El medio ambiente, un apoyo para el fortalecimiento de los procesos de escritura de

According to Aijmer and Simon-Vandenbergen (2006:113), DPs are “one of the most elusive aspects of language”. As they are pragmaticalised, they do not have a well-defined lexical meaning but they do, however, have pragmatic meaning. This pragmatic meaning does not bestow any propositional content on the DP but may influence the proposition of the surrounding discourse by indicating how this discourse should be interpreted. In Example 1 below, you know is a subject + verb combination with referential use, i.e. this combination has propositional meaning. You know cannot be removed without rendering the utterance ungrammatical and is thus not to be considered a DP. On the other hand, you know in Example 2 is a

The Swedish subtitling of discourse particle You Know in ten US films

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DP, as it does not have propositional meaning and can be removed without making the utterance ungrammatical, although removing it may, however, change the meaning of the proposition following it:

(1) You know what Richard’s favourite song is?

(2) You know, Richard’s favourite song is My Way with Frank Sinatra.

The notorious elusiveness of most DPs as well as the difficulty of pin- pointing their proper function in the discourse are the most likely reasons for their omission in subtitles. Another possible reason for their deletion is their lack of semantic meaning, a quality which causes DPs to be perceived as redundant features of language. They are usually considered a frequent component of spoken language that does not have much significance in written format in general. Certain socio-cultural norms at play in Swedish society consider DPs to be part of a spoken language which does not generally enjoy a high status and their (over)use is considered as ‘bad language’ (Kotsinas, 2002; Andersson, 2004). To a large extent, these norms govern the literary translation of DPs, which, in turn, dictates the subtitling of these features (Mattsson, 2007:7). A further reason for the omission of DPs in subtitling may be the fact that subtitles cooperate with the original film dialogue and “the meaningful and stroking presence of the parallel image” (Chaume, 2004:843). When dealing with audiovisual programmes, it is often argued that the various functions fulfilled by DPs can be replaced by means of intonation and gestures, as enough information is put across through the audio and visual dimensions of a film. However, if a DP is omitted in a subtitle, the information a viewer receives from the subtitle may in fact be at variance with the information received from the images and the soundtrack. This conflict between audiovisual information and subtitle can create “a discordance […] which may need more processing time to resolve than the cinema [or TV] audience has available to it” (Hatim and Mason, 1997:89).

Ivarsson and Carroll (1998:87) in their influential work on subtitling state, under the heading ‘Ellipsis’, that:

Words whose main purpose is to keep the conversation ticking over (“well”, “you know”) […] can safely be omitted. But this does not mean to say that subtitlers should ignore those little words that often make all the difference or give the lie to a person’s character. There can be a world of difference between “It’s ridiculous”, “It’s just ridiculous” and “It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?”

The somewhat contradictory claim that, on the one hand, DPs can safely be omitted, but on the other hand, they should not be ignored, is a much quoted

Jenny Mattsson

excerpt in Swedish subtitling guidelines. The Swedish public channel SVT (2002) states that the reduction of a ST is a must and, although it does not offer any rules, it gives advice on how to treat English DPs in Swedish subtitling: “There is usually no problem for not translating words that only fill pauses (well, you know, etc) […]. However, one should not take away all those little words that add nuances to the language and characterise people. There is a difference between ‘Han är hemma’, Han är ju hemma’, ‘Han är väl hemma’”(my translation).

Another set of subtitling guidelines was produced by Subtitling International in 1990 and was still being used by SDI media, among others, in 2006 (Kenneth Johansson, 2006, personal communication). On the subject of reduction from English into Swedish, these guidelines state that it is up to each translator to choose what is most important to communicate to the viewer, and provide some suggestions: “As a rule, words that fill pauses, unnecessary repetitions [etc.] can be removed. However, one should not remove little words adding nuances to the language” (my translation).

As is clear from the above two quotes from the Swedish subtitling guidelines, they both quote Ivarsson and Carroll’s excerpt more or less verbatim, illustrating how influential these authors’ views are on the subtitling of DPs and other features devoid of semantic meaning. There seems to be a general tendency to consider DPs as only having the function of ‘fillers’ which can most often be removed in the subtitles. However, DPs are more than that. The two quotes from the guidelines explicitly mention the fact that you know and other DPs can be more than just fillers and, hence, should not be ignored completely. The issue is to discover which words simply ‘keep the conversation ticking over’ as fillers and which words ‘make all the difference’. A possible way of doing this is provided below.