Translating Culture-Bound, Context-Based, Idiomatic Expressions in Motion Pictures in Iran: Success and Challenges [PP: 149-154] Mehdi Norouzi Kharazmi University of Tehran Iran ABSTRACT The paper investigates whether bilingual translators (English into Persian subtitles) are successful in filling the cultural gaps in this kind of translation. In bilingual subtitling, getting the gist precedes the art of translation and in doing so, mastery of the original language is of utmost importance. In this respect, the study aimed to examine the rate of success in translation of culture-based, context-based and idiomatic expressions. To this end, eight comedy motion pictures and their Persian subtitles were analysed to show that transferring cultural elements through subtitles, and giving the new audience the same impression as that produced by the original, do not happen in Iran as best as expected. Keywords: Motion Pictures, Bilingual Subtitling, English and Persian Subtitles, Transferring Cultural Elements into another Language ARTICLE The paper received on: 13/04/2016 Reviewed on: 03/05/2016 Accepted after revisions on: 10/06/2016 INFO Suggested citation: Norouzi, M. (2016). Translating Culture-Bound, Context-Based, Idiomatic Expressions in Motion Pictures in Iran: Success and Challenges. International Journal of English Language & Translation Studies. 4(2), 149-154. Retrieved From http://www.eltsjournal.org

1. Introduction Motion pictures are one of the most important sources of entertainment. In the last few years, there has been a growing interest in movies around the world. Most film directors and producers believe that a movie will not become successful one unless it has a great sale globally. As per to a research conducted between 2001 to 2010, the total box-office spending has risen by about one-third in North America while more than doubling elsewhere. (Economist, Bigger abroad, 2011)

International Journal of English Language & Translation Studies ISSN:2308-5460 Volume: 04 Issue: 02 April-June, 2016

As seen in the chart, foreign box emphasis on the translator’s skill and office sales beat North American sales by a mastery of the original in his first law. huge margin. Subtitles are used by different Dolet’s first two principles also deals with people and in different ways. They are used translators’ competency in the source by those who are hearing-impaired. They language. (Munday, 2008) are also used by those who watch movies Despite every effort translators meticulously and wish not to miss a word. make to translate subtitles, they are still not Public places like restaurants, banks and successful in transferring cultural elements. stores, where film dialog would not be clear A number of mistranslations can be seen in to be heard, can use subtitles to satisfy the Persian subtitles of American movies. A needs of their customers. They can also be mistranslation will deprive movie lovers of used for clips and old footage with muffled an opportunity to fully understand the ins and faint sounds. Plus, most EFL students and outs of a movie. In Iran, authorities do watch movies to improve their listening and not see subtitles as something systematic. it is done at the beginning with either same- Subtitling in Iran is kind of an underground language or translated subtitles. activity. It is not done methodically. Care Culture is another important thing must be taken in translation of subtitles not that comes to the fore when you watch a just because culture is transferred here but a movie in a foreign language. Even two single goof will interrupt the new countries, with the same language, have audience’s trains of thoughts. In this their own differences let alone two respect, the purpose of this paper is to draw countries with two different languages. The attention to the nascent field of AVT. Paper importance of subtitles worldwide is deals with bilingual translation of English undeniable. Therefore, the need for good into Persian subtitles to find whether subtitles is felt more than before. A good subtitlers are successful in bilingual subtitle reflects the message of original in a subtitling keeping the cultural flavor. way that is comprehensible for the new 2. Review of Literature audience. To the author’s knowledge, very In order to understand a motion few articles can be found in the literature picture, especially in a foreign language, that address the issue of subtitles. Although you have to master that language so that you Delabastita calls it “still a virgin area of can identify with the characters, get the research” (Munday, 2008) in his point of the scenes, their sense of humor and Translation and Mass-communication: so on. All people are not language learners, Film and TV Translation as evidence of teachers and scholars. A society is mostly Cultural Dynamics, this field has not been made of ordinary people who barely master subject to much of research and still is in their mother language. Therefore, bud. This field comes to the fore when you translators’ role is very prominent here. A find the real importance of it. As Piotr translator who has mastery of not only his Kuhiwczak and Karin Littau (2007) put native language but also the foreign forward, apart from the fact that subtitling language has priority over others. is often up to ten times cheaper than Proficiency in source language is so dubbing, it has other advantages that important that many translation scholars contribute to its increasing popularity. It have opinions on that. In his Essay on the usually takes much less time to subtitle than Principles of Translation, Tytler (1907) put it does to dub. Moreover, subtitling also Cite this article as: Norouzi, M. (2016). Translating Culture-Bound, Context-Based, Idiomatic Expressions in Motion Pictures in Iran: Success and Challenges. International Journal of English Language & Translation Studies. 4(2), 149-154. Retrieved From http://www.eltsjournal.org Page | 150

Translating Culture-Bound, Context-Based, Idiomatic Expressions in Motion Pictures.. Norouzi, Mehdi

leaves the original soundtrack intact. In his classification. In addition, it examines its article on Multidimensional Translation: merits and criticisms. Semantics turned Semiotics, Henry Gottlieb De Linde and Kay (Munday, 2008, (2005) talked about the additive nature of p. 186) also noted the differences between subtitling giving viewers total access to the interlingual subtitling and written exotic original while being semantically translation, notably the space and time safeguarded by captions in the domestic constraints. They also place much store on language. the image on the screen, which is normally Comparing subtitling with other inviolable, and the soundtrack in the source area of translation, one can find that at least language which is retained. the number of research done in other fields 3. Methodology are quite a few. In their Subtitle Translation The researcher used the first 45 Strategies as a Reflection of Technical minutes of eight American comedy movies Limitations, Ying Zhang and Junyan Liu with rates more than six, according to IMDb (2009) investigated different strategies used which stands for Internet Movie Database in the subtitle translation of Ang lee, and is an online database of information Chinese movie director and producer. The related to films, television programs, and constraints and strategies in translation are video games for the purpose of also discussed in this research. randomization. Hamid Marashi and Khatereh He also visited SubtitlePedia at Poursoltani’s An Analysis of Farsi into www.sub.subtitlepedia.com for Persian English Subtitling Strategies Employed in subtitles. Table 1 illustrates the name of Iranian Feature Films (2009) aimed at motion pictures, their directors and their finding the common strategies in subtitle release years. It is worth mentioning, translation of Farsi into English. This study Comedy was chosen due to the rich focuses on Iranian movies and their Farsi- diversity of culture-based and idiomatic into-English translation strategies. It expressions in this genre. The order of the attempts to find what method is used a lot in movies does not signify any degree or level subtitle translation of Farsi into English of a characteristic like importance or through a table of frequency. superiority. In his How Is Culture Rendered Table 1: List of Motion Pictures Analyzed in (2005), Pederson proposed different This Research strategies that a subtitler can adopt in translation and whether they can solve all culture-bound problems through these strategies or not. It also mention the problems a translator would face in translation of culture-bound words and sentences. Liu’s On the Classification of Subtitling (2014) also showed different classification of subtitles and factors that The researcher watched the first 45 are used in its classification. It also minutes of each movie three times. In the discussed Eduard Bartoll and Jan Ivarsson’s first round, he wrote down the expressions

International Journal of English Language & Translation Studies ISSN:2308-5460 Volume: 04 Issue: 02 April- June, 2016 Page | 151

International Journal of English Language & Translation Studies ISSN:2308-5460 Volume: 04 Issue: 02 April-June, 2016 and statements of the original that are Saint Ambrose’s answer to Saint Augustine difficult to translate like phrasal verbs, when asked whether they should fast on idioms, proverbs or a culture specific Saturday as Romans did, or not, as in Milan. expression and then in the second round he It appeared in English by about 1530 and watched the movies with Persian subtitles remains so well known that it is often and this time he wrote down the translation shortened, as in the example (The American of the expressions he had already found in Heritage, 2002). the first round. In the third round, the Luckily, the exact equivalent of this proverb researcher watched the movies with full exist in Persian which goes, شو جماعت همرنگ رسوا نشوی خواهی concentration so that he did not miss any point. (Ghanbari, 2005). Examples of the expressions under study Transferring this proverb into Farsi and their translations: without manipulation looks completely odd Idiomatic Expression: to the target language audience. In Anchorman II, a character says: Culture-Specific Expressions: I kinda got the word by the tail here. In the movie Click, the leading actor says: Persian Subtitle: I ain’t exactly Thurston Howell! :Persian Subtitle .گرفتم رو دنیا دم جورایی یه اینجا .ندارم تیله مایه راستش This expression’s literal translation makes no sense in Persian. According to Thurston Howell III otherwise TheFreeDictionary.com, an known as "The Millionaire" is a character American online dictionary and on the CBS television sitcom 's encyclopedia, the definition of this Island, which ran from 1964 to 1967, and expression is the following: later in syndication. Howell, portrayed by Have the world by the tail (with a downhill veteran character actor , is so drag): wealthy that he took hundreds of thousands Have destiny under control. of dollars in cash and several changes of In Persian it means: clothing with him for what was intended to ,be only a three-hour boat tour in بودن مراد وفق بر اوضاع But the subtitler translated this one of the sillier premises of the show. sentence literally which denotes nothing in Speaking with a Locust Valley Farsi. lockjaw accent, Howell is a stereotypical Proverbs: member of the New England Yankee elite In Anchorman I, the actress says, — a resident of Newport, Rhode Island, a When in Rome do as the Romans do. graduate of Harvard University and a Here is its Persian subtitle: Republican (Thurston Howell, III, 2015). In its translation, the subtitler used .دادم سفارش ها رومی مثل بودم، رم تو وقت Again like the previous example, the word- the meaning Thurston Howell connotes for-word translation is meaningless in which are wealth and opulence. Some Persian. audience may not know anything about When in Rome do as the Romans do Thurston Howell. Plus using the name with means, follow local custom, as in Kate said extra explanation would violate the space they’d all be wearing shorts or blue jeans to and time constraints. Therefore, the best the outdoor wedding, so when in Rome we’ll way to translate the aforementioned do the same. This advice allegedly was Cite this article as: Norouzi, M. (2016). Translating Culture-Bound, Context-Based, Idiomatic Expressions in Motion Pictures in Iran: Success and Challenges. International Journal of English Language & Translation Studies. 4(2), 149-154. Retrieved From http://www.eltsjournal.org Page | 152

Translating Culture-Bound, Context-Based, Idiomatic Expressions in Motion Pictures.. Norouzi, Mehdi

sentence here is to convey the meaning this by Frank Coraci by 30% had the lowest rate name connotes. of success. The overall measurement results Deceiving Expression: are summarized in Table 3. In the Wolf of Wall Street, the Table 3 Subtitlers' overall success rate in eight leading actor says, comedies We call him Mad Max because of his hair- trigger temper. Persian Subtitle: موهاش چون گفتیم می خله مکس بهش ما The overall rate of success .موند می گیره مثل Its translation is rather funny represents that subtitlers are successful only because here hair-trigger has nothing to do in 51% of the translation of the expressions with the word hair, but if you take a look at under study. its translation, you can fathom how the Conclusion subtitler translated it clumsily. From the findings, it is possible to According to Longman Dictionary conclude that subtitlers are not successful in (2009), a hair-trigger temper is the one that dealing with Culture-bound, context-based easily gets angry. and idiomatic expressions. The findings Persian speaker in this situation have a number of possible limitations. One would say, question, still unanswered, is whether the subtitlers are proficient in the source شدن عصبانی زود شدن، عصبانی راحتی به 4. Results and Discussion language or not. As was discussed earlier in Table 2 represents the subtitlers’ the introduction, subtitling in Iran is rate of success in each movie separately. completely an underground activity. Since Table 2: Subtitlers’ success rate in translation no subtitler is available to answer the of Culture-bound and Idiomatic Expressions researcher’s questions, and finding a concise background of a subtitler is impossible for they put their nicknames at the end of the subtitles, the researcher cannot say decisively whether the subtitles of the current research comes from an educated, well-educated, English-proficient or uneducated person. On the other hand, it is undoubtedly crystal-clear that subtitling, with the full knowledge of the fact that subtitlers are anonymous, is not done in a It has been found that subtitlers are way it should be. With 51% overall success not successful in translation of idiomatic, in just the first 45 minutes of eight culture-specific and context-based comedies, it leaves nothing to say. expressions. Among the motion pictures the Culture-based and idiomatic researcher analyzed, Yes Man directed by expressions form the body of a movie and, Peyton Reed and Anchorman1 directed by to provide a good translation, special care Adam McKay had the rate of success more must be taken in dealing with than 60% while in the others this rate of communicative elements of a movie so that success barely reached 55% in the first 45 the target audience can stomach these minutes. On the other hand, click directed International Journal of English Language & Translation Studies ISSN:2308-5460 Volume: 04 Issue: 02 April- June, 2016 Page | 153

International Journal of English Language & Translation Studies ISSN:2308-5460 Volume: 04 Issue: 02 April-June, 2016 elements as they do when they watch a Littau, Karin and Kuhiwczak, Piotr. (2007). A movie in their own language. As Gottlieb Companion to Translation Studies. puts (Gottlieb, 1998), subtitlers are Liu, D. (2014, Sep). On the Classification of expected to prioritize the overall Subtitling. Journal of Language communicative intention of an utterance Teaching and Research, 5. Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. over the semantics of its individual lexical (2009). Pearson Education Limited. constituents. Therefore, it begs someone Marashi, Hamid and Poursoltani, Khatereh. who is well-educated and is not only master (2009). An Analysis of Farsi into of his native language but also the foreign English Subtitling Strategies. Journal language. of Teaching English as a Foreign The findings of this research can Language and Literature. draw a little bit of authorities’ attention to Munday, J. (2008). Inroducing Translation the fact that AVT is not done as appropriate Studies: Theories and applications as possible. There must be some facilities or (2nd ed.). Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. institutes to train those who would like to do Munday, J. (2008). Introducing Translation subtitling. These training course can go in Studies, Theories and applications (2nd ed.). Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. depth and teach the trainees exotic cultures, Pedersen, J. (2005). How is Culture Rendered sense of humor and sensitivities. Then they in Subtitles? MuTra 2005 – Challenges can start with the basics of audiovisual of Multidimensional Translation: translation and its constraints. The list is Conference Proceedings. EU-High- endless. Level Scientific Conference Series. The American Heritage. (2002). Houghton References Mifflin Company. Baker, M. &. (Ed.). (2013). Routledge Thurston Howell, III. (2015, December 1st). Encyclopedia of Translation Studies Retrieved from Wikipedia, the free (2nd ed.). Abingdon, OX: Routledge. encyclopedia: www.en.wikipedia.org Economist, Bigger abroad. (2011, Feb 17th). Tytler, A. F. (1907). Essay on the principles of Retrieved from Economist Website: translation. London : J. M. Dent & co.; www.economist.com New York, E. P. Dutton & co. Ghanbari, A. (2005). English-Persian When in Rome. (n.d.). (Farlex, Producer, & Dictionary of Proverbs. (A. Jafarzade, Farlex Inc.) Retrieved from The Free Ed.) Rahnama. Dictionary: Gottlieb, H. (1998). Routledge Encyclopedia of www.thefreedictionary.com Translation Studies. In M. Baker (Ed.). Zhang, Ying and Liu, Junyan. (2009). Films, London & New York: Routledge. Subtitle Translation Strategies as a Gottlieb, H. (2005). Multidimensional Reflection of Technical Limitations: a Translation: Semantics Turned Case Study of Ang Lee’s. Asian Social Semiotics. MuTra 2005 – Challenges of Science. Multidimensional Translation. EU- High-Level Scientific Conference Series.

Cite this article as: Norouzi, M. (2016). Translating Culture-Bound, Context-Based, Idiomatic Expressions in Motion Pictures in Iran: Success and Challenges. International Journal of English Language & Translation Studies. 4(2), 149-154. Retrieved From http://www.eltsjournal.org Page | 154