7.4 Further Evaluation of the Corpus Data Results
In order to further test the relations between the use of these expressions and the popularity of the films,I collect some evidence from the Internet.According to the findings of this study,these 15 films all used culturally loaded expressions in their translation from English into Chinese; later,when they were released to the public,they gained praise with regard to their language quality.I collected the grades to the 15 selected films from three different popular websites (please see the examples as the three screenshots below),all of which have significant community of netizens and are approved websites in China.
Screenshot 16
(http://www.iqiyi.com/)
The first website to be introduced is called “Aiqiyi” (iQIYI.COM),which is the Pinyin name of this website.This website is an approved website in Beijing.According to the Senior Vice President of iQIYI,Yang Xianghua (Donews 2015),there were over 10 million iQIYI club members in 2015.In the context of this current research project,it is arguable that the bigger the number of the club members,and the more people there are to grade films,the more reliable and objective the results are likely to be for me to reference because of the large sample of opinions involved.
Screenshot 17
(https://movie.douban.com/)
The second selected website was registered and approved in Beijing in 2005.According to its official data,by 2013,it had over 200 million club members.The scale of its membership is so great that it offers me relatively objective data results on the grades for each released film.
Screenshot 18
(http://v.qq.com/)
Last but not least is Tencent,which is one of the biggest Internet service providers in China.Established in 1998 by Ma Huateng and four other people,its service types include different kinds of social media,such as Internet software (QQ,QQ Space),mobile apps (WeChat,Tencent News),which are now used widely by Chinese people in their daily life,meaning that it is difficult to obtain precise data on its members.Therefore,the participants on this website are theoretically considered as the most significant in terms of numbers among the three chosen websites.(https://www.daowen.com)
I collected grades for the 15 selected films in her study,and then calculated the average values for each film in order to see if the translated language quality can influence the grade of each film.Grades for the same film were compared among these three websites,with the average values showing a relatively objective result as follows:
Table 11
According to the above data,the film Rio 1 got the highest average grade among the 15 films in the three biggest official websites.Then the second highest is Madagascar 3.It is an associated fact that Rio 1 is the film with the highest frequency of using popular expressions in the translated subtitles,while Madagascar 3 is the film with the highest frequency of using traditional expressions in the translated subtitles.Therefore,I assume that the use of two such kinds of culturally loaded expressions in E-C subtitle translation may appeal to the audience.However,the use of these two types of expression in the E-C subtitle translation of animation films may affect the overall quality of the subtitle translation,but it is not the decisive factor when it comes to the overall translation quality.See the grade for the film Turbo; although this film earned a place in the top five highest ticket sales in its year of release,the netizens gave a relatively lower grade to this film.The reasons may be varied,because a good quality film is composed of many kinds of factors and elements.From this research,the use of typical Chinese culturally loaded expressions in subtitle translation is,at least,positive from the perspective of intercultural communication.
Moreover,as the following curve graph shows,there are three curves representing the grades on each of the three official websites respectively.According to their trends,it shows that the grades for the 15 selected films on the three official websites are similar; therefore,this consistency indicates a certain accuracy and precision across these grades.In other words,they are reliable and valuable data for this current research.
Figure 6
On the above websites,after registering as members,viewers have the chance to give grades to the films they watch,whether they saw them at the cinema or online.Since these three websites are officially approved in China,the English-language films on their website contain the officially released translation.These websites encourage their customers to mark all the films they release.See the following screenshot:
Screenshot 19
The upper circle marks the place where the audience grades the films they have watched,while the lower circle shows the two ways in which to add more detailed comments or suggestions to these films.With one click in the orange-coloured area,more detailed directions about how to grade a film is given.The main areas that the participants should consider while grading are: story,picture,language,music and theme.These are appropriate criteria,which correspond to the important components of film quality,according to Jia (2010: 185),Mtime (website) and Douban (website).Since the highest possible grade is 10 points,each criterion carries a maximum of two points,so that participants can give a grade from 0 to 2 for each area; the overall grade equals the total for all the five phases.Therefore,the 15 selected films received a good grade in the film ranking list on average,since most of them received over 7.0 points.The high grades given by a significant number of netizens suggest that these films are of a good overall quality.What is more,considering that these films are all foreign films,the translation of the subtitles should shoulder more importance compare with home produced films.Audiences of foreign films may pay more attention to the quality of the translated subtitles no matter if their English level is good or not.Because,for people with a good level of English,their English comprehension is good,their own English ability is good,and they may have a corresponding expectation regarding the translation of the subtitles.Therefore,for this kind of audience,when they mark the film,the language criterion may have more relevance for them; however,as for the audiences whose English is not good enough,they may totally rely on the translated subtitles.If the quality of the subtitles is not good enough,they will be influenced in understanding the film.Therefore,the quality of the translated subtitles may also be key criterion when they mark the film.Above these two phases of reversing consideration,the researcher can put forward a tentative hypothesis that the higher graded films may have a better quality of subtitling.
In order to verify the tentative research result,I,firstly,read and calculated the specific comments from the netizens who took part in the grading online.Over 32% (2,810 out of 8,769) of netizens (net citizens) commented on the point of subtitling quality.The keywords used to comment on the meaning behind the subtitling translation are “funny”,“popular Internet words” and “the use of idioms”.They noticed the use of culturally loaded expressions and there were 60% (1,680 out of 2,810) of participants who indicated their preference for these kinds of expressions.The second point in favour of this hypothesis is from two scholars and practitioners of subtitle translation.The discussion with these two scholars helped me to collect reliable effective qualitative data to further verify my third hypothesis.