Classification of multimodal translation errors in the entertainment industry: a proposal

ABSTRACT

Most translation tasks in the entertainment industry involve multiple modes of communication, i.e. they are multimodal, not solely language-based. A translator is expected to analyse, evaluate and transfer each of those modes to render an accurate translation of the source text. This is especially important in films, documentaries, TV and animated shows – multimodal scripts which are being localised for various contexts. An important step in the translation process in the entertainment industry should be the identification of translation errors in the final product which should be based on a proper translation error classification. Given that available translation error classifications rely solely on linguistic modes of communication, the aim of this paper is to propose a multimodal translation error classification which would be based on the multimodality of scripts to be translated and thus provide a reliable tool for the quality check of the final translation product in the entertainment industry. In that way, translators in this industry will be alerted to recognise elements (e.g. tone of voice, facial expressions, proximity, etc.) existing in multimodal scripts where both the source and the target texts as essential parts of the scripts are multimodal products.

KEYWORDS:

• Translation error classification
• classification proposal
• multimodal translation
• multimodality
• entertainment industry

Acknowledgment

We would like to thank the organisers and participants of the Bremen-Groningen Online Workshops on Multimodality 2020/2021 for initiating the discussion about a translation error classification based on multimodality and thereby directly motivating the writing of this article. This work was supported by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia (Contract No. 451-03- 9/2021-14/200165).

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jasmina P. Đorđević

Jasmina P. Đorđević (Associate Professor and Head of the Foreign Language Centre, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Niš, Serbia) teaches English for Specific Purposes, Translation of Non-Literary Texts, Applied Linguistics, Language and the Digital Environment. Her academic and scientific interests include the study of translation, multimodal and digital media discourse analysis and Computer-Assisted Language Learning.

Dušan Stamenković

Dušan M. Stamenković (Associate Professor at the Department of English and Head of the Language Cognition Lab, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Niš, Serbia) teaches Contemporary English Language, Discourse & Multimodality, Consecutive Interpreting, Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics and Psycholinguistics and Meaning. His research interests include cognitive approaches to linguistics, metaphor comprehension, multimodality, comics and video games studies, as well as contrastive linguistics and translation studies.