The Impact of Audiovisual Translation Modality on the Reception and Perception of Culture-Specific References
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Olga Łabendowicz The Impact of Audiovisual Translation Modality on the Reception and Perception of Culture-Specific References PhD Thesis written under the supervision of prof. dr hab. Łukasz Bogucki Assistant Supervisor: dr Piotr Pęzik University of Lodz 2018 2 Acknowledgments First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisors: Professor Łukasz Bogucki, for inspiring and encouraging me to devote my PhD Thesis to Reception Studies in Audiovisual Translation, as well as for putting me in touch with the AVT Lab; and Dr Piotr Pęzik, for his constructive criticism of the experimental part of the research. Special thanks to Mgr Łukasz Dutka and the team at the AVT Lab for their support, patience, and assistance in conducting the eye-tracking experiments at the Institute of Applied Linguistics, Warsaw University, which served as the basis for the presented study. I would also like to express my gratitude to Dr Federico M. Federici for his feedback regarding parts of the data, which proved extremely helpful in moving the analysis forward, and for drawing my attention to the publications that immensely contributed to developing my methodology. 3 4 The translator's words, as perceived by the audience, establish certain relationships with the nonverbal elements of the text that appear on the screen with them. – Jorge Díaz Cintas (2008: 11) Introduction Enabled by the digital age, research in humanities and collaboration between researchers progress. However, noteworthy, the findings are still often isolated (Brown 2016: 47). Despite ever-growing developments in the field of Audiovisual Translation (see Gambier 2009, 2013, 2016; Denton and Ciampi 2012; Perego 2016, among others), the existing research still often lacks a deeper understanding of what Gambier (2009) refers to as the “social dimension of AVT services” (p. 51). As this includes “a better knowledge of viewers' needs, reading habits and reception capacity” (ibid.), the main objective of the presented PhD Thesis is to examine to what extent and in what ways a mode of Audiovisual Translation (AVT) determines the reception and perception of humorous audiovisual materials (AVs) deeply rooted in source culture (SC) with reference to audiovisuals translated from English into Polish. By providing an analysis of the three dominant modes of AVT available in Poland (Szarkowska 2009), also referred to as “AVT proper” (Okyayuz 2017: 115), namely: dubbing, subtitling (here in the form of fansubs, amateur subtitles), and voice over, the presented results are applicable to the majority of the translated American humorous productions and may be useful for both theoreticians and practitioners dealing with AVT. In light of the limited reception research in the field of AVT (Matamala 2017: 14), the study is an attempt to contribute to the further development of the topic in combination with cognitive translatology – which recently is gaining researchers' interest (see Halverson 2010; Muñoz 2010; O'Brien 2013; Deckert 2017; Schwieter and Ferreira 2017; among others) and with psychocinematics, rooted in preferences of viewers towards a given production (Shimamura 2013: 2), but which is thus extended into audience's preferences towards AVT. The analysis differentiates between reception and perception in order to offer a comprehensive analysis of the processes that viewers undergo when watching American humorous productions translated into Polish. The former shall be understood as “the act of internali[z]ing the content and the data (visual, audial) during the act of watching” (Łabendowicz, forthcoming). Noteworthy, as observed by Gambier (2009), “the reception of AV output is not only about cultural assumptions, allusions or proper 5 names – but also about expectations” (p. 41). The latter is “the effect of internalized information filtered through previous experiences and preferences” (ibid.). It should also be borne in mind that since perception is “intuitive cognition that starts during the act of receiving the audiovisual material, but which also continues after it ends (…), it may change with time” (ibid.). A joint receptive and perceptive approach thus ventures outside this perspective and extends the area of interest in order to include also viewers' preferences and expectations in an attempt to push the field forward (Di Giovanni 2016: 61). Furthermore, aware of the emergence of the demotic turn in AVT, including the growing importance of participatory translation (see Pérez-González 2014; Łabendowicz 2017), an end-product-oriented approach has been adopted, with the focus solely on the perspective of target audience that consumes the translations produced by either professional or amateur translators. Such an approach allows for a comprehensive analysis of preferences, expectations, and viewing styles exhibited by Polish audiences with regard to humorous American productions featuring culture-specific references in the form of cultural lacunas. The research employed eye-tracking, “a naturalistic methodology” (Pérez- González 2014: no page), which is increasingly commonly adopted for reception studies in translation (Brems and Ramos Pinto 2013: 146) also within AVT (Künzli 2013: 56; see also Korpal 2015). The application of oculography came as an obvious choice also with regard to the key topics covered by the study. Needless to say, “[r]esearch in neuroscience on perception stands as a reminder that translation does not depend simply on the nature of the perceptible world or on conscious knowledge, but that translators and receivers of translation are all shaped in their perceptions by their cultures and recursively predisposed to produce or consume translations in culturally formed ways. In cultural translation these formations inextricably link perception and memory”. (Tymoczko 2014: 122) As the focus of the study is on humorous productions, it must also be specified that the analysis was based on intertextual humor acts (see Raskin 1985; Attardo 2001; López González 2017) that constitute cultural lacunas (see Łabendowicz 2014) and which appear both in the dialogue and on the screen. The rationale behind this choice was to expose Polish viewers to the most challenging types of AVs that require possessing a specific culture repertoire (see Even-Zohar 1997a) within the source text (ST), thus in some sense demands an access to collective memory (see Halbwachs 1980; Halbwachs 1992; Gedi and Elam 1996; Olick 2008; among others) of a given culture – here, American culture. Such an approach had two main objectives. First, to examine how Polish audiences perceive and receive such productions with Polish translations and to contrast them with original 6 versions (including English subtitles). Second, to investigate how the fact that an intertextual humor act spans over the two layers of processing (audial and visual) affects audience's perception. The fact that emotions may have a positive impact on remembering in a situation when they do not disrupt the stage of processing of information (Johnson et.al. 2012: 37) was thus taken into account. The joint purpose of these two areas of interest was to elucidate how the receptive and perceptive processes differ in the presented context as well as how the occurrence of a cultural lacuna both in the dialogue and on the screen reinforces the understanding of the presented AVs. The conducted eye- tracking experiments were therefore both TT- and ST-oriented. Due to the complexity and the scope of the analysis, the task was not an easy one. A number of variables has been introduced in order to present the most reliable overview of Polish audience's preferences, expectations, and viewing styles. Nevertheless, a clear structure of the Thesis paired with summaries of the individual sections of the research shall guide the Reader through all the stages of the analysis and help in arriving at the conclusions The structure of the Thesis is therefore as follows. The first two chapters provide a theoretical background for the experimental part. Chapter 1 examines the phenomena related to reception, perception, and memory, which have been presented in the context of culture and intertextual humor. It is then followed by Chapter 2, which gives an overview of Polish audiences' contemporary viewing styles – making note of the recent increase in online viewership and growth in popularity of Video-on-Demand (VOD) platforms. It also discusses the most recent findings related to preferences, expectations, and competences of Polish audience. Finally, the focus shifts from the target audience to amateur subtitlers (henceforth referred to as fansubbers) in light of the abovementioned demotic turn and the participatory AVT. It must be emphasized that for the clarity and lucidity of argumentation, the second chapter does not attempt to provide a thorough and comprehensive overview of audiovisual translation in Poland. As the main focus of the Thesis is to focus on the practical, empirical examination of the impact of AVT modality on the reception and perception of culture-specific references, Chapter 2 therefore only signals certain recent developments and phenomena that are reflected or may have contributed to the observations made in Chapter 3. It thus serves as a departing point for a more in-depth analysis of the presented issues rather than is to be considered a full and complete study of AVT. Already the fact that the Thesis focuses solely on AVT proper should act as an indicator of the limited approach towards the general landscape of audiovisual translation in the country. Nevertheless, it is still crucial to include this part in the analysis as it shows the reasons for and the direction of the entire study. 7 The experimental part is presented in Chapter 3. It opens with the presentation of the results of the two online surveys (Open Online Survey and Post-Experiment Online Survey), which allow to form a number of observations related to audience's preferences (with regards to AVT modes), expectations (towards American humorous productions), and competences (both linguistic and cultural). The discussion about the results paves the way for the main part of the study, namely the analysis of the eye-tracking experiments.