6.1.2 Discussion of the Results
The following three charts explain the procedure of calculating the frequency of the use of traditional expressions in each of the 15 films’ subtitle translation by using ParaConc,Excel and the generated histogram of Excel.I put the data of each film in 15 separated ParaConc and Excel files,and then made an overall Excel chart to collect the frequency of the use of traditional expressions in all of the 15 films as shown in the second and third graphs:
Screenshot 14
(The sample shows the calculation of the frequency of the use of traditional expressions in ParaConc.)The following table shows the use of traditional expressions in each of the 15 films:
Table 5
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Figure 4
According to the above data,firstly,the use of traditional expressions in the translated subtitles in Chinese in all the 15 films is found.This result shows the subtitlers’ awareness of using traditional expressions in their translation.Secondly,the subtitler of Madagascar 3 is shown to use this kind of expression in 133 translated subtitles out of 1,293.This is the highest frequency of using traditional expressions among the 15 selected film translations.Meanwhile,in Despicable Me 1,the subtitler only applied 10 traditional expressions in 704 subtitles.Thirdly,the films with the top five highest frequency of using traditional expressions in their translations have three points in common: a) all of these films’ total number of subtitle pairs are over 1,200,except one with 1,031; b) all of the films using traditional expressions in their translations equate to over 5% of the total translated subtitles; c) all of these films are the latest released films compared with the rest of the selected films (Despicable Me 2,Frozen and Rio 2 are from 2014,Turbo is from 2013,and Madagascar 3 is from 2012).
The reasons behind this phenomenon might be: 1) Madagascar 3 has a bigger number of subtitles among the whole films (the total number of subtitle pairs in Madagascar 3 is 1,293; that of Despicable Me 1 is 704),which may increase the chances of using a traditional expression in the translation; 2) compared with the two storylines in these two films,Madagascar 3 is more complex with more relations among different characters; 3) the dialogue in Despicable Me 1 is more simple and brief,while the direct translation method is used in most of translated subtitles and,given the mechanical limits of making subtitles for a film,there is no need to use more strategies in the translation of simple language.
Then,if comparing the series of films individually,the researcher finds that,in Despicable Me 1 and 2,Madagascar 1,2 and 3,Rio 1 and 2,Cars 1 and 2,and The Smurfs 1 and 2,the frequency of using traditional expressions in the translated subtitles in Chinese increased obviously in all of these five-film series.Moreover,in each of the film series,in order to show a certain degree of consistency among each instalment of one film series,the characters in the story are similar in number and personality,while the style of the story is similar as well.As such,the increasing frequency of using traditional expressions in the subtitle translation might prove that,with the development of globalization,subtitlers in translated animation films in China pay more and more attention to the use of typical expressions in order to make the films more acceptable to the target audience.
In addition,the highest three frequencies of use of traditional expressions in the subtitle translations are found in the films of Madagascar 3 (2012),Turbo (2013) and then Rio 2 (2014).I find that these three films are the relatively latest films among the 15 selected films,and then I also expect that a tendency of using traditional expressions in English-language exported animation films in China will appear.Therefore,this also confirms that the use of traditional expressions in the E-C subtitle translation of animation films exists and is developing.
In the following section,I will describe my observations regarding 935 translated subtitles,which involve the use of traditional expressions,out of 19,081 in the corpus data,in order to discuss the quality of their use in this context,as well as suggest more effective translations where appropriate.