For the purposes of this study, I considered it vital not to instruct the informants in any way.
By this I mean that the reception process would not have been natural, if the informants had been instructed to search for something in particular. That is not to say that the situation would have been natural as a consequence. The very fact that they were specially summoned to arrive at a research meeting without any preconceived notion of its intent, has undoubtedly affected their state of mind and they would not have felt completely at ease as opposed to, say, with a group of close friends enjoying an evening together.
The atmosphere during the discussions did not appear to be fully natural and effortless: many comments presented during discussions were rather brief and the discussions followed my line of questions rather closely in the case of both groups. Not knowing the aim of the study could have worked as a deterrent and made the informants feel uncomfortable answering questions under the watchful eye of the moderator.
It was apparent in both groups that the definition of the quality of the subtitles was not straightforward: there was a lingering sensation that seemed to be bothering both near- and non-expert groups: there were more questionable instances than could actively be remembered. Consequently, deeming the overall quality appropriate could simply have been a convenient option in lack of tangible evidence to the contrary.
However, the study did reveal certain differences between near- and non-experts. As for the perception of errors, as mentioned in chapter 6, the subtitles contained approximately 166 errors. Retained English expressions, whether full, partial or adapted, were particularly noteworthy (approximately half of all notions). It is of course conceivable that minor details, such as individual words and missing commas may be quite forgettable.
The following table illustrates the errors perceived by both groups according to error type:
Table 7. Errors perceived by near- and non-experts
Perceived errors Near-experts Non-experts
Misunderstood words 1 0
Misunderstood expressions 1 1
Retention (full) 1 2
Retention (partial) 1 0
Retention (adapted) 1 0
Nonexistent Finnish 1 0
Unidiomatic expressions 0 (1) 0
Incorrect Finnish equivalent 0 0
Spelling errors 0 0
Incorrect punctuation 0 0
Total 6 (7) 3
According to the information obtained from questionnaires (see section 7.1), the near-experts appeared to be more inclined to language matters than the non-experts: the near-experts had fewer minor subjects and they displayed a greater tendency to language studies in general.
They were also, on average, more advanced in their studies. Consequently they were evidently in an advantaged position as for the potential perception of any errors.
Indeed, as can be seen, the near-experts pointed out more erroneous instances. Furthermore, the use of unidiomatic, inconsistent or erroneous Finnish was only mentioned by near-experts.
However, given the vast amount of errors in the subtitles, only a fraction of any erroneous instances were noticed by either group. The table also illustrates the fact that, as in Tuominen’s (2012) study, the difficulties in remembering the errors and the small number of particularly objectionable occurrences were strikingly similar in both groups and that the quality of the subtitles was not deemed poor, although it was not particularly praised, either.
Even though the non-expert group mentioned slightly more instances not connected to the translation, extra linguistic matters were brought up in both groups and were, as opposed to merely linguistic matters, a considerable source of observations and there were no considerable differences in the groups in this respect: when asked to name something objectionable, the act of vomiting that was present at least twice in the film was mentioned as unpleasant in both groups.
The quoting patterns of near- and non-experts in this study provide further evidence of the similarity in viewing habits. Compared to the study conducted by Tuominen (2012), where there were reportedly no significant differences between near- and non-experts in the perception of subtitles (see section 4.3), the similarities in quoting English and Finnish were even more strikingly apparent in my study when comparing near-experts and non-experts:
both groups had approximately four quotes in English. The near-expert-group had approximately two Finnish quotes and additionally the claimed inconsistency of use between two Finnish words used to refer to the same concept was noted. Additionally, a play on words came up in the near-expert discussion: the basic idea of it was expressed in Finnish but the actual Finnish words were not remembered. It was also remembered that the English original had the same basic playful idea.
As for the non-expert group, there were approximately three quotes in Finnish, one of which was a Finnish corruption of the original English word stalker and one that was an accurately recalled translation of an English expression. It was interesting to note such a pattern that could easily have been thought as reversed: the non-experts quoted phrases whereas the near-experts mainly quoted short, individual words. This is strikingly similar to Tuominen’s (2012) study, where the near-expert informants tended mainly to quote only short “keywords.” The retained use of the wordMom was brought up in both groups: it was mentioned three times in the near-experts group and once in the non-expert group and was evidently confusing. Several behavioral patterns correlate with those reported by Tuominen:
there were self-blaming comments in both of my groups and the film or the translation were not automatically blamed of being unclear. Tuominen noticed in her study that the subtitles were seen as a legitimate part of a film: the quoting patterns in my study were relatively short and scarce. Therefore, the legitimacy of the subtitles in the minds of my informants cannot be fully ascertained based solely on quoting patterns.
Some of the quotes from the study were not, however, in any way linked to appreciation:
some of them were used to point out problematic instances. It is still noteworthy that the informants were able to recall both English and Finnish expressions in relatively similar numbers. In the following chapter, I will present the final conclusions of my study.
8 Conclusion
This study originally stemmed from the personal perception of numerous errors and questionable solutions in the AV translation of a DVD film. I first analyzed the errors for my earlier thesis (Lehto 2013) and I constructed further categories for the errors for my current study. More specifically, I was interested in discovering whether my subjective views of the errors would correlate with discoveries made by others.
Defining translation errors was difficult throughout the study. The main categorization of errors in this study was based on their supposed reason, although the actual reason may be difficult to determine. Furthermore, each error can be caused by a number of factors.
Consequently, many examples placed in a particular category could be presented in other categories as well.
Since the informants were not given any instructions, the study concentrated simply on noting down whatever errors or problematic instances would emerge in focus group discussions. For the purposes of this study, a tentative definition for translation errors was provided in section 4.3, where unconventional solutions and unidiomatic language were noticed to be particularly problematic in translations.
The definition of translation errors in always related to existing norms and definitions of good quality. As mentioned in section 5.1, the exact target group or purpose of the translation were difficult to ascertain, but the general impression made by the film as well as an investigation into its details suggested that it is light entertainment without any special requirements.
Therefore, conveying normal everyday communication in Finnish could be deemed sufficient for the subtitles. In addition to this general quality, they should, according to several studies on the good quality of subtitles, beeasily understood anduncomplicated(see section 3.2.3).
Moreover, they should not attract too much attention by their presence. As Tuominen (2012:
279) points out:
The only significantly problematic theme to arise from the discussions was not an unambiguous subtitling error but, more accurately, any part of the subtitles which drew unnecessary attention to itself and away from the entirety of the multimodal text.
It became apparent that the subtitles used in this study did in fact break the norms presented:
many source texts words had been translated incorrectly and the subtitles contained several
unidiomatic Finnish words and expressions. Particularly noticeable were the retained source text words, which attracted the attention of both near- and non-experts and formed approximately half of all problematic issues discovered. Misunderstood words and expressions leading to incorrect translations as well as unidiomatic words and expressions leading to either incorrect or unidiomatic translations were noticed far less frequently. These findings do not correlate at all with the distribution of all errors discovered and categorized by me prior to focus group discussions.
What was striking was that, even though retained English expressions were particularly noticeable, only fractions of all of the categorized errors were noticed. This supports the findings of Tuominen (2012) and the eye-tracking study by Lång et al. (2013). According to these studies, subtitles are noticed at a sensory level, but they tend not to be processed consciously. Rather, they seem to form only one aspect of multimodality and not necessarily be prioritized, since, as suggested by Tuominen (2012: 285), close observation would divert attention from other aspects of the experience.
Since instances mentioned here that could be thought of as erroneous are limited, the question asked by Tuominen (2012: 287) proves to be once again relevant: does questionable quality in AV translations indeed matter, if small inaccuracies and inconsistencies are usually ignored by viewers? Indeed, in the light of my study vast majority of potential errors passed by undetected.
There was no clear distinction in the preferences between source and target languages, either:
both non- and near-experts quoted both languages rather similarly during discussions. What was particularly striking was that neither non-experts nor near-experts found the overall quality of the subtitles to be poor. It should also be noted that the quality was not particularly praised either. This would suggest that the overall quality of the subtitles was found to be satisfactory. In other words, the translation could be seen to fulfill the expectancy norm as defined by Chesterman (see section 3.1.2).
It should be pointed out that my study has certain limitations. First of all, the number of participants, seven in total, is quite limited. Furthermore, the demographic profile of the informants was rather heterogeneous as all of them were young university students. For future research, a similar study could be carried out with a larger number of informants with more diverse personal profiles, for example.
Furthermore, the film used in this study as well as that in Tuominen’s study could be categorized as entertainment. In other words, they are not designed to be used, for example, for educational or professional purposes. Would similar errors found in this study pass equally unnoticed in the subtitles of a promotional corporate presentation film, for example? The perception of errors could be different in the case of a translation designed for different purposes than the material used in this study.
The particular AV translation did not contain all conceivable factors that would diminish their quality. The segmentation and timing were appropriate, for example. What would be the effects of a translation containing poor segmentation and timing in addition to problems described in this study?
As the informants of my study were not instructed beforehand, what would be the effect of, shall we say, deliberate “contamination” of informants? For example, one group could be instructed to search for errors and the data could be compared to the findings of other, non-instructed groups. This could mean applying the method not applied in this study that was discussed in sections 7.3.1 and 7.4.1: at least one group of informants could be issued with writing equipment and told to examine the subtitles in particular for errors or anything worthy of criticism. One further possibility for a future study could be exposing informants to a source language they are not at all familiar with, such as Japanese. How would informants observe the subtitles and make “mental notes” of them, if their understanding of the film were completely dependable on them? It would also be interesting to conduct a study where several researchers would study the same material by noting down observations individually and as a group. Such a study would be an extension to my current study.
In any case, it is reasonable to assume, in accordance with an earlier study (see section 4.3) that especially creative embellishments or artistic solutions as well as retained source-text elements may be problematic for viewers. There may be individual variations in particular in AV products as well as in the receiving audiences, but it could be appropriate to take these notions into consideration in the production on subtitles.
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