The choice of a translation strategy in translating swear words in subtitles, i.e. whether swear words are toned down, strengthened, left out or translated as words of similar strength, is affected by several factors, as discussed by Hjort (2006). According to a study conducted by Hjort (2006:80), almost 70 percent of the interviewed AV translators had received some kinds of guidelines for translating swear words, most of them from their employers or older colleagues, and nearly all the guidelines recommended toning down or omitting swear words.
The former of these two strategies is also supported by the fact that, as Hjort (2006:77) suggests, swear words have a stronger impact when they are in the written form (e.g. in subtitles) than when they are spoken aloud, to which Ivarsson and Carroll (1998:126) add that this is especially true if the words are translated literally, whereas the latter strategy is supported by the fact that subtitles have time and space limitations (Hjort 2006:78), which leads to omitting information that the translator deems less important to the material.
33
Additionally, translators can safely assume that viewers can deduce the state of mind of a speaker from his facial expression and tone even if swear words are left out of the subtitles (Vertanen 2007:153). Ivarsson and Carroll (1998:127) also suggest that lengthy passages of swear words should be toned down but that the translator should not take matters into his own hands by censoring the material as he wills. However, they do add that it is acceptable for a translator to act as a censor if the client has explicitly requested this. Interestingly, Gambier (1994:280) suggests that the translator should avoid strongly offensive elements in written form.
On the other hand, if the translator wishes to preserve the function or style of the source material completely, it may be preferable to translate swear words as similar words (Hjort 2006:78) in the target language, although, as Vertanen (2007:153) argues, the function of a line can be more easily adhered to if swear words are left out as this leaves more room for the
“main idea” of the line. Vertanen does, however, admit that in some situations, translators should not hesitate to use offensive language. As an example, Vertanen mentions that it may not be appropriate to translate swear words used by soldiers in trenches in the World War I as mild words such as darn, since it is likely that they used much stronger language (Vertanen 2007:153). Ivarsson and Carroll (1998:127) agree with this by suggesting that if the makers of the movie etc. have settled on a certain level of expression, e.g. very strong language, it is not appropriate for the translator to alter it. This is also the view expressed by Fernández (2009:212), who notes that while some movies may be too offensive for several people, swear words should be translated and both their sense and intensity should be retained in the translation in order to preserve the “artistic integrity” of the movie. Fernández (2009:213) also argues that omitting swear words may disrupt the spontaneity of the dialog, as it is often the intention of the writers of a movie to produce dialog and conversation that is natural and close to real-life speech. Furthermore, Díaz Cintas and Remael (2007:196) express a similar view, pointing out that swear words play certain roles in the interactions between characters and while at least some swear words should be approached with caution, it is not the most advisable choice to omit them. According to Díaz Cintas and Remael (2007:197), this is especially true if the swearing in the movie is related to characterization or other intended purpose concerning the theme or story of the movie, although they do also note that it may not always be necessary to preserve every single swear word in the subtitles to provide the viewer with this kind of necessary information, since this can also be achieved with fewer swear words.
34
Translators’ decisions may also be influenced by their vocabulary or preferences (Hjort 2006:81–83) and what kind of values and opinions they have of swear words. This is backed up by Díaz Cintas and Remael (2007:198), who found in their subtitle samples that subtitles may sometimes censor words according to what they may think is appropriate in the context of the target culture or, in fact, also the medium in which the subtitle is presented. Indeed, in some of their examples, stronger swear words were found in subtitles on DVD than those on VHS. As previously mentioned in section 2.2, Díaz Cintas and Remael (2007:24) also noted that the target audience for television subtitles is much wider and varied than for other media.
One may wonder if, in addition to slower reading speeds, this also results in fewer and weaker swear words in television subtitles to please the wider audience of television?
The fact that the source material can actually be heard simultaneously while reading subtitles (Hjort 2007a) may also have an effect on the choice of translation strategies, as viewers can more easily evaluate and possibly notice considerable changes in subtitles than in the case of, for instance, literary works.
Next, let us concentrate on the material that will be analysed in this study, both the movie itself as well as its three subtitles.
35
4 Material
The research material consists of swear words found in the movie The Big Lebowski, which is a comedy/crime/mystery movie by Ethan and Joel Coen, and three Finnish subtitles of the movie. The movie tells the story of an unemployed and lazy man called ‘the Dude’, whose real name is Jeffrey Lebowski. He is mistaken for a millionaire who is also named Jeffrey Lebowski, and several mishaps ensue.
The movie was a disappointment at the box-office when released in 1998 but has since become a cult classic. The cult status of the movie is reflected in, for instance, the fact that there is an annual festival, Lebowski Fest, dedicated to the movie, which has been held in several cities in the USA.
The Big Lebowski is an appropriate choice of material for this study, since it contains a considerably large number of swear words, even if the number of different swear words is not exceptionally large. In fact, the amount of swearing in the movie is so extensive that, for my BA thesis, only the swear words from roughly the first hour of the movie were used as the material, as they provided a perfectly sufficient amount of material for a study that size. In this MA thesis, however, I analysed all of the swear words found in the movie and, thus, have a considerably larger material to work on. There were, in total, 377 words in the movie that were initially collected as being considered as swear words. However, after conducting the questionnaire survey for the strength of swear words and, thus, forming the strength categorisations for this thesis, the total number of swear words in the movie was slightly lowered to 360 as some of the words were left out because of the results of the survey. It is worthy to note that swear words were counted individually, i.e. each word was considered separate, even if they were in the same phrase12. Thus, for instance, according to this study, the phrase fuck a stranger in the ass, that is repeated several times in the movie, contained two separate swear words, fuck and ass, even if they could be considered as a single phrase fuck (someone) in the ass, as it is much easier to determine the strength of single words than to include an extensive number of all kinds of phrases in the survey questionnaires for the strength of swear words. This did come up during the study, as the phrase suck your cock was
12 Of course, regularly used swear words that are already in the form of a phrase such as son of a bitch were counted as one swear word.
36
said in the movie and the translation in all of the subtitles was something in the lines of ottaa suihin. Thus, according to this study, the English phrase contains one swear word, cock, whereas the Finnish phrase, as already discussed in section 3 about what is considered a swear word in this thesis, does not contain any swear words per se as the phrase is a euphemism, even if the whole phrase ottaa suihin in itself might, for some people, cause offence13. This may be an area where further research is welcomed; how non-swear words or euphemisms, through, for instance, connotations and in conjunction with other words, can become offensive without being considered as swear words per se.
During the analysis, I found that one of the reasons for the large number of swear words in the movie was that a lot of the same phrases containing swear words are repeated in succession by the characters, especially by the main character, as he is trying to make his point to someone or when he is stuttering. The swear words in the movie were used, for instance, to show aggression and as a device to illustrate the nature of the characters. For example, some characters, who are dominant and easily irritated, use swear words frequently, whereas characters who are more submissive do not use many swear words. An exception for this is the main character who is neither very dominant nor very submissive and still swears very frequently. The narrator, who comes across as the most ‘normal’ or, more appropriately, stable character in the movie, uses only mild swear words such as darned, and, in fact, at one point of the movie, remarks to the main character that he should not use so many swear words, to which the character responds What the fuck are you talking about? The swear words were also used humoristically, as there were some repeated humorous phrases that contain swear words, such as Shut the fuck up, Donny!, which is repeatedly said to a submissive character throughout the movie.
As mentioned in the previous paragraph, the movie contains many scenes where the characters repeat the same phrases and, in addition, where many characters talk over each other and thus the dialogue is, at times, very hectic with numerous lines being spoken almost simultaneously by several different people. This combined with the fact that the dialogue, for
13 Of course, one could argue here that, since the definition of swear words presented in section 3 suggests that any word or phrase that is likely to cause offence in polite conversation is a swear word, this phrase should also be considered a swear word. However, this, again, has to do with the context as well as the fact that this study concentrates on single words rather than phrases that are not well established swear words; neither of the words ottaa nor suihin can be considered as causing any remarkable offence in every day conversation and the whole phrase itself, as mentioned in the text, is a euphemism.
37
the most part, resembles actual speech with its hesitations, mistakes and stutters, certainly makes the film quite difficult to subtitle as it requires much condensation and omission to be able to include all the necessary information while still retaining the hectic atmosphere and style of the movie and its dialogue in the subtitles.
The three subtitles of the movie analysed in this thesis are all from different sources, namely from a DVD, from Netflix and from the TV showing of the movie on the Finnish TV channel Kutonen. The first subtitles are from a DVD of the movie which was released in 2008 by Universal Pictures Nordic. Part of the same subtitles were also used in my BA thesis.
Unfortunately, the subtitler or the subtitling company responsible for the subtitles is not mentioned on the DVD.
The second subtitles are from Netflix, an online streaming service. Netflix was founded in 1997 and first concentrated on DVD rentals by mail. A decade later, Netflix started to implement streaming TV services into their repertoire in the US, and in 2010, they began streaming internationally. Since then, Netflix has grown into a hugely successful service with users in over 190 countries and nowadays, they even produce their own TV shows and movies. Netflix offers a very wide variety of TV shows, movies and documentaries to stream on demand for a monthly fee on almost any device that is connected to the internet, for instance, computers, video game consoles, handheld devices, and TVs that have a Netflix application. This offers viewers much more freedom to choose what and when they want to watch, in contrast to TV channels that have scheduled programs and set time slots etc.
In 2012, Netflix became available in Finland with a rather limited array of TV shows, but the number of TV shows and movies on offer has since increased greatly. However, very shortly after Netflix began streaming in Finland, there was some controversy14 over the fact that on some shows, Netflix had used subtitles that had been made for the Finnish web site DivX Finland, which offers subtitles that are made for free by its users and, thus, are also legally questionable, since the subtitles are for mainstream movies and TV shows. Netflix apologized for the mishap and promised to investigate how this might have happened.
14 News of this controversy can be read at the website of Yle, the Finnish national broadcasting company, at Yle.fi http://yle.fi/uutiset/3-6342904 and also at City.fi
http://www.city.fi/kulttuuri/netflixin+kaannokset+keraavat+kritiikkia/5331
38
Unfortunately, this is not the only controversy concerning Finnish subtitles on Netflix. A brief glance through Finnish blogs and message boards reveals the opinion of many people that the subtitles on Netflix are of highly varying quality, especially for TV shows, where it is not unusual for different episodes to be subtitled by different translators, often resulting in discrepancies and inconsistencies between episodes of the same TV show. Furthermore, Netflix does not explicitly reveal where the subtitles are from and the name of the subtitler or subtitling company is not always mentioned in their subtitles as is usually the case on TV and DVD subtitles15. According to a blog entry on av-kaantajat.blogspot.fi16, Chief Product Officer of Netflix, Neil Hunt, revealed in an interview that the quality of subtitles is not a priority for Netflix, as long as the subtitles are ready as soon as possible. The blog entry also suggests that the deadlines for the subtitles are almost unreasonably short and that the fees paid to subtitlers are much lower than what is generally considered as acceptable in the audiovisual translation community. In the worst case scenario, subtitlers are expected to translate an hour and a half’s worth of material in a day, an amount that usually takes about a week to translate. These facts, combined with the huge success of Netflix in recent years, are enough to cause legitimate worries about the future of subtitling, especially in terms of fees, working conditions and particularly the actual employment of subtitlers. Fortunately, it seems that Netflix has recently put more focus on the quality of the subtitles, as evidenced by the fact that they have implemented a test and indexing system for translators called Hermes, which aims to improve the quality of the translations and subtitles in Netflix by, for instance, ensuring the abilities of subtitlers with standardised tests17.
The Big Lebowski was added to Finnish Netflix on 7th of October 2016. The subtitles for the movie do not mention the name of the subtitler or subtitling company, although, according to the aforementioned blog entry, most of the subtitles available on Netflix are commissioned from Broadcast Text and SDI Media, two subtitling companies that also handle most of the subtitling on Finnish TV and DVD releases. Interestingly, as of 7th of December 2017, the movie can not be found on Finnish Netflix any more. This fact goes to show how quickly the selection of movies changes on Netflix and, thus, how such services depend more on the quantity of different movies rather than stability and repeated viewings of the same movies.
15 In this case, however, as mentioned, the DVD subtitles do not present the name of the subtitler.
16 The very fascinating and informative blog entry and other entries written by two professional audiovisual translators can be read at http://av-kaantajat.blogspot.fi/2012/10/netflixin-kaannosstrategiassa-on.html
17 A blog entry from Netflix on this matter can be read at https://media.netflix.com/en/company-blog/netflix-is-looking-for-the-best-translators-around-the-globe
39
Finally, the third subtitles analysed in this thesis are from the Finnish TV channel Kutonen, where the movie was aired on 26th of October 2016. Although the air date is very recent, the actual age of the subtitles themselves is not known (this, of course, also applies to the subtitles from Netflix), and, especially since it is fairly frequent to reuse the same subtitles of a movie on TV, it may very well be that the TV subtitles were made a long time before the air date.
Contrary to the Netflix and DVD subtitles, the TV subtitles do present the name of the subtitling company at the end of the movie, namely Broadcast Text International. This is quite intriguing, as, according to the blog entry introduced above, Netflix does also use subtitles produced by Broadcast Text, but the subtitles of the movie in question were different on Netflix than on the TV showing.
40
5 Method
In this section, the research method and the questionnaire survey concerning the strength of swear words will be presented. The study was conducted in two parts, using two different methods. Before the actual analysis of the material, i.e. the movie and its subtitles, could be done, the categorisations used in the analysis were formed, using the results from the surveys, of which one was conducted for English swear words and one for Finnish swear words. The categorisations were then used for the analysis of the actual material.
Words that might be considered as swear words were collected from the movie by watching the movie and writing them down, using the categorisations presented in section 3.4.1 and, on a wider scale, the definition presented in section 3 as guidelines when picking the words. The findings were also confirmed by reading the English hard-of-hearing subtitles for the movie.
The translations for these words as well as other possible swear words were also collected from the subtitles by reading the subtitles and writing them down. After that, the words were
The translations for these words as well as other possible swear words were also collected from the subtitles by reading the subtitles and writing them down. After that, the words were