TERMINOLOGY IN TELEVISION AN ANALYSIS OF THE DUTCH SUBTITLES OF THE BIG BANG THEORY Word count: 29.912 Brecht Van Hove Studentennummer: 01402920 Promotor: Prof. dr. Bernard De Clerck Masterproef voorgelegd tot het behalen van de graad van Master in het Vertalen (Nederlands, Engels, Frans) Academiejaar: 2017 – 2018 TERMINOLOGY IN TELEVISION AN ANALYSIS OF THE DUTCH SUBTITLES OF THE BIG BANG THEORY Word count: 29.912 Brecht Van Hove Studentennummer: 01402920 Promotor: Prof. dr. Bernard De Clerck Masterproef voorgelegd tot het behalen van de graad van Master in het Vertalen (Nederlands, Engels, Frans) Academiejaar: 2017 – 2018 ABSTRACT The present study aims to identify the way in which scientific terms in a season of The Big Bang Theory are rendered in the Dutch subtitles. The baseline of this thesis is a 26,000-word corpus of an entire season of TBBT and its corresponding subtitles. The subsequent step was to extract the terms from the corpus. The translation strategies taxonomy employed was based on Tomaszkiewicz (2006, as cited in Vandenberghe, 2013), Díaz Cintas and Remael (2007) and Pedersen (2010) and included strategies from Lozano and Matamala (2009) and Badia and Brumme (2014). Literal Translation, Loan Translation and Transposition were found to be used most often, but a fair share of Underspecifications, Term-to-Non-Terms and Inadequate Equivalents occurred, too. The domain of Physics was shown to contain the highest degree of Inadequate Equivalents. The results in terms of translation strategies were likened to those found in Bianchi (s.d.) on documentary subtitling, for terminology may be translated differently with regards to the ST context. The results were found not to be conclusive. Then, to shed light on the possibly impeding factors in subtitling being in effect, the length of ST terms was contrasted with that of TT ones. It was found that for Underspecification, the number of characters was salient. Lastly, the results were compared with Skopos theory and it was found that it cannot be applied to the present study, due to the occurrence of Underspecification, Inadequate Equivalents, Retention and Term-to-Non-Term translations. The results tentatively indicate that subtitling constraints are in effect for terminology translation. (253 words) Keywords: subtitling, scientific terminology, translation strategies, sitcom, Skopos theory COPYRIGHT De auteur en promotor(en) geven de toelating deze studie als geheel voor consultatie beschikbaar te stellen voor persoonlijk gebruik. Elk ander gebruik valt onder de beperkingen van het auteursrecht, in het bijzonder met betrekking tot de verplichting de bron uitdrukkelijk te vermelden bij het aanhalen van gegevens uit deze studie. Het auteursrecht betreffende de gegevens vermeld in deze studie berust bij de promotor(en). Het auteursrecht beperkt zich tot de wijze waarop de auteur de problematiek van het onderwerp heeft benaderd en neergeschreven. De auteur respecteert daarbij het oorspronkelijke auteursrecht van de individueel geciteerde studies en eventueel bijhorende documentatie, zoals tabellen en figuren. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Prof. Dr. De Clerck for guiding me through this thesis’ process and offering sound advice as to which elements I should broach in this paper. Without his help and thorough feedback, this thesis would not have been possible. My heartfelt gratitude also goes out to my fellow students, who have become great friends over the years. Thanks to them, university was not only a place of studying and acquiring knowledge, but also a place where we could laugh and enjoy ourselves. Additionally, I would like to thank my family and friends, who continuously supported me and listened to my ideas and theories, even though they may not always have understood my jabbering about terminology and subtitling. Thank you, Dylan Roaen, for your medical insight. My sincere gratitude also goes out to my boyfriend, who offered insight and was able to help me with the more technical side of this paper. From the bottom of my heart: thank you. TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Abbreviations ............................................................................................................... 14 List of Images .......................................................................................................................... 15 List of Tables ........................................................................................................................... 16 List of Figures .......................................................................................................................... 17 1 Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 19 2 Theoretical background ................................................................................................... 21 2.1 Terminology ............................................................................................................. 21 2.1.1 The Triangle of Reference ............................................................................... 21 2.1.2 History of terminology ..................................................................................... 22 2.1.3 Definition of terminology ................................................................................ 25 2.1.4 Definition of terms ........................................................................................... 25 2.1.5 Characteristics of terms .................................................................................... 26 2.1.5.1 General characteristics ................................................................................. 26 2.1.5.2 Scientific terminology .................................................................................. 28 2.1.6 Composition of terms ....................................................................................... 29 2.1.7 Summary .......................................................................................................... 30 2.2 The translation of terminology ................................................................................. 31 2.2.1 Preliminaries .................................................................................................... 31 2.2.2 Terminological difficulties ............................................................................... 32 2.2.3 Translation strategies ....................................................................................... 33 2.2.4 Terminological resources ................................................................................. 34 2.3 Audiovisual Translation Studies .............................................................................. 36 2.3.1 History.............................................................................................................. 36 2.3.2 Types of AVT practices ................................................................................... 36 2.3.3 Subtitling .......................................................................................................... 37 2.3.3.1 Subtitling as constrained translation ............................................................ 39 2.3.3.2 Translation strategies ................................................................................... 41 2.4 Challenges of subtitling terminology ....................................................................... 49 2.4.1 Length of terms ................................................................................................ 50 2.4.2 Skopos theory................................................................................................... 50 2.4.3 Paraphrasing of terminology ............................................................................ 51 2.4.4 Difficulties in the Big Bang Theory ................................................................. 52 2.4.5 Additional challenges ....................................................................................... 52 3 Research Questions and Hypotheses ............................................................................... 53 4 Data .................................................................................................................................. 56 4.1 Corpus ...................................................................................................................... 56 4.2 The Big Bang Theory ............................................................................................... 58 4.2.1 Main characters ................................................................................................ 59 4.2.2 Episodes in Season 2 ........................................................................................ 61 5 Methodology .................................................................................................................... 62 5.1 Terminology extraction ............................................................................................ 62 5.1.1 Automatic terminology extraction ................................................................... 62 5.1.2 Manual terminology extraction ........................................................................ 64 5.2 Selection criteria ...................................................................................................... 65 5.2.1 Theoretical selection criteria ...........................................................................