TRANSLATION OF ENGLISH-VIETNAMESE FILM SUBTITLES IN SOME POPULAR MOVIES

Abstract

In accordance with the great need of studying English in Vietnam, especially through English movies, translating subtitles has become a decent job as well as demanding work. With the aims of figuring out which strategies have been used in translating English-Vietnamese film subtitles and providing some implications on subtitle translation, this article looks at those of five popular movies on the website www.studyphim.vn to analyze namely “Ice Age: The Meltdown”, “Friends”, “Prison Break”, “Avengers: Age of Ultron”, and “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey”. The researcher watched and compared English and Vietnamese subtitles of the movies to find out the procedures and strategies of translation employed based on the theoretical framework adapted from Newmark’s and Baker’s theories about translation. After analyzing, there were principal procedures and strategies have been used as follows: literal translation, transference, naturalization, through translation, shift or transposition, notes, translation by a more neutral/less expensive word, translation by cultural substitution, translation by paraphrase using   a related word or using unrelated words, translation by omission, collocations, and idioms. The study also found out errors that are still existed in the subtitle translation of the collected films and they should be corrected. This project is hoped to contribute to the literature for future research on similar topic.