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Article published In:
Target
Vol. 33:1 (2021) ► pp.26–46

Audiovisual translation as orchestration of multimodal synergies

Expendability of interjections in intralingual film subtitling

ORCID logo | Harbin Institute of TechnologyShenzhen
This study explores the coordination between subtitles and other semiotic resources in films, from within a systemic functional semiotic framework. The paper focuses on the subtitling of interjections (e.g., ‘oh’, ‘wow’, ‘yay’) to examine how subtitles are synthesized in films with respect to the presence of facial expressions and/or bodily gestures which might be perceived as conveying similar meanings. The analysis of multiple versions of intralingual subtitles of two English-language films shows that the seemingly random omission of soundtrack interjections from subtitles is patterned to a considerable degree – those interjections which are concurrent with semiotically correlated actions were frequently omitted. The findings suggest that subtitling is a complex process involving synergy between subtitles and other semiotic resources, which calls for interdisciplinary research integrating translation, multimodality, and linguistics.
Keywords: audiovisual translation, subtitling, multimodal synergy, interjection, facial expression, gesture, semiotic redundancy, systemic functional semiotics
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Interjections and subtitling
  • 3.Data and methodology
    • 3.1Research data
    • 3.2A systemic functional semiotic approach
    • 3.3Tracking of interjections and annotation scheme
  • 4.Subtitling of interjections in the presence or absence of semiotically correlated actions
    • 4.1Subtitling of accompanied and unaccompanied interjections in each version
    • 4.2Subtitling of accompanied interjections across versions
    • 4.3Subtitling of unaccompanied interjections across versions
  • 5.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Filmography
  • References
Published online: 15 January 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.19163.jin
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DeMicco, Kirk, and Chris Sanders. 2013. The Croods. DreamWorks Animation. USA: 20th Century Fox, DVD.Google Scholar
Anderson, Wes. 2014. The Grand Budapest Hotel. Fox Searchlight Pictures. USA: 20th Century Fox, DVD. Google Scholar
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