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‘domestication’ – in other words, cultural translation –

versus ‘foreignizing’

The debate can be approached using Venuti’s (1995) two key concepts of

domestication and foreignisation. Should the translator simply calque names from
the ST into the TT, or should he adapt them to the TT culture or even substitute
the original names by others that would sound familiar to the target addressees,
for the sake of creating the same effect in the audience as the original text did?
Sometimes, the visibility of the translator can be minimised by the use of certain
strategies that enhance comprehension but do also curtail the reader’s enjoyment
of the text, like the use of explanatory notes or glosses in certain types of writing.
However, this procedure is not normally available to audiovisual translators and,
although some subtitling practices – that is, fansubs – do resort to the inclusion of
translators’ notes (Díaz Cintas, 2005), this can be considered a very marginal
activity. Dubbing translators and subtitlers have only a limited range of translation
strategies available, and this is particularly evident in those parts of a text which
are most problematic. People and place names are especially challenging for
translators because rather than being universal they are usually deeply embedded
in a particular culture. Each community shares a culture, which is determined by
factors such as their past history, their common experiences and a relatively
similar point of view regarding the reality that surrounds them, as opposed to that
of other communities. Yet, this reality is not only made up of real facts, historical
people and true events. In fact, the shape of different cultures is strongly
determined by other fictional factors that also play an important role in a
particular community’s reality and include two main categories: literature and the
media.

The following pages aim to give a brief overview of the main theoretical

aspects underpinning our analysis of the English subtitles, in particular politeness
theory, audience design, and issues of domestication versus foreignisation in
translation. We then proceed to the actual analysis of examples from the film, and

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will conclude with a number of remarks about the way in which face-threatening
acts are managed in the English subtitles of this film, and implications for audience
design.

Domesticating vs Foreignising Strategies: Fluency
and Translator Invisibility

The final theoretical aspect we draw on in this research is that of

domestication vs foreignisation in translation, a dichotomy which takes us back to
the age-long debate of whether in translation we should aim to take the text
closer to the reader, or to take the reader towards the text. A domesticating
strategy aims ‘to bring back a cultural other as the same, the recognisable, even
the familiar’ (Venuti, 1995: 18); the reconstitution of the foreign text in
accordance with the values, beliefs and conventions which pre-exist in the target
language. One of the main ways in which this can be achieved is by using, in
translation, a fluent discourse which ensures readability, adheres to current usage,
eliminates stylistic peculiarities, and conceals the fact that the text is in fact a
translation (Venuti, 1995: 1). This strategy also helps to hide the presence and
intervention of translators, to make them invisible, as it were. Foreignising
translation, on the other hand, involves less violence to the source text and, in
fact, makes a task out of preserving, as far as possible, the otherness of the source
text. The overall tendency is for (literary) translators into English to adopt
domesticating strategies, and to aim for fluent-sounding discourse.

In subtitling, the translator’s visibility or invisibility takes on additional

meanings, including the very literal one of intrusiveness of nonintrusiveness in the
overall experience of watching an audiovisual programme, that is, the subtitles
should not obscure the image and they should be fairly easy to read so that the
audience does not need to spend too much time on them at the expense of other
components of the audiovisual programme, such as image. Furthermore, subtitles
are frequently not considered to be on a par with the other components of a
programme; thus, according to Smith: the goal is subtitles which, while perfectly
legible, actually give the impression of merging into the background. They are no

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more than a support for the visuals. Ideally, the audience should leave the cinema
or switch off the television having understood the film but without having made
any conscious effort to read the subtitles. (Smith, 1998: 148)

Aiming for this kind of invisibility is clearly linked to issues of domestication

and fluency in translation and with the levelling out of linguistic features which are
perceived as being too salient and attracting viewers’ attention at the expense of
the visuals. There are, however, other issue to consider. Audiences are likely to
find subtitles nonintrusive when these adhere to the norms they are accustomed
to, even if the particular norms in operation are not always in conformity with
best subtitling practice. The fact that audiences are almost always heterogeneous
and that audience groups differ in terms of cognitive environment, processing
ability and interest in the audiovisual programme makes it plausible to suggest
that what is comfortable reading for one group may prove difficult (and hence
intrusive) for another, and too easy for yet a third group.