More than words: a multimodal analytical framework for studying the subtitling of swearwords

ABSTRACT

This study aims to adopt existing methodologies to build a Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL)-based multimodal analytical framework capable of analysing swearing and its subtitling in their full multimodal context. The proposed framework offers tools to investigate how the communicative meanings of swearing are constructed through the interaction between different elements in different modes, and the effects of the retention and modification of the intermodal relations on subtitled films. This study finds that swearing is constructed multimodally through three metafunctional levels. Although the original swearwords are mostly omitted or changed to be less offensive in the Chinese subtitles, most communicative meanings of swearing can be inferred from the complementary relation between subtitles and the elements in the spoken and mise-en-scène modes. The study concludes that the focus of subtitle translation analysis should not be on what is lost in the target texts but on the contributions of different elements in different modes and their intermodal relations as well as how individual translation techniques work in a multimodal environment.

KEYWORDS:

• Swearwords
• subtitle translation
• multimodality
• audiovisual translation
• intermodal relations

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The term ‘mode’ in this study refers to those ‘sets of meaning-making resources that we intuitively fall back on’ in the production and consumption of audiovisual texts (Pérez-González, 2014, p. 192).

2 I follow the term used by Ramos Pinto (2018), who defines ‘the mise-en-scène mode’ as the stage design and actors’ arrangement in scenes for film, including costume and makeup, figure behaviour and setting.

3 The rating is based on The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) film rating system.

4 Han and Wang (2014) categorise English and Chinese swearwords into different semantic categories: the former includes body parts (arse), sex (fuck), mother (bastard), religion (god), and etc.; the latter includes sex (操 fuck), mother (他妈的 his mother’s), death (死人 dead man), and etc.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Siwen Lu

Dr Siwen Lu is currently a Lecturer in Translation Studies at University of Sheffield. She was a Visiting Post-Doc Researcher at University of Cambridge and University of Bristol before joining Sheffield. She completed her PhD in Translation Studies at University of Liverpool. Her research interests include audiovisual translation (e.g. subtitling, fansubbing, danmu subtitles), multimodality and digital media cultures. She has published several articles in peer-reviewed journals including Babel: International Journal of Translation, New Media & Society, Visual Communication, International Journal of Communication and Perspectives: Studies in Translation Theory and Practice. She is a member of The British Association for Chinese Studies (BACS) and European Association for Studies in Screen Translation (ESIST).