Translating culture-specific references on Greek television: A diachronic case study of subtitling trends

Abstract

The treatment of culture specific utterances is said to be one of the most challenging tasks for any translator. In the case of subtitling, there are special idiosyncratic features that render the particular task even more demanding. The subtitler has to take a wide range of parameters into consideration ranging from the polymedial nature of the medium to the functionality of each utterance within the audiovisual product. Each parameter works as a confining or aiding framework for the subtitling act and ultimately determines the range of choices and possible alternatives for the adoptable strategies. This thesis attempts to outline these additional parameters, posed by subtitling, in a diachronic perspective. Examples of culture specific references will be drawn, among others, from two different sets of subtitles written for a very popular TV series (Beverly Hills 90210) broadcast by two Greek TV channels with a twenty-year time gap. The existence of these parallel translations provide the ground for a contrastive study which yields interesting insights as to the variation of translation strategies adopted by professionals. The different renderings of the culture-specific utterances are juxtaposed to serve the overriding objective of comparing the numerical findings with the strategies used for different cultural groupings. The question on whether and if so to what extent and towards what direction has the treatment of culture specific utterances changed in the course of time, will be dealt with in this thesis.