A to Z of Screenplay Translation

The reasons for opting for cinematic translation are the following:

• Interdisciplinary truism
• Uniqueness of Septiem Art (cinema)
• Universality & Millennial Exigency
• Hegemony of Hollywood
• Dynamicity of Cinematic Discourse
• Poly-Semiotics and Deictics and Diegetics in cinematic texts and sub-texts
• Genre-Flexibility
• Intertextuality (within and without films)
• Vocabulary (Denotation and Connotation)
• Script / Frame
• Imagery

As the title is "A to Z of Screenplay Translation", I have formatted this article according to an A to Z list of notes.

• Sometimes equivalents in the two languages bear similarities with respect to volume, syllable, rhythm, phonics and acoustics ruling, which eases domestication of utterances.

• Positive Transfer from the source tongue is another parameter that can render a facile translation.

• Fillers within dialogs are essential since they illuminate under-the-skin dynamics in a character structurally, semantically, and semiotically.

• Onomatopoeic words or interjections, however universal, are usually not identical in the two languages under study. Therefore, they must be paid due attention.

• The need for localization at times prompts translators to alter positive utterances into negative and vice versa, in an attempt to acclimatize the translated version to better suit the comprehension paradigms of the TL readers and listeners, posing an ostensibly variant façade beneath which the deep structure remains intact.

C

• Statements can be acculturated to diffuse local color. Different cultures have different thought patterns thereby affecting their language. In other words there is a bidirectional relation between language and thought.

• In translating proverbial expressions, temporal and spatial contingencies (the context) determine the best rendition; for example in a Western movie where the horse is dramatically essential, an expression like "to flog a dead

• Another area of difference is the variation in wording. Speakers of English, especially Americans comfortably interpose parts of speech; i.e. adjectives as verbs; nouns as verbs, etc. This type of productivity is far less heard of and very much rare in Persian language. Therefore such translations may look lengthier or shorter than the original.

• In the case of geographically confined movies, it would be meritorious, occasionally, to re-register the setting of the story to the audience's mind, through renewed employment of original SL words such as routines and globally used formulaics.

• Sometimes in dubbed movies, we are exposed to culturally target language-rooted expressions which befit the context from which they emerged. In Persian dubbing tradition, some banal Western movies (horse operas), lewd, slapstick comic films of lowly substance were translated in this way. Harold Lloyd's comedy which is strictly dependent on its American locations or the lofty works of Buster Keaton or Woody Allen's stylish verbal comedy cannot employ too much of this type of translation. I am delighted by the fact that many of Charlie Chaplin's major works belonged to the silent era of cinema for which they did not require translations of any kind! Some Persian expressions, however rigidly Iranian or broadly religious, could still be conveniently used in an entirely western setting and yet act as wholesome renditions.

• In screenplay translation, the metropolitan vernacular of the capital of the TL country is to be employed, and the translator is to consciously and cautiously avoid dialect-generated expressions of his or her own homeland. Our subconscious is a highly powerful endogenous mechanism which surfaces when we retire to our indulgent moments. A worthwhile solution would be to demand both female and male proofreaders (text umpires) to locate such invisible faux pas and to suggest modifications. There is not a good chance for a screenplay book to be reprinted or revised, since oftentimes book-readers tend to be cinema-goers. Therefore, the translator, for this specific genre of translation, ought to review his text for many times to filter any mistranslations.

• In ordinary mainstream translation, one may render a short sentence as long one or a long one as short one, but in screenplay translation, such textual conversions are ruled out due to the dubber's and the acoustic lip-synch's requirements. Cinematic translations are time-bound, gesture-bound and lip movement-bound. This fact presupposes a philologist-lexicologist translator who has spare bags of vocabulary to give him/her the flexibility to select words as the visual context demands.

• Much like fiction and poetry, screenplays in general and English screenplays in particular are a bonanza of newly coined vocabulary. Movies are admired for their novel contexts; new complex situations breed new ideas which in turn can generate new words and phrases. The fever of novelty and coinage has unleashed the lexical appetite of venturesome minds. Hence, bilingual dictionaries are crippled to satisfy the demands of the text, and the translator has to coin corresponding words or phrases. A stylist idiosyncratic translator may, as summoned by his gift of the gab, house-clean the language. The notion is so readily understandable that it defies exemplification. We all owe a plethora of words and word combinations to great writers from Shakespeare to Orwell to e.e. cummings. Since cinema is the artifact of various nationals, from German to Hong Kong Chinese, and Hollywood is the industry for immigrant filmmakers, it is only natural if a filmmaker's mother tongue, advertently or inadvertently, affects the language of the dialogs. Translators, accordingly, have to be creative neologists.

• It is suggested that the proverbs and idiomatic expressions be translated source-like rather than target-like, yet not excessively verbatim, for the sake of local color and zeitgeist. As for screenplays, translating according to the local color and atmospherics of the source language is of preference but not of persistence. Sometimes these idioms rise out of textual and subtextual exigencies, since cinema has a character of immediacy. Songs, lyrics, poems, hymns, etc. in a film are normally parts of the plot (especially in Broadway musicals), so they had better be translated-no matter how well-rhymed or prose-like they may appear—as subtitles, to allow the audience to relate with the genuine atmosphere of the movie. The opening titling and the closing credits could also be taken as translatable material.

• In trailer movies that feature megastars in their cast, the same dubbed voices are preferred to appease the icon-seeking mentality of their fans and for the sake of marketability. In Iran, for instance, which is globally reputed for her dulcet tuneful dubbers (voice-artists), Alan Delon is most appreciated for his voice-over who has a gifted ethereal voice to transfix the audience. All the James Bonds have dwelled in the minds of viewers for their classic antics, appearances, gestures and postures, accessories and, yes, their voices which have become indissociable from the role.

• On the average, the language in the theater is more hyperbolic, pompous and grandiloquent, as compared to cinema which is more everyday and commonplace. Although in costume movies, which thematically touch historical motifs, the language is as exaggerated as in the theater. In other words, cinematic translation is highly genre-based, but since the modern-day world is in and of itself so eventful, it lends itself to day-to-day movie productions. In cinema, the tone and mood of the dialogs are adequately illumined in complementary parentheses.

• Occasionally, the original screenplay is altered by the director's revisions, or its different versions: American, European, festival, private, national, or international, etc. In such cases, though the original version is the authoritative one, footnotes from the other versions of the screen-script can be allotted to certain scenes and sequences as an aid in elaborating on nuances such as proper names, culture-geared concepts, neologisms, abbreviations, acronyms, etc. Often a good indication of the integrity of a translation work is its abundance of footnotes.

• As for trailers and sequels or prequels like "Godfather 1, 2, 3," the screenplays should offer "sameness" in the renditions of different episodes, even if each sequel is given to a different translator. If, for example, a direct quotation by one character is repeated several times, the translator must refer back to the text to cite the exact wording that appeared in the scenario the very first time (like a recorded voice played in a courtroom).

• The translated version sometimes gets truncated or bowdlerized by some brutal censor to enjoy the right of publication. A smart translator with a little foresight can contrive renditions which would prevent any sort of mishandling and nonetheless allow smart readers to restore those original parts.

• Dubbing of foreign films and TV series into Chinese, according to Zhang, is subject to a number of linguistic, cultural and political constraints.

• Bassnett (1991): "Globally, this is the age of mass communications, of multimedia experiences and a world where audiences demand the right to share the latest text, be it film, song, or book simultaneously across cultures."
• "The translator (of drama) must take into account the function of the text as an element for and of performance to enquire into the deictic units of the text."
• Kowzan propounds that any dramatic text contains within it a set of extralinguistic systems (i.e., pitch, intonation, accent, etc.) as well as an undertext (gestural text), which are determined by the movements an actor makes while speaking that text.
• Shahba (1998) stratifies the movie sounds as: (a) characters' dialogs, (b) score (music), and (c) sound effects. (The latter two (M&E) are known as Universal Sounds.)
• What takes place on the screen is irreversible. The translator must resist the temptation of producing aesthetically satisfying dialogs like those printed on the page in works of serious literature for the simple reason that dubbed films should "preserve the same effect on the hearer that the original has in the source language." (Reiss, 2000) According to Gutt (2000), they should be translated "in such a manner that they yield the intended meaning without forcing the audience to make an unnecessary processing effort." In other words, with rare exceptions, dubbed film dialogs must not be too difficult to understand at first hearing—since there is no second hearing. (Zhang)
• Cinema is for all viewers, from a preschooler to a postgraduate; dregs and creams alike.
• Kovacic: A Film Translator should know both what to translate and what not to translate.

• In an ideal situation, the translator operates on a document called a Dialog List (post-production script): the (more or less) exact compilation of the linguistic exchanges (dialogs and monologs) that take place in the audio-visual product. Besides the linguistic material, a good dialog list offers metatextual information about the social context and the cultural connotations, clarifies the meaning of words or expressions that may be obscure for the translator, explains puns and plays on words, offers the correct spelling of proper names and indicates ironic statements, etc. This is an essential document for the efficient work of the screen translator and ought to be provided by the production or distribution company.

• The screen translator is faced with a kind of "Gesamtkunstwerk" (multi-media performance) where the dialog works together with the visual image, soundtrack, and music (Barbara Schwarz, 2002); a fact that is responsible for a series of limitations that constrain his/her task.
• Unshackled English

The English language is so unruly and vast that it oftentimes handicaps translators.

• Dual Rendition

Screenplay Translation is both Translation and Interpretation and even more

• Lingual Transition

• Under-Translation

Certain semantic elements are lost in translation, most fundamentally for cultural

reasons. A typical instance is:

Titles: e.g. Gone with the Wind (as "Vanished Like Smoke and Clouds")

Proper Names qua metaphors: e.g. Box and Cox

The process of recording or replacing voices for a motion picture, most commonly used in reference to voices recorded which do not belong to the original actors and speak in a different language than the actor is speaking. It can also be used to describe the process of re-recording lines by the actor who originally spoke them. This process is technically known as Additional Dialog Recording (Automated Dialog Replacement) (ADR).

• Dubbing can accommodate censorship of various kinds.

R
Subtitling
[Captioning]
Subtitling can be defined as a linguistic practice that consists of providing, usually at the bottom of the screen, a written text that intends to account for what has been said (or shown in written form) in the audio-visual product. It can either be a form of written translation of a dialog in a foreign language, or a written rendering of the dialog in the same language—with or without added information intended to help viewers with or without hearing disabilities to follow the dialog. Sometimes, mainly at film festivals, subtitles may be shown on a separate display below the screen, thus saving the film-maker from creating a subtitled copy for perhaps just one showing. Subtitles usually convey what is meant, rather than being an exact rendering of how it is said, i.e. meaning is more important than form, for the mere sake of removing the cognitive pressure on the eyes and the mind of the reader. On special occasions, such as film festivals, live translation is often done by volunteers. In multi-screen editing, subtitling seems unwise.

1. Assuming that a dialog list has been provided by the production/distribution company, the first task is the spotting (also known as timing or cueing) of the film, which is normally done by a technician. This consists of noting in the dialog list when subtitles should start and stop. Once the in and out times have been established, one can proceed to work out the length of the subtitles the translator has to write. According to the seconds and frames that are available, the subtitles will be graphically longer or shorter. In some instances, spotting has already been done by the company that provided the dialog list, in which case this document is known as a master list. When the timing has been done by a professional other than the translator, the latter's freedom can be severely restricted. The imposition of a maximum permitted number of spaces for a text may not work equally well for all languages and that is why, if translators could do their own spotting, they could be more flexible and make a more rational use of the spaces needed for any given subtitle.
2. Once spotting has been done, the next step is to translate from one language to another, carried out by the translator.
3. The final stage consists in adjusting the length of the subtitles to the spaces available, paying special attention to the syntactical presentation of the subtitles and making sure that cuts and changes of scenes are respected. The person in charge of adjusting tends to be a different professional known, by some, as the subtitler. Nowadays there is a call for the unification of all these tasks (spotting, translation and adjustment) in the figure of the translator, since it is believed that the combination of these functions in one person will help to reduce the risk of error. New developments in specialized computer software for subtitling, together with the designing of university modules where students are systematically taught all the necessary stages for subtitling, suggest the consolidation of this versatile professional in the very near future.
4. The dialogs of the characters can appear in different colors. Especially in two-character movies (DUO)
5. The color of subtitle: for example in horror movies it cannot be dark because locations are usually in the night.
6. Subtitling should not cover an important visual element in the shot at the bottom or corner of it.

T
Preference: Different countries adopt different approaches to film translation for various cultural, political, economic, and ideological reasons.

FIGS (France, Italy, Germany, and Spain)

China

Iran

Quebec

Bulgaria

Hungary

Slovakia (by home actors)

Thailand (+ SIMULCAST on radio)

South Africa (+ SIMULCAST on radio)

Vietnam (One Voice)

Poland (One Voice for both male and female)

Russia & Estonia (LECTORING / Voice-Over)

Anglophones: USA, UK

Israel

Greece

Romania

Slovania

Scandinavia (Children's films are dubbed)

Netherlands (Children's films are dubbed)

Finland (Double-Subtitle)

Belgium (Double-Subtitle)

Jordan (Double-Subtitles)

U
Spatial and Temporal Constraints for Visibility and Legibility

• A maximum of two lines of horizontal subtitles at a time
• A maximum of 35 characters for each line
• An average of 70 characters in two lines for a duration of about 6 seconds
• The size of a subtitle is 1/12 of the total screen height
• The subtitle projection has to be synchronized with the actual dialog and removed when the actors stop speaking.
• There has to be some time lag between subtitle projections.
• A subtitle should not run over a cut or change of scene.
• Recommended Typefaces are "Helvetica" and "Arial".
• Type characters should be colored pale white (not snow bright) because a too flashy pigment would tire the viewers' eye.
• Sequence Dots {...} are used hen a subtitle sentence is not finished on one flash and has to continue on a consecutive one.
• Italics or quotation marks are used for Off-Screen (O.S.) voices, radio or TV or loudspeaker, an inner thought, phone calls and narration.
• Subtitles are usually placed at the bottom of the screen to guarantee minimum pollution of the central image. They should be placed in a different area when the background does not allow its reading or, alternatively, be superimposed on a dark-colored box (Ghost Box) that will contrast with the written message and favour its reading. using a font which ensures their clear visibility and easy legibility whilst distracting as little as possible from the picture.
  
  Each subtitle must be a coherent, logical and syntactical unit. Line breaks ought to be applied in such a way as to coincide with the natural breaks in sentence structure. (especially in the case of chunks and formulaics).

V
Dubbing vs. Subtitling

• Expensive
• The original dialog is lost (Gisting/- pad)
• It takes longer
• Pretends to be a domestic product
• Can be more courteous
• Dubbing actors' voices can be repetitive
• Suits readers of poor literacy
• Respects the image of the original
• Synchronous understanding
• Allows the overlapping of dialog
• Viewer can focus on images
• Viewer can follow the sense even if distracted from watching
• Constrained by lip-sync and lip-shape
• Only one linguistic code
• Allows more cinematic illusion
• More authoritarian
• Joy


• Subtitling: (Foreignization)
• Cheap
• Respects the original integrity of the original dialog
• Reasonably quick
• Promotes the learning of foreign languages
• Can be less courteous
• Quality of original actors' voices
• Suits the hearing impaired and immigrants
• Pollutes the image
• Deferred understanding
• Does not allow the overlapping of dialog
• Dispersion of attention
• Viewer will lose the sense if distracted
• Constrained by space and time
• Two different linguistic codes simultaneously can be disorientating
• Can detract from cinematic illusion
• More democratic
• Fatigue

W

Other Projection Species

• Supertitles (Surtitles)

are commonly used in opera or other musical performancer to transcribe lyrics that may be difficult to understand in the sung form.

• Projected Titles

are generally projected above the theatre's proscenium arch (but, alternately, on either side of the stage

• Electronic Libretto System

individual screens placed in front of each seat allowing viewers either to read a translation or to switch them off during the performance.

• The name of a movie is probably the first notion that runs in the public mouth but is the last item to be translated as it calls for a thorough understanding of the film thereby demanding a well-pondered equivalent to be well-sounding to the ears and scenic to the eyes of the of the audience.

• Previously, in animations the characters had sealed lips, so lip-synch dubbing was not needed, but now, due to the open-sesame power of computer-assisted animation and animatronics, the lips are moving, so much so that dubbing in animation is now more film-like since animated characters normally disallow long-shots and prefer to be shot in close-ups.

1. S/he invariably takes into account ambiguity, polysemy, satire, irony, metaphor, figurativity, and all other rhetoric gadgets available to the writer. In other words, a screenplay translator needs to be primarily a writer to know about the aesthetic mechanism of penmanship and preferably a linguist, a pragmatist, an aesthete and a critic; otherwise the translated work would be clumsy, flimsy and dull. S/he should have an eye for the aesthetically pleasing arrangement of phonemes and morphemes, sounds and words and be cognizant of semiotics.
2. S/he needs to love cinema and has to be a veteran cinema-goer and have a good command of the cinematic technical terminology and jargon (e.g. establishing shot, tilting, crane, voice-over, off-screen, swish pan, insert, close-up, traveling, etc.) and the issues in directing, editing, photographing, lenses, mise-en-scene, lighting, sound effect, set design, make-up, music (score), the history of cinema, the new trends , the celebrities, names and years of movies, the various genres of motion picture (e.g. comedy, melodrama, horror, thriller, action, classical, musical, film noir, documentary, Western, neo-realist, expressionist, New Wave, etc.). In short, the screenplay translator has to know the ins and outs of the world of cinema, from Hollywood to Bollywood.
3. S/he must keep abreast of the latest trends in the world and have a good general education to better relate to the stream of the story in the scenario. The screenplay translator is not betray the text which is entrusted to her/him; therefore s/he is the most fastidious and meticulous among translators. Unfortunately, many of the recent translations in the Iranian book market are sheer works of caprice, haste, want of fame, and amateurism upon which no supervision is exercised.
4. S/he must consider all denotative and connotative meanings and labeled usages (e.g. literary, archaic, euphemistic, derogatory, slang, taboo, formal, informal, etc.) of a vocabulary. Therefore the translator must have a variety of types of dictionaries. Even if the meaning of a word or phrase is apparently known, still a second lookup is more revealing.
   man and boy (since infancy)
   wildcat (tentative well / anchor reel)
   
5. S/he should watch the movie the script of which s/he is translating at least twice—one initial view before commencing the job of translation in order to become familiarized with the overall picture, and one final view in order to make the final touches to the translation work. Nevertheless, sporadic cursory or scrupulous looks at problematic shots and sequences of the film in the middle of translation are by all means recommended. Translators who are somehow deprived of exposure will surely end up with weird and at times ludicrous renditions.
6. S/he must be a circumspect screenplay translator who facilitates the work of the editor, the subtitler, and the dubber, taking into account the genre, audience, cast, pauses, emphatic parts, mimics, lip movements, etc. to be a maverick creator of a synch translation.
7. S/he should have an excellent PR and store the vernacular of people of different status with respect to language, personality, career, age, etc. in order to hire expressions accordingly. (field, mode and tenor).
8. S/he is recommended to read any biography or autobiography of the screenplaywright and the starring actors and study any review or critique about the movie alongside a host of general and special dictionaries and reference books since this could add to the skill of the translator and the integrity of the translation.

• A "genre" generally refers to films that share similarities in the narrative elements from which they are constructed.
• Three main types are often used to categorize film genres; setting, mood, and format. The film's location is defined as the setting. The emotional charge carried throughout the film is known as its mood. The film may also have been shot using particular equipment or be presented in a specific manner, or format. Age and Making are two supplemented divisions.

Genres: (Courtesy: Wikipedia.org)

• Setting:
• Crime - places its character within realm of criminal activity
• Film noir - portrays its principal characters in a nihilistic and existentialist circumstances
• Historical - taking place in the past
• Science fiction - placement of characters in an alternative reality, typically in the future or in space
• Sports - sporting events and locations pertaining to a given sport
• War - battlefields and locations pertaining to a time of war
• Westerns - colonial period to modern era of the western United States
• Road Movies - a chain of thrilling events take place on a suburban road

• Action - generally involves a moral interplay between "good" and "bad" played out through violence or physical force
• Adventure - involving danger, risk, and/or chance, often with a high degree of fantasy.
• Comedy - intended to provoke laughter
• Drama - mainly focuses on character development
• Fantasy - speculative fiction outside reality (i.e. myth, legend)
• Horror - intended to provoke fear in the audience
• Mystery - the progression from the unknown to the known by discovering and solving a series of clues
• Romance - dwelling on the elements of romantic love
• Thrillers - intended to provoke excitement and/or nervous tension into audience

• Animation - illusion of motion by consecutive display of static images which have been created by hand or on a computer
• Biographical - a biopic is a film that dramatizes the life of an actual person, with varying degrees of basis in fact
• Epic - a large scale production that covers a significant historical period (either real or fictitious), usually centering around a quest.
• Musical - a film interspersed with singing by all or some of the characters
• Martial Arts
• Short - may strive to contain many of the elements of a "full-length" feature, in a shorter time-frame
• Documentary - narrates or comments on current events and news stories.

• Children's film - films for young children; as opposed to a family film, no special effort is made to make the film attractive for other audiences.
• Family film - intended to be attractive for people of all ages and suitable for viewing by a young audience. Examples of this are Disney films.
• Adult film - intended to be viewed only by an adult audience, content may include violence, disturbing themes, obscene language, or explicit behavior (also pornographic film).

Critics also group films according to their directors and production, though this cannot defy storyline or genre.

• auteur
• independent films

The purpose of this article was a modest scrutiny of the nuances of screenplay translation while reintroducing it in the cloak of a specialized genre of translation for translators who choose this least-trodden path as career and for tasteful teachers to cogently handle juicier classes with the aura of the film and the aroma of the cinema and to give their own pedagogy a new coloring. By no means does this work claim to be exhaustive or perfect and any comment or question is welcome.

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• http://www.imdb.com/
• http://www.script-o-rama.com/
• http://www.variety.com/
• http://creativescreenwriting.com/