Comparative Analysis of Southern Min Subtitling Practices in Contemporary Singaporean and Taiwanese Films

• Main Authors: Rong-Chen Zhou, 周鎔晨
• Other Authors: Darryl Sterk
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2017
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/86012777481767925205

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 翻譯碩士學位學程 === 105 === Chinese language movies from Singapore and Taiwan often feature dialogue in their respective Southern Min ‘dialects,’ Hokkien and Taigi, in addition to spoken Mandarin, on which Modern Standard Chinese is based. The vocabularies of Southern Min and Mandarin differ significantly, despite the fact that both are classified as Chinese languages. Many Southern Min words do not have corresponding words in Mandarin; and some words do not have written characters. As a result, subtitlers translating Southern Min dialogue into Modern Standard Chinese face a range of challenges. These challenges include culture-specific references, humour and register. Some scholars in translation studies state that the norm for translating non-standard, oral or low-register forms of language, including dialectal particularities, is to adopt a standardising strategy by replacing these non-standard forms in the source language with standard forms typical of the written language. This is termed the ‘homogenising convention.’ However, the linguistic contexts of Southern Min are different in Singapore and Taiwan, therefore subtitlers from these two countries may or may not adopt the ‘homogenising convention.’ The subtitlers of the Singaporean movie It’s a Great Great World adopted it much more than their counterparts for the Taiwanese movie Twa-Tiu-Tiann. It’s a Great Great World used mainly Modern Standard Chinese terms, in line with the homogenising norm, while the subtitles in Twa-Tiu-Tiann took a more liberal approach in using non-standard forms. The two different approaches can be attributed to the fact that Southern Min is a living topolect that plays a significant role in the lives of Taiwanese people - and matters to Taiwanese identity - while it has declined in status in Singapore over the decades, and where it is not as widely-spoken, let alone read. The subtitles of Twa-Tiu-Tiann were targeted at a local audience relatively proficient in spoken and written Taigi, while the subtitles of It’s a Great Great World take into account audiences who may have grown unfamiliar with Hokkien by avoiding Hokkien lexicon in the written subtitles. The subtitles of 6 other movies from Singapore and Taiwan were briefly analysed to see if my findings can be generalised. Some exceptions were found, but the general trend can still be observed in the other movies.