The English-to-Dutch Subtitling of Culture-Specific Items in Reality Television and Documentary Television

Several studies have focused on the definition of culture-specific items (CSIs), the categorization of CSIs into different types, and the different procedures that can be used to translate them. Furthermore, many studies have investigated the potential existence of translation norms, which are not directly observable entities that are present within different cultural groups and which influence translation behavior. This study combines the topics of CSIs and translation norms to formulate a potential norm that governs English-to-Dutch subtitling of CSIs in non-fiction television that generally values either source- or target-oriented translations. The two genres of non-fiction television analyzed in this study are reality and documentary television. The existence of a potential translation norm is investigated through data triangulation, which, in this study, means that a corpus as a textual source and a questionnaire as an extratextual source are analyzed. Observable patterns...Show moreSeveral studies have focused on the definition of culture-specific items (CSIs), the categorization of CSIs into different types, and the different procedures that can be used to translate them. Furthermore, many studies have investigated the potential existence of translation norms, which are not directly observable entities that are present within different cultural groups and which influence translation behavior. This study combines the topics of CSIs and translation norms to formulate a potential norm that governs English-to-Dutch subtitling of CSIs in non-fiction television that generally values either source- or target-oriented translations. The two genres of non-fiction television analyzed in this study are reality and documentary television. The existence of a potential translation norm is investigated through data triangulation, which, in this study, means that a corpus as a textual source and a questionnaire as an extratextual source are analyzed. Observable patterns identified in the corpus and potentially normative statements gathered using the questionnaire indicate the existence of a translation norm that values mainly source-oriented translations of CSIs in English-to-Dutch subtitling of non-fiction television. Furthermore, the results indicate that the preferred CSI translations in the documentary series subtitles tend to be more source-oriented than CSI translations in the reality show subtitles. The results also show that the thematic category of CSIs can function as an indicator of whether their translation is generally more source- or target-oriented. Further research is needed to test whether the audiovisual television productions analyzed are representative of English-to-Dutch subtitled reality and documentary television, and whether the questionnaire results, based on a relatively low number of questions and participants, are representative of how a general Dutch audience evaluates CSI translations.Show less

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The English-to-Dutch Subtitling of Culture-Specific Items in Reality Television and Documentary Television