. Other varieties are devalued as they diverge in their lexicon, grammar and phonology/orthography from the standard norm.
The easy recognition of the varieties and the meaning they import into the fictional world has proven to be a powerful resource in the indirect depiction of characters and situations. It is, however, a fictional resource always embedded with a pragmatic and semiotic significance which takes advantage of linguistic stereotypes that have been developed over time to ensure easy recognition of the characters’ speech in terms of social standing, education level, geographical positioning or ethnic group (Blake, 1981; Chapman, 1994; Hodson, 2014; Page, 1988). It is thus embedded within the author’s aesthetic, narrative, thematic or stylistic objectives and used to fulfil specific diegetic functions, such as characterisation and introduction of authenticity, definition of interpersonal relationships of power or solidarity (Hatim and Mason, 1990), introduction of a
comedic moment or introduction of a point of view (especially when the narrator is the one employing non-standard discourse).
Given the intrinsic link between linguistic varieties and the sociocultural context in which they are embedded, along with the diegetic functions they are expected to fulfil, it is thus not surprising that this has often been considered an impossible translation task (Lane-Mercier, 1997). The difficulty does not lie so much in translating the linguistic varieties themselves, but in translating the existing relationship between the linguistic varieties and their associated extra- linguistic sociocultural meaning, leading to Leppihalme’s (1997) famous expression, ‘culture bumps’ (1997). This is arguably one of the main reasons behind the frequently identified tendency for discourse standardisation, which led Toury (1995/2012) to propose the ‘law of growing standardisation’.
For example, Leppihalme (2000) found that standardisation is the overall strategy used in the translation of Finnish novels into English and Swedish. Even though there is a loss of the linguistic individuality presented in the ST, she argues that the intended readers are emotionally satisfied because the readers are not interested in the linguistic identity of the author (Leppihalme, 2000). A standardisation strategy has been also identified in the translation of sub-standard Cockney and African American Vernacular English in Portuguese versions of Pygmalion and Gone with the Wind subtitled by the public television channel. Cavalheiro (2008) found that public television channels such as RTP, as well as translation distributed via VHS or the Internet, use a strategy of standardisation to translate the African American Vernacular English variety, reflecting the regional and sociocultural values assigned to enslave African Americans. Rosa (1994) also identifies that the strategy of standardisation was noted in the translation of sub-standard Cockney for public television channels such as RTP into Portuguese. Ramos Pinto (2009) identifies standardisation in Portuguese translations of sub-standard Cockney in Pygmalion and My Fair Lady published (for the page and the stage) before 1974, in addition to those aired by the state television channel. This suggests that the choice of standardisation strategy might sometimes be motivated by the pressure of state censorship, which seeks to promote the use of the standard variety.
In contrast, the strategies of dialectisation and exclusive use of non-standard varieties have been identified in a number of studies analysing the translation of non-standard varieties (Brisset, 1996; Cronin, 1996; Findlay, 1996). These studies seem to allow the association between the dialectal option and nationalist movements that seek to assert their cultural and linguistic autonomy via the language spoken as a national language (in the case of Spain) or variety of the former colonising country (in the case of Quebec or Ireland). Brisset (1996), for example, found that Joual (a very low-prestige Quebec working- class dialect of the Montreal area) and Quebec French (a less prestigious dialect of French) were used by Michel Garneau to translate the English novel, Macbeth, into Quebec French, a less prestigious dialect of French.
It has been possible to identify different levels of recreation (Rosa, 2015) and preservation strategies (Ramos Pinto, 2009) between standardisation and dialectisation, i.e. strategies by which the linguistic variation is recreated in the TT to a greater or lesser degree. These strategies have usefully been organised in a cline (Rosa, 2015) that recognises a centre of prestige where the standard variety is located and a periphery of less prestigious varieties. This allows us to account for different levels of recreation and identity situations in which the linguistic variation is kept in the TT, but with a diminished visibility either because of a lower frequency of use or the use of varieties/discourse markers closer to the centre of prestige. Three levels of preservation strategies are suggested: centralisation, maintenance and decentralisation (Ramos Pinto, 2017). This allows us to account for different levels of recreation and identity situations in which linguistic variation is recreated in the TT. This study will follow Ramos Pinto’s taxonomy.
There are a number of case studies analysing the translation of non-standard varieties which have identified different levels of preservation strategies. In the translation of The Sound and the Fury into German, Boecker (1973) found that an attempt is made to recreate non-standard varieties by using very simple German with non-standard grammatical features. On the other hand, Fayen (1989), in his analysis of the translation of Faulkner’s novel The Sound and the Fury into Spanish and Portuguese, concludes that translators tend to move closer to the centre of prestige (usually the standard and written style) with an
occasional lexical non-standard social variety in order to portray the character as belonging to a specific social class.
In addition, Määttä (2004) analyses the translation of the non-standard literary dialect of three characters (Benjy, Dilsey and Reverend) in different parts of the novel The Sound and the Fury into French. Määttä (2004) notices that there is an attempt to maintain the non-standard varieties by using familiar features recognised as non-standard features in the TL. The study identifies the strategies as follows: translation using oral features of spoken French, lexical dialectal features and reduction of non-standard varieties to forms of address to indicate social status. Määttä (2004) concludes that the translation follows the tradition of literary presentation with a similar frequency of non-standard features to the original in the first part of the novel, but with a lower frequency of non-standard features in the second part of the novel. This might lead to a loss of the narrative purpose and the ideological framework of the novel.
In a similar case-study, Dimitrova (1997) analysed the translation of the novel A Time on Earth from Swedish into English and Russian. Dimitrova (1997) found that no attempt has been made to use dialectal markers belonging to a specific social group or region. Furthermore, non-standard oral features, mainly morphosyntactic and lexical features, are used to recreate sub-standard regional and social varieties. Brodovich (1997) also identifies that oral discourse features commonly called ‘general non-standard Russian’ or ‘common speech’ are used to translate the non-standard speech presented in the English novel Pygmalion by Shaw into Russian. These case studies reveal that there is a general tendency to use lexical and morphosyntactic non-standard oral features to recreate non-standard varieties in literary translations.
As mentioned previously, the film industry takes advantage of similar features of representation of non-standard varieties to those used in the literary system. Accordingly, several studies in AVT have found that AV translators use similar strategies to those identified in the translation of non-standard varieties in the literary system. Rosa (1994, 2001) and Cavalheiro (2008), for example, found that non-standard oral features are used to identify the non-standard discourse in the English subtitles of sub-standard Cockney and African American Vernacular English into Portuguese versions of Pygmalion and Gone with the
Wind by the private television channel SIC. Ramos Pinto (2009) identifies the preference for lexical and graphical oral features in Portuguese translations of Pygmalion and My Fair Lady by the same private television channel. She argues that the effort to maintain linguistic variation features on the private television channels might be due to the fact that private companies hire freelance translators who feel less responsible for upholding the standard and have more freedom for creativity in translation.
Ellender (2015) provides a micro-level analysis of selected scenes from seven English language and French language films in order to explore the range of translation challenges posed by the subtitling of linguistic variation and the corresponding solutions offered by the subtitlers. She examines the way in which non-standard accent/pronunciation, morphosyntax and vocabulary have been subtitled into English or French. Two broad approaches are identified: neutralisation or preservation of non-standard features in the subtitles. Ellender (2015) suggests that when the subtitlers decide to standardise ST linguistic varieties, they could add occasional single-line headnotes or subtitles to inform the viewers about strong regional/dialectal language used in the ST. They also could take advantage of the DVD features to add an extra section to the film’s DVD to provide concise supplementary explanations of the linguistic varieties used in the ST. However, this addition will not compensate for the loss of communicative meaning occurring in the target product because the intended viewers may not understand the function of using dialect in the source product. Researchers from Asian and Middle Eastern countries have been focused on analysing the subtitling strategies used to translate linguistic variation presented in their local films into English. This is because they are interested in investigating the type of strategies and procedures employed in the subtitles. Tsai (2009), for example, focuses on the translation of Taiwanese Mandarin dialogue into English subtitles, and attempts to find counterpart strategies and to provide more information about subtitling Taiwanese film, especially from dialects into English. Tsai (2009) found that similar subtitling strategies to those identified by European scholars, such as simplification, omission and paraphrasing, have been used in the English subtitling of Taiwanese film.
As discussed by Lane-Mercier (1997), each of these strategies incurs risks in relation to meaning creation, meaning loss, ethnocentricity, unauthenticity, conservatism and/or radicalism. Besides identifying the strategies used, these descriptive studies have also shown that no strategy can be truly understood outside of its broader sociocultural context as it is often mediated by factors such as the ideological context, which can be more or less supportive of creative uses of discourse and work either as a creative or conservative influence; the established tradition for the recreation of non-standard varieties in literature, theatre and film; the recognised status of subtitling and subtitlers; and the target audience profile or working conditions, among others.
However, despite their great contribution, the textual analysis proposed in the above-mentioned studies does not provide AVT researchers with the tools required to consider the intermodal relationships established between the different modes contributing to the construction of the non-standard variety’s communicative purpose in the ST, nor the impact the strategies have on preserving, cancelling or modifying the intermodal relationships established in the ST and/or the diegetic function they fulfil. Without this, although it is possible to analyse in great detail the way in which linguistic varieties were translated, it is easy to fall into the trap of assuming that a strategy of standardisation, for example, equates with eliminating meaning when this might not be the case. Instead, the meaning may be expressed through other modes, through the tradition established for the translation of non-standard varieties in a given target context and through the sociocultural context mediating the viewers’ interpretation (Ramos Pinto and Mubaraki, forthcoming).
This study aims to address these issues by proposing a corpus-based quantitative analysis and an analytical framework to identify a) the linguistic varieties and their associated extra-linguistic meaning, b) the existing intermodal relationships and the diegetic functions they fulfil, c) the strategies used in translation and d) their impact on preserving, cancelling or modifying the ST intermodal relationships as well as the diegetic functions they accomplish.