The Acceptability Of Audiovisual Translation

In his "The Name and Nature of Translation Studies" (1972), Holmes pointed out that the discipline of translation should be divided into three branches: the descriptive translation studies or the translation description, the theoretical translation studies or the translation theory and the applied translation studies. The descriptive translation studies lays the foundation for the other two branches. The descriptive translation studies concerns itself with the objective "to describe the phenomena of translating and translation(s) as they manifest themselves in the world of our experience". In the field of the descriptive translation studies, Israeli scholars Itamar Even-Zohar and Gideon Toury have made prominent contribution. Itamar Even-Zohar proposed the polysystem theory which accounts for the behavior and evolution of literary systems. The polysystem theory sees translated literature, which interacts with the other systems, as part of the cultural, literary and historical system of the target language. Gideon Toury, within the framework of the polysystem theory, studied how the translated literature is influenced by the target culture especially by its cultural tradition. Toury focused his attention on the study of norms and pointed out that translation activities are governed by a set of norms. The descriptive translation studies aims at ascertaining these norms and their influences on translation activities as well as translators' choices of translation strategies. After Toury, developments in the study of norms are discussed by Andrew Chesterman and Theo Hermans.As a sub-field of translation studies, audiovisual translation includes subtitling and revoicing, which distinguishes audiovisual translation from other types of translation. The constraints in audiovisual translation are different from those in other types of translation. Subtitling is constrained both in time and in space. Revoicing is constrained by the appropriateness of the speech to the lip movements, and by the appropriateness of what is said to what is shown. If the target audiences do not understand the subtitles or the film dialogues they hear, they can not read the subtitles...