When it comes to the English language skills taught at secondary schools, productive and receptive skills in speech and writing are central parts of education and most teachers will be familiar with the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) and its functional descriptors to assess or self-assess how advanced learners have become in their language proficiency. The “Rahmenlehrplan 21”, for instance, makes no specific mention that translation, an activity that requires receptive skills in one language and productive skills in another, as well as processing skills in connecting the two, is a particular aim for learners in the English classroom, yet – at least in a more informal sense, translation is a very pervasive activity that can serve as scaffolding for early-stage learners when it comes to productive skills in their target language, but is also more broadly a specific mediation skill that allows processing and designing information for particular addressees. Indeed, the CEFR’s companion volume offers mediation as a key aspect for teaching and learning and also contains specific descriptors for written as well as oral translation. For instance, the descriptor for level A1 in “Translating a written text in speech or sign” specifies that an individual on that level:

“can provide a simple, rough oral translation (into Language B) of simple everyday words/signs and phrases (written in Language A) that are encountered on signs and notices, posters, programmes, leaflets, etc.”
(CEFR Companion volume 2020: 104)

Skills on level B2 in “Translating a written text in writing” include target texts that mirror “normal language usage” and are clearly organized, as well as the ability to convey main points of a target text while also staying close to its sentence and paragraph structure.

At the highest professional level, translation and interpreting are of course skills that require specific training that could not possibly be included in the curriculum of a Swiss secondary foreign language classroom. However, these examples of translation skills at earlier and less specialized stages of language learning indicate that translation is also a necessary competency for non-professionals and an activity and learning aim that could well be integrated into learning at school. This is even more true when we consider the initial premise that translation is not an independent skill, but in fact a sophisticated combination of listening/reading and writing/speaking, guided by principles like some form of structural, aesthetic or functional equivalence that also appears in the CEFR companion descriptors (CEFR Companion volume 2020).

In what follows, we will make some general observations on translation and then move to more specific information on subtitling. The text is meant for teachers who can use the suggested input and activities with their students to reflect on the challenges of translation and on introducing and reflecting on translating practices.

In the classroom, translation is at times considered in terms of correct or accurate transfer of the source (or school) language (e.g. German, French, Italian) into the target language (e.g. English). However, this understanding of translation does not do justice to the complexity of translation processes. Translating is challenging not just on the lexical and syntactic level (grammatical accuracy) but also on the pragmatic level (idiomatic expressions, adequate renditions of positionings, diplomacy, politeness, etc.). The more typologically different the languages itself and the “cultures” with which they are associated, the more challenging the translation becomes.

Random examples of typologically remote languages:
Korean and English
Japanese and German
Finnish and English

Random examples of typologically close languages:
Dutch and German
French and Italian
English and French

A selection of translation challenges:

• Syntax and morphology:
  Languages differ in how they organize sentences; French and English have Subject-Verb-Object position, while other languages put the verb last, etc.. Some languages use honorific morphemes to signal status and respect (e.g. Korean and Japanese), others make a distinction between Du/Sie, tu/Vous tu/Lei/voi and the accompanying verbs. Some languages favour suffixes and postpositions to indicate e.g. possessives and spatial locations whereas others prefer pronouns and preposition (compare e.g. Finnish and English, koira on sohvallamme, ‘the dog is on our sofa’, which in Finnish is literally rendered as ‘the dog is sofa-on-our’).
• Varieties:
  People do not only speak the standard of a language (‘Hochdeutsch’; Standard English) but there are many varieties of a language that exist at the same time: for example, regional dialects, social dialects, ethnic dialects. This variation is difficult to translate, because what such a dialect says about a speaker is grounded in the context of that society. To be precise, even standards of a language are often not one single variety, but can be part of a set of standards in different countries or regions (e.g. Austrian, German, Swiss High German, etc.; American, Australian, British, English, etc.).
• Vocabulary:
  The lexicon (the vocabulary of a language) can differ according to formality, genre, jargon, in-group language, etc. This language can be very group-specific and can often not be easily translated as no direct equivalence exists.
• Pragmatics:
  Differences in how to perform speech acts (e.g., thanking, greeting, addressing each other, doing phone calls, etc.) and activities in general have to do with how language is used idiomatically in the source and target languages. Since such practices can differ, translators have to make a decision with respect to whether they orient more towards the source language or the target language.

When translators make decisions as to how to transfer the source text into a target text, it is inevitable that they change the text and thus rewrite it. The reason for this is that there is no easy equivalence and automatic transfer from one language into another and as a consequence, translators are co-creators of a text. Research has described two general  orientation, which are described here in Nisticós’s words:

“The translators’ task is to make the source text available to a target audience with a different socio-cultural background than the author’s, by oscillating between an adaptation of a text to its target linguaculture and readers (domestication) and an orientation to the source language (foreignization). In this sense, they mediate between different languages, cultures, communities, social norms, and behaviors.” (Nisticó, under review)

A selection of translation practices/tendencies (based on Mauranen 2007):

• explicitation:
  “translations are more explicit than source texts” (p. 38)
• simplification:
  “translated language is ‘simplified’ as compared to non-translated language”, e.g. in vocabulary (p. 39)
• conventionalisation:
  “a tendency towards conventionality, or ‘normalisation’ […]. It is akin to a general conservatism or caution, often attributed to translations, which means that translations are supposed to avoid margins or periphery and remain safely within the mainstream.” (p. 40)
• under-representation of unique target-language items:
  “[F]eatures which tend to be ‘untranslatable’, unique to the target language, or in any case do not occur in the source language, tend to be proportionally under-represented in translations”, for example discourse markers or morphemes that only occur in one of the languages (p. 42).

• untypical collocations:
  The target texts shows collocations that are not typical of comparable texts in the same language (p. 44).
• source-language interference:
  “[B]oth the source text and the source language system” can be expected to influence the translation. (p. 43)

If we ask ourselves how we can integrate translation in the classroom and what enriching mediation activities can be offered to secondary school students, we may think only of translanguaging by teachers and learners, e.g. offering chunks from the L1 as a facilitator for understanding or expression in the L2. However, given the pervasiveness of audiovisually translated multimodal content that learners have at their disposal in this day and age, it may be useful to look further and discover subtitles as useful text genre for English teachers and learners. Most learners in the classroom will of course be broadly familiar with subtitles, in English or their L1, as a tool that can make it possible for them to understand parts of films and TV shows as well as shorter formats like Youtube and Tiktok videos to which they would otherwise have no or more limited access. This is to say that learners will already be familiar with some very pragmatic benefits of making use of subtitles as a tool, even though they may have spent little time actually considering what is and is not communicated through the subtitles they engage with.

When we look at research on subtitling, we find good descriptions of the particularities of subtitles as the product of a specific translational practice as well as of the specific differences to other types of audiovisual translation, of which dubbing is the most widely discussed example. Especially that latter comparison between subtitled and dubbed films has been discussed in different academic, but also in everyday public discourses, and its real-world impact is manifest in every decision when going to the movies or turning on the next Netflix episode in the form of a choice: What audiotrack and what subtitles do I pick?

Activities:

(1)      To what degree do each of the following aspects influence subtitling and dubbing? What might be the particular difficulties for each of the two types of translation?

(Source: Guillot 2017)

One interesting development in the last few decades is that subtitles are no longer exclusively made by professional subtitlers. In what has sometimes be called the fansubbing-phenomenon, individuals and groups of ardent expert fans have taken it upon themselves to share their time and expertise with other members of the same community who want to access newly produced audiovisual content quickly, for instance before a dubbed version has made it to an Italian television channel. But those fan subtitles are not only made faster than would be the case for other translations, they are also often informed by other aims. Researchers have found that in contrast to professional subtitles, fan subtitles are less demanding when it comes to phrasing the target text in optimally idiomatic sentences in the target language and instead favour access to the source text and source culture. This includes that fan subtitles do not only translate spoken words from the dialogue to written words in a different language, but include comments with additional explanations to provide additional insights. Moreover, fan subtitlers often assume that their readers and viewers are also themselves fans of what they are watching and therefore create common ground.

(Source: Messerli & Locher submitted.; Wilcock 2013)

The project Pragmatics of Fiction: Lay subtitling and online communal viewingoffers a new pragmatic perspective onto processes and products of subtitling. Its central foci are the role of English in making televised Korean dramas accessible to a global audience; the changing paradigms of subtitle production and reception towards more participatory and collaborative practices; the dynamic participation structures of translated artefacts and their effects on cross-cultural communication. While the project draws on research in translation, it is grounded in English linguistics, the pragmatics of fiction and computer-mediated communication. Our aim is to bring linguistic questions about language in use to this research interface. If you are interested in exploring this research further, please consult our publications:

Dayter, Daria, Locher, Miriam A., & Messerli, Thomas C. (in press 2023). Pragmatics of Translation: Negotiating Relational Work and Participation Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Locher, Miriam A. (2020). Moments of relational work in English fan translations of Korean TV drama. Journal of Pragmatics, 170, 139-155. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2020.08.002 (open access)

Locher, Miriam A., & Messerli, Thomas C. (2020). Translating the other: Communal TV watching of Korean TV drama. Journal of Pragmatics, 170, 20-36. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2020.07.002 (open access)

Messerli, Thomas C., & Locher, Miriam A. (2021). Humour support and emotive stance in comments on K-Drama. Journal of Pragmatics, 178, 408-425. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2021.03.001 (open access)

In preparation or under review

Locher, Miriam A., & Messerli, Thomas C. (under review). “what does hyung mean please?”: Moments of teaching and learning about Korean im/politeness on an online streaming platform of Korean TV drama. In Mary Shin Kim (Ed.), Politeness in Korean (t.b.a.): Springer.

Locher, Miriam A., & Messerli, Thomas C. (under review). “This is not the place to bother people about BTS”: Interaction and conflict within timed comments on the video streaming platform Viki. Discourse, Context and Media.

Messerli, Thomas C., & Locher, Miriam A. (under review). Contrastive analysis of English fan and professional subtitles of Korean TV Drama. In Miriam A. Locher, Daria Dayter, & Thomas C. Messerli (Eds.), Pragmatics and Translation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Recommended sources for translation strategies

Baker, Mona. (1992). In Other Words – A Coursebook on Translation. London / New York: Routledge.

Boria, Monica, Carreres, Ángeles, Noriega-Sánchez, María, & Tomalin, Marcus (Eds.). (2020). Translation and Multimodality: Beyond Words. London: Routledge.

House, Juliane. (2018). Translation: The Basics. London: Routledge.

Laviosa-Braithwaiten, Sara. (1998). Universals of translation. In Mona Baker & Kirsten Malmkjaer (Eds.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies (pp. 288-291). London and New York: Routledge.

Malmkjaer, Kirsten (Ed.) (2018). The Routledge Handbook of Translation Studies and Linguistics. Oxon & New York, NY: Routledge.

Mauranen, Anna. (2007). Universal tendencies in translation. In Gunilla  Anderman & Margaret Rogers (Eds.), Incorporating Corpora: The Linguist and the Translator (pp. 32-48). Bristol, Blue Ridge Summit: Multilingual Matters. https://:https://doi.org/10.21832/9781853599873-006

Nisticó, Simona. (under review). Translating conflict in written fiction. In Miriam A. Locher, Daria Dayter, & Thomas C. Messerli (Eds.), Pragmatics and Translation (pp. t.b.a.). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Recommended sources for audio-visual translation

Díaz-Cintas, Jorge, & Neves , Josélia (Eds.). (2015). Audiovisual Translation: Taking stock. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholar.

Díaz-Cintas, Jorge, & Nikolić, Kristijan (Eds.). (2018). Fast-Forwarding with Audiovisual Translation. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

Díaz-Cintas, Jorge, & Remael, Aline. (2007). Audiovisual Translation: Subtitling. New York: Routledge.

Guillot, Marie-Noëlle. (2017). Subtitling and Dubbing in Telecinematic Text. In Miriam A. Locher & Andreas H. Jucker (Eds.), Handbooks of Pragmatics: Pragmatics of Fiction (pp. 397–424). Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110431094-013

Guillot, M.-N. (2020). The pragmatics of audiovisual translation: Voices from within in film subtitling. Journal of Pragmatics, 170, 317-330. https://10.1016/j.pragma.2020.09.015

Messerli, Thomas C., & Locher, Miriam A. (under review). Contrastive analysis of English fan and professional subtitles of Korean TV Drama. In Miriam A. Locher, Daria Dayter, & Thomas C. Messerli (Eds.), Pragmatics and Translation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Oksefjell-Ebeling, S. (2012). Textual reduction in translated dialogue in film versus literary fiction. Nordic Journal of English Studies, 11(3), 100-126.

Ranzato, Irene, & Zanotti, Serenella (Eds.). (2018). Linguistic and Cultural Representation in Audiovisual Translation. New York: Routledge.

Wilcock, Simone. (2013). A comparative analysis of fansubbing and professional DVD subtitling [M.A. Thesis]. University of Johannesburg.

Recommended sources for pragmatics and translation

Dayter, Daria, Locher, Miriam A., & Messerli, Thomas C. (in press 2023). Pragmatics in Translation: Mediality, participation and relational work. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hickey, Leo (Ed.) (1998). The Pragmatics of Translation. Clevedon and Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters.

Locher, Miriam A., & Sidiropoulou, Maria (Eds.). (2021). Pragmatics of translation (special issue). Journal of Pragmatics.

Sidiropoulou, M. (2021). Understanding Im/politeness Through Translation. The English-Greek Paradigm. Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland.

Tipton, Rebecca, & Desilla, Louisa (Eds.). (2019). The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Pragmatics. London: Routledge.

Source for CEFR framework

CEFR Companion volume. (2020).Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment. Companion volume.

Solution Activity Passive reading and active writing of subtitles

(a) and (d) are fansubtitles and professional subtitles in an action scene from a Korean TV-Drama

(b), (c), and (e) are the back translation the professional subtitles and the fan subtitles from Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis