MASARYKOVA UNIVERZITA

FILOZOFICKÁ FAKULTA

Diplomová práce

Brno 2006 Pavel Reich

Masaryk University

Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

The Film and the Book

in Translation

Pavel Reich

Supervisor: PhDr. Jarmila Fictumová

Brno 2006

Hereby I declare that I have worked on this diploma thesis independently using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

I would like to express my sincere thanks to my supervisor PhDr. Jarmila Fictumová for her ideas, inspiring guidance and kind assistance.

Contents

1. Introduction

Audiovisual translation (and subtitling in particular) is a branch of translation studies, which has been neglected by translatology scholars until very recently. As a result of this marginalization, no subtitler actually knew how exactly the job should be done. This situation has been improving in recent years owing particularly to the European Association for Studies in Screen Translation. Academic research has started in this field and several works concerning audiovisual translation have been published. The aim of this work is to contribute to the exploration of this interesting field of study.

Its first part deals with audiovisual translation as such since this kind of translation is characterized by certain particularities. In case of subtitling it is especially the lack of space and time. The translation is influenced by confined space available for the subtitle text, the time available for and between subtitle exposures, the timing of subtitle insertion and removal and last but not least the display and format of the subtitles. Besides, the subtitler has to take into account the average reading speed of the viewers.

As for the dubbing, its main aim is to seem natural and authentic. The performed translation must match the lip movements of the speaker on the screen as closely as possible, especially when the actor is shown in a close-up. There are usually more people cooperating, one of them making a raw translation and another one rewriting it in order to match it with the lip movements of the person seen on the screen.

All these factors influence the translation and make it very different from a literary translation.

The second part of the thesis deals with a particular film - Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. First of all, the translation of the book is examined with emphasis being laid on potential translation problems and their solutions in the Czech translation. In order to be able to treat the translation differences between a film and a book on which it is based, it is also necessary to know the differences between the book and the film themselves. Thus, various kinds of changes (particularly elision which is almost mandatory in all films based on novels) are treated in a separate chapter.

There are two basic aims of the thesis. The first one is to find out what the difference is between the subtitled versions and the dubbed version as far as content and means of expression are concerned and to find out whether it corresponds to the theoretical principles mentioned in the first part of the work.

The second aim is to find out whether the solution to the potential translation problems is the same in the book and in the film and whether the audiovisual translations are inspired by their literary counterpart in cases when the film script and book dialogues are the same.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is an ideal choice for such a study. It is based on a novel, which has become well known all over the world and has been translated into many languages. Moreover, there are many die-hard fans that know the book almost by heart and are capable of noting almost any minor discrepancy in the translation of the film.

2. Audiovisual Translation

“Audiovisual translation refers to the translation of products in which the verbal dimension is supplemented by elements in other media” (Diaz-Cintas, http://www.literarytranslation.com/workshops/almodovar).

Diaz-Cintas suggests three possibilities: 1) the message is conveyed only auditorily as, for example, in songs and radio programmes, or 2) the only channel used is the visual one: comic strips, published advertisements, etc. or 3) both auditory and visual channels convey the message as in products such as films, CD-ROMs or documentaries. Because of the mix of different communication systems such as images, sound (music, noise) and the verbal component (oral production, written text), the translation of audiovisual materials is characterised by particular limitations. These make audiovisual translation very different from literary translation.

2. 2. Subdivision of audiovisual translation

Serban devides audiovisual translation into two groups: intralingual and interlingual.

1) Intralingual Audiovisual Translation

In this kind of translation the source language is the same as the target language. There are three main types of intralingual audiovisual translation: subtitling for the hearing impaired, audio description for the blind, live subtitling and surtitling for the opera and theatre.

2) Interlingual audiovisual translation

Television programmes and films are translated to foreign languages. The interlingual translation can be either visual which is known as subtitling, or aural, in which case the whole soundtrack is replaced (Luyken, 11).

2. 3. Intralingual Audiovisual Translation

2. 3. 1. Subtitling for the hard-of-hearing and the deaf

As stated by Ivarsson and Carroll, subtitles for the hard-of-hearing and the deaf are intended especially for people with hearing problems although other people can benefit from them as well. They are prepared specifically for this target group and are transmitted via teletext (129 - 133).

Ivarsson and Carroll also maintain that the subtitles for the hearing impaired differ from translated subtitles mainly in that they adhere to slightly different norms for reading speed and syntax and include additional information (e.g. indication of who is saying what, usually by assigning a special colour of subtitles to each of the main characters).

2. 3. 2. Audio description for the blind

Ivarsson and Carroll also speak about audio description for the blind. This kind of translation is an additional narrative that fits between the original dialogue and describes everything that is seen in the film or on the stage. It includes descriptions of e.g. actions, facial expressions, clothing and scenery and helps the blind to understand the plot of the story. As far as TV, video and DVD are concerned, the description has to be carefully balanced with the original soundtrack. As for the theatre, there are usually several people working as describers, as the task would be too demanding for one person.

2. 3. 3. Live Subtitling (e.g. news broadcasts)

Live subtitling might be sometimes used during news broadcasts. The main problem is that as writing at the same speed as normal speech is practically impossible with a standard keyboard, even with highly developed abbreviation programmes, special “chord keyboards” have to be used. These allow the typist to press two or more keys at the same time, i.e. to write syllables and even whole words instead of single letters. Together with special programmes, which are capable of correcting errors, it is possible to obtain the subtitles in a reasonable time limit (Ivarsson and Carroll, 133).

2. 3. 4. Surtitling for the opera and the theatre

Ivarsson and Carroll also deal with surtitles or supertitles. These are often used during musical performances, especially the opera. In general, they are the translated or transcribed lyrics projected above the scene. They may be used either to translate the meaning of the lyrics to the audience's language, or to transcribe lyrics that may be difficult to understand in the sung form. They are usually displayed using a supertitling machine.

Surtitling for theatre follows the same principles as subtitling for television. The only exception is the speed of the surtitles. As the audience have to move their gaze a great distance from the actors to the display above the stage, the surtitles have to be even slower than subtitles in a film (Ivarsson and Carroll, 19 - 20).

2.4. Interlingual audiovisual translation

The aim of interlingual translation is to make the audiovisual production (films, TV programmes etc.) comprehensible for audiences who cannot understand the language in which it was made, and thus improve the possibility of exporting it abroad.

Interlingual translation, designated for all cinema, television or video, can be divided into two groups: 1) revoicing, which consists of lip-sync dubbing, voice-overs and narration and 2) subtitling.

Luyken describes revoicing as “the replacement of a programme's voice track by a version, either of the same or new dialogue, translated into another language or dialect. The visual appearance of the programme remains unaltered from the original, but is usually edited so as to accommodate optimum lip-synchronisation” (39). Subtitles are described by the same author as “mostly condensed translations of original dialogue (or on-screen text) which appear as lines of text usually positioned towards the foot of the screen. The subtitles appear and disappear in time with the corresponding portion of original dialogue or text. Some subtitles are `reduced' or they can be bilingual” (39).

Although these two types of production of audiovisual translation are obviously very different, they have one major feature in common: they interfuse linguistics, science, technology, art and aesthetics. All these have to be mixed harmoniously enough so as the final result (subtitles or dubbing) is comprehensible and comfortable as much as possible for the viewer. Any inconvenience can annoy the audience and thus negatively affect the final perception of the whole audiovisual product by the target language viewers.

2. 4. 1 Interlingual Audiovisual Translation in the Past

2.4.1.1. Early History

Although all the production in the early years of film industry was silent, there was, according to Ivarsson and Carroll, very strong intention to convey to the viewers the dialogue, which is spoken by actors on the screen. This was solved by intertitles - a predecessor of today's subtitles. The intertitles were short texts written on a paper and inserted between sequences of a film. Later on they started to be called subtitles. Translating such a dialogue was very easy. Intertitles or subtitles in the original language were removed and after the translation they were placed again into the film. But there existed even easier ways. Sometimes a speaker translated the text simultaneously in the cinema during projection (9).

But after the invention of sound film in late 1920s, a new serious problem appeared as far as translation of the dialogue is concerned. According to Kautský, the first way of dealing with this problem was multilingual filming. This means that one film was shot several times, successively in English, German, Italian and French. The scenario of such a film was translated into these languages and every scene had to be shot four times on the same set. When English actors have finished, Kautský claims, they were replaced by Germans, who were then replaced by Italians etc. But it is obvious that this way of film internationalisation had to be abandoned very soon. Not only was it extremely expensive, but it was also very time-consuming (the shooting itself as well as the journey of European actors to the United States). Furthermore, people who did not speak any of these four languages did not understand the film anyway. That is why new ways of film translation had to be found.

2.4.1.2. History of Subtitling

Subtitles directly followed intertitles. As maintained by Ivarsson, the main difference was that they were not inserted between film sequences, but directly into the picture. The process was rather complicated and the results were very poor. Scientists in several European countries (mainly Hungary, France and Scandinavian countries) tried to improve the way of inserting subtitles on the distribution copies of the film. Success came in 1933 when chemical subtitling was invented in Hungary and Sweden (although the first subtitled film ever was shown in Copenhagen as early as 1929). Other techniques of transferring the translated subtitles to film followed (mechanical and thermal, photochemical, optical, laser) (7).

Ivarsson also claims that an important landmark in the history of subtitling was its emergence on TV. When television broadcasting started to operate, it was only a matter of time when foreign cinema films would be shown in this new medium. That moment came in August 1938 when Arthur Robinson's Der Student von Prag was presented on BBC. However, the showing itself was rather disappointing. It was found immediately, that subtitles made for the cinema are not convenient enough for television. As the picture on a TV set has a narrower contrast range than that on a cinema screen, the subtitles were almost illegible. Furthermore, the ability of the audience to read subtitles on a TV screen is much slower than on a cinema screen. It thus started to be necessary to produce subtitles for TV, different from those designated for the cinema (7 - 8).

Later stages of sutbtitling history are described by Ivarsson and Carroll. As for the making of subtitles, it was done by several people in separate work processes. The spotting was done by a technician who usually had no knowledge of the source language. He just marked the in times and out times of every utterance into a dialogue list. Afterwards, these times were converted to a specific number of characters. The translator then had to fit his translation into this number of characters, usually without ever having seen the film. Finally, another technician had the job of typing the subtitles onto the type plates or later on, onto the computer disks from which they were transferred to the film. The final result was very often full of errors. A turning point came in the 1980s. Advances in computer technology and new subtitling programmes allowed translators to carry out the whole process of subtitling (timing, translation and revision) on their own. They had the film on a videocassette and thus only needed a video recorder connected to their personal computer. Even that is now history, as films are now stored on DVDs which can be inserted directly into the computer.

2.4.1.3. History of Dubbing

The history of dubbing is treated in detail by Kautský. His findings can be summarized as follows.

The evolution of dubbing is different from the one of subtitling in that it varies from one country to another. Its origins are in the United States, but it has been used mainly in Europe, where it first appeared in 1936.

Kautský claims that first attempts at dubbing date back to the 1930s. The quality was very poor and it was rejected. At the beginning, it was usually one person (often the translator himself) who dubbed all the characters of a film. A typical example of such a dubbing is H.C. Raymakery's “Na stopě”, which was translated, spoken, edited and mixed by one person. This was also the first film ever dubbed in Czechoslovakia (1933). Later, several people started to perform postsynchronisation. But the quality did not improve much. The dialogues sounded unnatural, the text was badly synchronised, the performance of the actors was usually rather poor and as a whole it was acoustically very badly done. All these facts were very irritating for the spectators. But there was another problem, which contributed to the unpopularity of early dubbing in Czechoslovakia: the audience simply could not get used to the fact that people in the United States or France speak Czech instead of English or French. This was, according to Kautský, considered very funny and uncomfortable.

As stated by Kautský, the evolution of dubbing was strongly contributed to by television. It was decided that all films in Czechoslovak television would be dubbed. The main reason was the supposition that viewers should feel as much at ease in front of the TV as possible. If the films were subtitled, they would have to concentrate much more than when they are dubbed. Another reason was the unsuitability of cinema subtitles for television.

In the early days of TV dubbing, as claimed by Kautský, only a few actors were involved. They simply read the subtitles at the same time when the subtitles were shown on the screen. One actor dubbed several film characters. Later on, an unsubtitled version of the film was broadcasted, but the performance of the dubbers was not much better.

The next evolution stage of dubbing was “live dubbing”. In this process the dialogue was translated specifically for this purpose and the number of dubbing actors was the same as the number of characters in the film. But the main inconvenience was the fact that it was broadcasted live, which means that actors were performing only once without any possibility of correction or change. They successively took their turns on one chair using one pair of earphones. All the noise they made (such as coughing, moving the chair, putting the earphones on and off, steps) was heard in the dubbing. The quality of the final product was obviously very low. It was only in 1964 when loop dubbing started. Its quality increased progressively and Czech dubbing soon became one of the best in Europe. In the loop system the whole film is divided into several parts or loops, all actors are present and dub the whole loop so many times until the director is satisfied. This method ensures high quality of the dubbing, but is very time-consuming.

As stated by Bajerová, Škovrová and Tomíček, full opening of the market for foreign films, the possibility of watching films on video and new TV channels in the 1990s caused a sudden rise in the demand for dubbing. New dubbing studios appeared, especially in Prague. As everything had to be done as fast as possible, the quality of dubbing has dropped. This situation seems to be improving in the last few years as only the best of these studios have survived and as the expertise of people doing this job has improved (http://www.dabing.info/historie.html).

Besides, a new method appeared in the 1990s. It was the unilinear dubbing - there is always only one actor present in the studio who dubs his character continuously from the beginning to the end of the film. If the director is dissatisfied, they only have to redo only the particular part in which they made a mistake. As the unilinear dubbing is faster and cheaper than the loop dubbing, it is now preferred by an overwhelming majority of dubbing studios (Bajerová, Škvorová, Tomíček, http://www.dabing.info/historie.html).

2. 4. 2. Interlingual Audiovisual Translation at Present

2. 4. 2. 1. Situation in Europe

Luyken divides European countries into several groups according to their attitude towards translating audiovisual production. There are 1) dubbing countries, 2) subtitling countries 3) countries using both subtitling and dubbing, and 4) countries using other types of audiovisual translation (mainly voice-over) (31 - 39).

1. Dubbing countries are those that use lip-synchronisation both at cinema and television. They are Germany (together with Austria), France, Italy and Spain. Only in such countries the market is large enough so that the expensive production of dubbing can be profitable. Spain can be here considered as an exception, Luyken claims, since the main reason why dubbing started to be used in this country was a big proportion of illiterate population.

2. Subtitling countries are, on the other hand, those which subtitle everything, being it for the cinema or television. They are small Western European countries where foreign-language programme has a high share of total programme output and where the market is not big enough to sustain dubbing. Typical examples of such countries are the Netherlands, Portugal or Scandinavian countries. The only case in which subtitling countries use dubbing are films and TV programmes for children who are not able to read the subtitles.

3. The third group is formed by Central European countries (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary) using both subtitling and dubbing, the former for cinema, the latter for television broadcast. Sometimes subtitled programmes appear on TV as well, especially those meant for particular viewers.

4. The fourth group is the one of rather poor Central and Eastern European countries using voice-over. Especially Poland is well-known for this practice, but there are others (e.g. Latvia, Lithuania or Estonia).

2. 4. 2. 2. Subtitling vs. Dubbing

Both these main techniques of audiovisual translation have their pros and cons and it is important to stress that neither of them is better than the other in a general way. Advocates of subtitling point out that it is much cheaper than dubbing, it keeps the original dialogue and that the viewer can hear the original actor's voice (unlike dubbing where it is lost). Another important reason is the fact that films with subtitles promote learning of foreign languages as the audience can hear the foreign language and at the same time reads the translation. According to many, this might contribute to the fact that the majority of inhabitants of the dubbing countries are much worse at learning foreign languages (English in particular) than inhabitants of the subtitling countries.

But, on the other hand, subtitling also has substantial disadvantages. Not only is the reduction of original information much higher than in the case of dubbing, but subtitles also distract the viewers, which means that the audience has to perceive the written text together with the image and that can be very inconvenient. Furthermore, the viewer cannot follow the story whenever he is distracted from watching. These are only some pros and cons of subtitling and dubbing. As far as voice-over is concerned, there is only one advantage: low cost. This technique thus cannot be considered as equipollent to the ones of subtitling and dubbing.

As it is impossible to state which of these practices (subtitling and dubbing) is better, it seems that there are two things that influence the decision whether a certain programme will be subtitled or dubbed: 1) economic reasons and 2) audience expectations and wishes (Diaz-Cintas, http://www.literarytranslation.com/workshops/almodovar/).

2. 4. 2. 3. Costs of Various Audiovisual Translation Types

According to Luyken, the costs can be divided into two groups: investment costs for equipment (capital costs) and labour costs influenced by time (operational costs) (90).

He states that the average cost of one hour of television programme subtitling in Europe (in 1991) is € 740. Lip-synch dubbing of the same one hour costs on average € 11,000 and voice-over for the same period of time can be produced for about € 1,100. But it is important to stress that these are only average amounts as they vary significantly from one country to another (from € 275 to € 1,957 for subtitling and from € 3,460 to € 24,000 for dubbing) (90 - 108).

It is thus observed that dubbing is approximately 15 times more expensive than subtitling. There are two main explanations of this fact: it takes much more time to dub a film than to subtitle it and there are much more people needed. That increases financial demands enormously. On the other hand, the capital and equipment costs of subtitling and dubbing are almost the same (around € 130,000) (Luyken, 105).

It is important to stress in this context that the cost of both subtitling and dubbing is closely connected to its quality. If the whole process is done faster and fewer people are engaged (especially in the case of dubbing), then the costs can be significantly reduced. Nevertheless, this is always at the expense of the quality of the overall product.

2. 4. 2. 4. Various Types of Audiovisual Translation as perceived by the audience

As far as preferences of the audience are concerned, it is important to note that they are always primarily determined by audiovisual practices they are used to (Luyken, 185).

Almost all viewers in a subtitling country such as the Netherlands will always opt for subtitles, while those in the dubbing countries expect everything to be dubbed. In a similar way, the majority of the audience in the Czech Republic expect that almost all TV programmes will be dubbed, but cinemagoers are unpleasantly surprised if a foreign film is dubbed (except for some particular cases, e.g. films for children).

But, on the other hand, there are some other factors influencing attitudes of viewers to both methods. They are age, education and socio-economic standard.

“The younger, the better educated and the more affluent viewers

are more likely to claim across Europe to prefer subtitled versions,

or `viewing the original', rather than dubbed adaptations. This is

partly because higher multilingualism and familiarity with reading

in this particular target group make subtitled programmes easier

for them to comprehend and enjoy” (Luyken, 186).

2. 4. 2. 5. Globalisation of Audiovisual Translation

Efforts to reduce costs and duration of the translation process led to new ways of doing the job of audiovisual translator. This concerns particularly DVD subtitling of Hollywood films. Nowadays, they are almost all translated in London into about 40 languages and only then distributed to the target countries. The majority of these multilingual subtitling companies in London originally produced only closed captions in English for British television programmes and commercials. After several fusions and takeovers, they moved to the production of multilingual subtitles and are now key providers of DVD subtitles of Hollywood films. Nonetheless, their origins in closed captioning for the hard of hearing are still reflected in their style of timing subtitles (Carroll, http://fr46.uni-saarland.de/atrc/images/artikel_carroll.pdf).

Carroll claims that formerly these companies provided only so-called templates (also known as master list or “Genesis” file). Such templates were files containing English subtitles with all in and out times. They were sent by e-mail to various countries where local translators translated them into their languages. The translators also usually worked with a VHS cassette, which was shipped to them. According to Carroll, the templates were useful especially in the case of bonus material on the DVD such as documents about shooting the film. As the original language script for these bonuses is usually not available (unlike the main film) and they are usually very badly comprehensible, templates helped the subtitler in the target country to manage the translation.

The main disadvantage was that the translators usually were not able to change the spotting and their work thus resembled more the localisation of texts rather than subtitling as such. This led the subtitling companies to a new strategy: employing foreign translators directly in London. Such a strategy had also other positive effects: privacy risks were reduced and no time had to be spent by shipping the cassettes (Carroll, http://fr46.uni-saarland.de/atrc/images/artikel_carroll.pdf).

2. 4. 2. 6. The Job of Audiovisual Translator

There is a substantial difference between a subtitler and a dubbing translator. The subtitlers do a complex job - spotting, translation and subtitle composition. They can be either permanent staff of subtitling studios or TV stations or they can be free-lancers. These free-lancers are, however, usually used on a more or less regular basis. On the other hand, the dubbing translator only has to do a rough translation of the dialogue. He usually translates the script word by word, sometimes suggesting various possibilities of translation and than passes it on to the dubbing writers (or adaptors) who then compose a dubbing dialogue which is synchronous with the original one.

Luyken claims that the actual translation expenditure in lip-sync dubbing is the single smallest item of the entire cost involved, representing between 13 and 20% of a total dubbing budget. However, he admits that the majority from this share goes to the pocket of the adaptor and the translator usually only gets very little. There are even cases when he receives only 1.5% of the dubbing budget. This is, according to Luyken, the direct result of the fact that dubbing companies are looking for ways to cut costs. The first victims are then the translators, because there are many of them and their job is not the final product. Translators thus earn between € 80 and 145 per working day which translates, on the assumption of full-year employment, to a gross salary equivalent of some € 26 500 pa. On the other hand, the gross annual income of a subtitler in Western Europe is estimated at some € 34 000 per year (approximately € 170 per working day) (90 - 108).

2. 4. 2. 7. Fake Subtitles

Fake subtitles are those which can be found on the internet. They are produced by movie fans and usually serve to those who have a fake copy of the film. The films themselves can be downloaded from peer to peer networks. Users can download whatever they want for free, in return they only have to share programmes, films, music etc. that they have on their own disks. Czech fake subtitles can be found for instance on www.titulky.com or www.subtitles.cz. The quality of such subtitles varies widely as they are usually produced by people who not only have no knowledge in translatology and subtitling theory, but even their knowledge of English is sometimes very poor.

The fake subtitles are usually translated from time-coded dialogue lists with no or little attention being paid to the rules and constraints described in this work. Whatever is the original language of the film, almost all Czech fake subtitles are translated from English which serves as a pivot language. Thus, as the translation into English is usually very bad and then the translation from English into Czech is even worse, the final result is crappy. Incorrect spelling and syntax errors occur very often.

3. Differences between Literary and Audiovisual Translations

Luyken deals with the difference between literary and audiovisual translations in his chapter on semiotics of audiovisual language transfer (153 - 165). He comes to the conclusion that subtitling and dubbing certainly are a form of translation. However, there are some special features that make them different from the translation of a written text.

When translating a book, the text is transferred from one language to another. In this case the new work completely replaces the original and the two are completely independent. On the other hand, the message of a film is expressed by various elements such as image, acting, sound or language. And obviously only some of these are replaced. When a film is dubbed, the visual component stays completely the same, only the auditory component is changed. And it is even more interesting in the case of subtitling, as both visual and auditory components remain, the actual translation only being added to the original work. Thus, the transferred form of one element of a work has to `coexist' with other elements of the same work. Those remain in the original form (Luyken, 153).

The particularity of audiovisual translation also lies in reduced scope of the translator. If there is something which has to be explained in the literary translation, the translator can use a footnote or he can include the explanation directly into the text. This is impossible in a film.

A big problem arises when there is a difference between the average word length of the source and target languages. Such an example is English and Czech. There are many short words or phrases in English the translation of which is much longer in Czech. (“I think so” - “Myslím, že ano”; “I did it” - “udělal jsem to”, or sometimes even “já jsem to udělal”). This leads to a necessary condensation of the translated text which has to be done by the translator.

Thus, according to Luyken, audiovisual translation

“…adds information to that contained in the original text and leaves

some out. It can never attempt to transfer every bit of information from

one language into the other. It is at one and the same time both more

and less than conventional translation. Less, because it does not translate

everything. More, because the audiovisual Translator/Writer has to make

editorial decisions all the time about omissions or condensation of the

original text, and about new information that has to be inserted into it.

This all has profound implications for the programme which is subject

to any form of Language Transfer” (154).

These were some particular features shared by both subtitling and dubbing. Needless to say, there are many others, which are specific only for subtitling or only for dubbing. These will be treated in detail in the following chapters.

3. 1. Subtitling

3. 1. 1. The Process of Subtitling

As stated by Ivarsson and Carroll, the subtitler usually works with a script or dialogue list, which are provided to him in the source language. In the best case he obtains a post-production script which includes the whole dialogue (even the parts which are very badly audible). If he is lucky enough, he also has a glossary where dialect words, slang, insider jokes etc. are explained. But it is important that every such dialogue list is checked. There are sometimes mistakes and discrepancies between this list and the actual film dialogue. It is always important to fit the subtitles to what is really being said (79 - 80).

According to the same authors, when the film is supposed to be subtitled into many language versions, a master list is available. This contains the in and out times, prepared by a technician in the country of origin. In addition, there is a transcription of the source language dialogue, but these are abridged. The subtitler's job is then just to transform it into his language. He has to observe the previous spotting as well as the subtitle length. This can be very inconvenient as the translator is not able to adjust is to the needs of his language (54 - 57).

In case the subtitler has not got the master list, he must do the spotting himself. He uses specialised software such as Poliscript which facilitates the job significantly. All subtitling systems nowadays use time codes. Such a time code “provides an 8-digit address for every frame of a videotape (or every image of a film)” (Ivarsson and Carroll, 141). In the past, when a video recorder was used for subtitling, this was recorded on the tape and when needed, it could be displayed. But in new subtitling programmes it is not necessary to use the VHS any more, the films are imported directly into the computer and are converted into an mpeg file. In such programmes the time codes are shown permanently.

The time code shows “hours:minutes:seconds.frames” like e.g. 01:28:15.09. There are colons between hours, minutes and seconds, but between seconds and fames there is a dot. “The number of frames per second depends on the standard: 24 frames a second for film, 25 frames a second for PAL or SECAM video and some films, and 30 frames a second for NTSC video” (Ivarsson and Carrol, 141).

With the assistance of the time codes, the subtitler can spot the film and then prepare the subtitles. During the whole process, however, he has to bear in mind certain rules which should be observed, as stated by Ivarsson and Carroll:

Position on the Screen

Subtitles should be placed at the bottom of the screen in order not to interrupt the image action. The only case when the subtitle can change its position is the one when something important is shown in the part of the screen where subtitles are inserted. These can be for example captions. The subtitles can then move either above these captions or even to the top of the screen.

Number of Lines

There can be two lines at a maximum, otherwise the subtitles would cover too much of the screen, which would be very disturbing. Furthermore, three lines would be difficult to read in the short time available. If there is only one line displayed, it can be positioned either on the upper or lower line. The former is easier for the viewer to read as he is used to the beginning of the subtitle. The latter, on the other hand, interferes much less to the background image.

Text Positioning

The subtitles can be either centred or they can appear at the left margin of the screen. In Western Europe, centred subtitles are used in the cinema while left-justified subtitles are used in the television. In the Czech Republic and some other countries, however, even the TV usually displays centred subtitles. This seems to be “due to unconscious adoption of the principle applying in the cinema, or possibly to the fact that optical film stock was used for the subtitles” (Ivarsson and Carroll, 49).

Number of Characters per Line

The majority of sources state that there should be maximally 35 - 40 characters in each line. If there were more, the characters would have to be too small and it may be difficult for the audience to read. On the other hand, if there were less, the text reduction and omissions would be unbearable.

Typeface and Distribution

According to Ivarsson and Carroll, it is advisable to use typefaces with no serifs such as Arial as their legibility is better than that of typefaces with serifs such as Times New Roman. As for the distribution, proportional types are preferable to monospace ones as the former save space (42).

3. 1. 2. Duration of a Subtitle

While spotting, it is essential to bear in mind the fact that “subtitles which remain on the screen long enough to be read more than once are just as irritating as subtitles that disappear before the audience has had time to finish reading them” (Ivarsson and Carroll, 67). That is why rules concerning the maximum and minimum duration of one subtitle have been introduced. Karamitroglou states that that the average reading speed of subtitles is 150 - 180 words per minute, which is 2.5 - 3 words per second. As a full two-line subtitle contains about 14 - 16 words, it should be projected for some 5.5 minutes. After the addition of the time necessary for the eye to notice that a subtitle has appeared at the bottom of the screen, we get to the final result - 6 seconds. Thus, a full two-line subtitle should remain on the screen for 6 seconds, but at the same time it should not exceed this time, because viewers would immediately start to reread it (Karamitroglou, http://accurapid.com/journal/04stndrd.htm).

As for a single-line subtitle, Karamitroglou argues that the optimum time for which it should remain on the screen is about 3.5 seconds. The half second is added because it has been proven that viewers tend to read two-line subtitles a little bit faster than separate one-line subtitles. These 3.5 seconds are again not only minimum time, but also maximum time.

Karamitroglou also introduces a rule for the minimum time of a single-word subtitle, however short or simple this word may be. He fixes this time at 1.5 seconds. If it disappeared sooner, the viewer's eye would not be able to recognise it, and it would seem just like an irritating flash.

If there are two consecutive subtitles, Karamitroglou maintains, there has to be at least a ¼ second gap between them. This is necessary for the eye to notice that there has been a change in the subtitles. If this break was not maintained, the viewer would not be able to distinguish the two different subtitles and would think it is still the previous one, especially if the two are approximately of the same length.

All these are of course recommendations rather than hard and fast rules and the times can vary according to the audience it is designated to (as the reading speed of the elderly is certainly lower than that of teenagers). Nevertheless, the more these rules are observed, the higher the quality of the subtitles.

Likewise, it is important to stick to the speed consistency. As the viewers very quickly get used to the reading rhythm, it should stay the same during the whole film and there should not be any deviations such as sudden acceleration or deceleration of the subtitles (Ivarsson and Carroll, 69).

3. 1. 3. Synchronisation

As stated by Ivarsson and Carroll, in the early days the basic principle was to synchronise perfectly the subtitles with the speech. The subtitle appeared exactly at the same moment when the utterance started and disappeared the moment it ended. But the attitude soon changed and this practice has been abandoned (72).

The leading-in time should stick to the beginning of the utterance. Nevertheless, Karamitroglou argues that it is better to make a delay of ¼ of a second, as this is approximately the time the brain needs to “process the advent of spoken linguistic material and guide the eye towards the bottom of the screen anticipating the subtitle” (Karamitroglou, http://accurapid.com/journal/04stndrd.htm).

On the other hand, according to Karamitroglou, the lagging-out time does not have to stick so closely to the end of the utterance and the subtitle can remain on the screen even after the utterance has been pronounced. Nevertheless, he argues that this should not exceed 2 seconds, because if it remains longer, the viewer has the impression that the subtitles do not correspond exactly to what is being said.

As for the synchronisation with camera takes and cuts, Karamitroglou claims that the subtitles should observe the major ones which signify thematic change and thus the subtitles should disappear before them. In case the cut is not particularly significant and does not mean any substantial change, the subtitle can remain on the screen.

3. 1. 4. Punctuation

Punctuation in subtitles is usually the same as in any other written language form. There are, however, some cases, stated e.g. by Ivarsson and Carroll, when particular rules are applied for subtitles in order to facilitate their reading to the audience. These rules have to be consistent and logic, otherwise they could confuse the viewers rather than help them to understand the film translation.

Two punctuation marks essential for subtitling seem to be hyphens and suspension dots. These have to follow particular rules.

According to Ivarsson and Carroll, hyphens are used at the beginning of subtitles translating dialogue. As this is considered to be their main role in subtitling, all other usage of hyphens should be avoided (111):

-What happened?

-He had a car accident.

However, the same authors stress that it is important not to mix hyphens with dashes, which are slightly longer and have a different meaning. They are used in subtitling for distinguishing between sentences uttered by a single person which are addressed to different people:

Did you prepare the meal? - You can

tell us what you wanted to, Frank.

Suspension dots are also treated in detail by Ivarsson and Carroll. If they are used without spaces in the middle of a sentence, it means that the character is hesitating (113 - 114):

He said…that he doesn't love her any more?

On the other hand, if a space follows, they mean the character was interrupted:

He said… Yes, that he doesn't love her.

It is necessary to repeat the suspension dots if they coincide with a subtitle break:

It is necessary…

…that we pay a visit to the parents

and ask if they don't need anything.

As for other punctuation, the quotation marks, exclamation and question marks and commas usually observe the same rules as in any other written text, while underlying, semicolons and parentheses should be completely avoided (Ivarsson and Carroll, 114 - 116).

3. 1. 5. Other Conventions

There are certain other rules which effect the subtitles. Although these may vary in different countries, there is a tendency to bring them into line. These include the use of upper case and italics as well as some other particularities (subtitling of songs or letters).

According to Ivarsson and Carroll, upper case can be used in the subtitles to translate shouting or exclamations which are very loud (116):

CATCH HIM !

The same authors also state that the use of italics is quite common in subtitling. They usually signify 1) speech which is not uttered by the character on screen - this can be for example a voice from telephone, radio or TV, 2) interior monologue and dream scenes, 3) narrator's voice, 4) songs, and 5) everything which would be written in italics in a normal text such as words in a foreign language or titles and names (Ivarsson and Carroll, 118).

A specific case are songs. If the lyrics are translated, Ivarsson and Carroll argue, it is advisible to put them down in italics. However, these authors stress that not every song in a film needs to be translated. It only has to be subtitled if it is important for the story or there is another serious reason. It is not necessary that the song translation rhymes, nevertheless it should stick to the rhythm of the song so that it is easy to read while listening to the original. Sometimes it is enough to subtitle only the beginning of the song in order that the viewer has some idea what it is about (Ivarsson and Carroll, 120 - 122).

Very interesting is the subtitling of letters. It happens very often that a letter is read aloud in a film. The way this is subtitled differs according to various factors. Ivarsson and Carroll state six possibilities (119):

1) The writer of the letter thinks to himself while writing the text = interior monologue -

• italics

2) The writer thinks aloud while writing the text = audible speech - normal style

3) The writer reads the letter aloud after writing it = quotation - normal style + quotation

marks

4) The writer's voice is heard while the addressee is reading it - italics

5) The recipient reads the letter aloud - normal style + quotation marks

6) The voice of the recipient is heard while he reads the letter without moving his lips

= interior monologue - italics + quotation marks

There are, of course, other things which might cause some problems. These are for example currency, units of measurement, abbreviations or proper names and brand names. It is not necessary, however, to treat these here in detail, as the film translation of these usually observe exactly the same rules as the literary translation. The same applies for strong language used in a film.

3. 1. 6. Translation and adaptation of the subtitles

It is evident that if the above mentioned rules and time constraints are to be observed, the subtitles have to be considerably shortened in comparison to the original dialogue. It is the subtitler's job to decide what will be kept and what will be omitted.

According to Ivarsson and Carroll, the subtitler sometimes has to decide between omission and paraphrase. Omission means that a whole part of the dialogue is left out, paraphrase, on the other hand, stands for modification of the dialogue in order to make it shorter. Out of these two, Ivarsson and Carroll argue, the former is more convenient as it seems to be less annoying for those who understand the original. Thus, the sentence “Well, I just want to tell you that yesterday Jane came to our room and told us that she has heard that everybody will have to sit the exam again some time in September.” should be subtitled in this way:

Yesterday Jane told us

that everybody will have to sit the exam again.

.

Nevertheless, subtitlers usually take advantage of both these methods and use them simultaneously (Ivarsson and Carroll, 87).

3. 1. 6. 1. Omission

There are certain words and expressions which can be omitted without lowering the quality of the translation. As stated by Karamitroglou, these include particularly two groups:

1) Padding expressions such as “you know”, “well” etc. can be omitted as they usually do not contribute to the semantic meaning of the utterance.

2) Words that are presumably known to the target language audience and are pronounced separately do not have to be necessarily subtitled. Such words are for example “yes”, “no”, “sorry”, “please”, “thanks” or “ok”. Similarly, according to Karamitroglou, names of the characters can be omitted if they are called out. But on the other hand, if these expressions are included in a larger context, they always have to be subtitled.

3. 1. 6. 2. Use of simple vocabulary

Ivarsson and Carroll claim that, if possible, common and simple words should be preferred to unusual ones. When the subtitler has the possibility of choosing between several words with the same or similar meaning, he should always bear in mind that the more common and simple the word, the faster it is read by the viewer. The only exception from this rule is, of course, the case when florid language plays a vital part either in the whole film or in the speech of a certain character (Ivarsson and Carroll, 89).

3. 1. 6. 3. Simple syntax

Syntactic structures should also be simplified as much as possible. There are very often cases, when reduction of a complex sentence is possible without changing the meaning. Karamitroglou states seven such particular cases:

1. Active for passive constructions:

“It is believed by many people.” => “Many people believe.”

2. Positive for negative expressions:

“We went to a place we hadn't been before.” => “We went to a new place.”

3. Temporal prepositional phrases for temporal subordinate clauses:

“I'll study when I finish watching this movie.” => “I'll study after this movie.”

4. Modified nouns for the referring relative clauses:

“What I'd like is a cup of coffee.” => “I'd like a cup of coffee.”

5. Gapping for double verb insertion:

“John would like to work in Germany and Bill would like to work in France.” => “John would like to work in Germany and Bill in France.”

6. Straightforward question sentences for indicative pragmatic requests:

“I would like to know if you are coming.” => “Are you coming?”

7. Straightforward imperative sentences for indicative pragmatic requests:

“I would like you to give me my keys back.” => “Give me my keys back.”

3. 1. 7. Subtitles Editing

As one line usually is not enough, the translator often has to split the subtitle into two lines. This has to be done very carefully and the breaks should not be in contradiction with the sense of what is being said - each line should be logically and grammatically compact. Moreover, according to Ivarsson and Carroll, one subtitle should correspond to one phrase or sentence or should be composed of several short phrases or sentences. On the other hand, Ivarsson and Carroll argue, one long sentence spreading across several subtitles should be avoided (93 - 96).

When the dialogue is too fast, two line subtitles are used. Each line then corresponds to what is being said by one character. The beginning of such a subtitle is always hyphenated and if it is a question and an answer, the former should always be on the top line and the latter on the second line. The only exception is the case when the answer cannot appear in the subtitle before it is actually uttered (Ivarsson and Carroll, 94).

-Have you seen that film? But: -I couldn't believe what he did. .

-Yes, I have. -What did he do?

-He killed her.

3. 1. 7. 1. Subtitling of written texts

Not only speech, but also written texts which appear in the production and are important for the understanding of the film, have to be translated. These are not only titles, but also captions (small texts indicating when and where the scene is taking place in feature films or names of speaking persons in documents) as well as various newspaper headlines, letters etc.

Translation of all these texts should “appear and disappear simultaneously with the original and they should correspond typographically as closely to the original as the subtitling system allows. Capitals should be written as capitals and handwritten texts as italics” (Ivarsson, 97).

3. 1. 8. ESIST

Although all the above mentioned rules are recommendations, their observing is essential for high quality of the translation. Subtitling suffers by the non-existence of hard and fast rules which all subtitle producers would be obliged to observe. An important effort to change this situation seems to be the Code of Good Subtitling Practice published by ESIST (European Association for Studies in Screen Translation) which can be found on this association's web pages (www.esist.org). The Code states some basic principles a high quality subtitler should always stick to.

3. 2. Revoicing

Revoicing is the second alternative as far as translation of a film or TV programme is concerned. It consists in replacement of the original voice track by a target language one. Luyken distinguishes between four subcategories of revoicing: 1) dubbing, 2) voice-over, 3) narration and 4) free commentary.

3. 2. 1. Voice-over, narration and free commentary

These are three names for approximately the same thing: a method when the new soundtrack is carried out by one single person or several people with no attempt to synchronise the lip movements with what is being said. The original sound is either not heard at all or is audible at a very low level. Sometimes at the beginning and at the end of a speech the original is allowed to be heard. The difference between voice-over and narration is only very slight: the voice-over refers usually to a single monologue while narration is a translation of the whole programme. Free commentary differs from the former two in that it is not a faithful translation of the original (Luyken, 80 - 84).

According to Luyken, all these methods are quite simple and cheap. They are used mainly in documentaries and other non-feature programmes. Nevertheless, in some European countries such as Poland, it is used in TV for all production including feature films and series.

3. 2. 2. Dubbing

Lip-synchronised dubbing is the most common type of revoicing. It is performed by professional actors, usually each of them dubbing one character and its aim is to have the same effect on the target language audience as the original has on the source language audience.

One of the main differences between dubbing and subtitling is the fact that several people participate in the preparation of dubbing, while almost the whole process of subtitling is nowadays done by only one person.

Individual steps involved in the whole process of dubbing are treated by Luyken (73 - 79). After registration and verification of a master and dialogue list a time-coded working copy is produced and spotted. Then a raw translation is made which serves as a basis for the adaptation. At the same time casting is carried out. Next step is the recording itself. After that, the final product is mixed, edited and approved and thus prepared for transmission. In the case of a one hour programme all this takes from a few working days to a maximum of 3 - 4 weeks. Luyken claims that the actual duration is influenced my many factors, e.g. the difficulty of the original script or the quality which is demanded.

Steps which are decisive from the point of view of our topic are translation and adaptation.

3. 2. 2. 1. Dubbing Translation

As stated by Kautský, the dubbing translation is very different from the literary one. According to Kautký, the main distinction between them is the fact that the translation in dubbing is not the final product which is presented to the audience, but only a semifinished work which is then passed on to the adaptor who finishes it. He claims that the translator usually produces a word-by-word translation, sometimes even with several suggestions how something could be translated. It is essential, Kautský argues, that the adaptor knows the exact meaning so that he can capture the sense and transfer it into the target language in utterly different words which enable the synchronisation. Thus, the translation has to be very raw.

3. 2. 2. 2. Dubbing Adaptation

The adaptor then works with the raw translation. He does not necessarily have to speak the source language of the original, but if he does, it is undoubtedly a big advantage. Sometimes the translator and the adaptor are the same person.

Unlike subtitling, the final text does not have to be reduced in relation to the original, it has to have exactly the same length, start and end simultaneously with the original dialogue. Nevertheless, there are some other rules the adaptor has to observe.

3. 2. 2. 3. Synchronism

Paquin speaks about three types of synchronism: phonetic, semantic and dramatic.

According to Paquin, phonetic synchronism is simply matching the lip movements. “Phonetic synchrony is achieved when the lip movements of the screen actor match perfectly the sounds produced by the studio actor, not only words, but also breathing, grunts, screams, etc. Actors do that in the studio, even if they are invisible. They make gestures, and get into their roles” (Paquin, http://accurapid.com/journal/05dubb.htm).

According to Paquin, the adaptor has to stick to these basic rules if he wants to achieve good phonetic synchronism:

1. the number of syllables of the adaptation should correspond to the number of syllables of the original (this contributes to the credibility of the adaptation. On the other hand this rule is sometimes not observed and that does not necessarily mean that the dubbing is bad).

2. The main hard and fast rule is fitting the bilabials. If the protagonist pronounces “m”, “v”, “p”, “b”, “f” then the dubbing actor has to use one of these consonants too. They are well interchangeable and the audience is not able to tell them apart.

Thus, for example, Czech word “opice” can be used for the original “monkey” without any problem. Even the fact that there is a vowel preceding the bilabial in the Czech word “opice” does not pose any problem, as the audience is not able to notice its pronunciation. It is important to fit the bilabials at the beginning and the end of words. Here they are most noticeable.

Kautský argues that if the actor markedly closes his mouth at the end of his speech although the last sound he pronounced was a vowel, or, on the other hand, he markedly opens his mouth after a final bilabial, then the adaptor has to conform to what is seen and not what is heard in the original.

The best way of the adaptor to help himself if he cannot find appropriate equivalents in the target language is to change completely the word order. Then it is much easier to find a matching word.

Last but not least, it is important to say that phonetic synchronism should not, if possible, be achieved at the expense of appropriate syntax and lexis (e.g. one register should be stuck to and no inadequate provincialisms should be used).

According to Paquin, semantic synchronism means that the new dialogue in the target language should have the same meaning as the original. Nevertheless, Paquin argues, there are certain cases when this is not true. This concerns for example numerals, occupations etc. When for example the occupation is not important for the story it can be changed in the target language in order to achieve more convenient phonetic synchronism. Thus, it can be said that semantic synchronism is more important than phonetic synchronism only if the original meaning is essential for the whole story. In other cases the meaning can be slightly changed without any problem.

The last synchronism Paquin speaks about is dramatic synchronism. It is the realism with which the characters speak in the target language. What they say has to correspond to what they do (a person shaking his head obviously cannot say yes and vice versa) and the way they speak must be in accordance with what the audience expects. Thus, e.g. a queen should not use colloquial speech when it is not appropriate, a prostitute should not express herself in archaisms etc.

This is also why, for example, the dubbing of Latin American soap operas may sometimes seem unnatural: the lip movements are matched, but monotonous Czech language does not fit exaggerated gestures of the actors.

Last but not least, a fourth kind of synchronism can be added. It is the nucleus synchronism introduced by Luyken. “Nucleus-sync concerns the fact that movements of the body, slight nods, raising of the eyebrows, or making gestures always coincide with the uttering of stressed syllables, which in linguistics are referred to as nuclei. Possibly, this parallel occurrence of stressed syllables and other movements can be seen as instrumental in the perception of speech” (Luyken, 160).

3. 3. Conclusion on Subtitling and Dubbing

It can be thus said that both subtitling and dubbing are influenced by several constraints which make both these kinds of translation very different from the literary one. On the other hand, as the constraints are very different for these two techniques, the final results are also very different.

From this point of view, there are two things that have to be taken into account: 1) the length of the target language version and 2) the fidelity if its meaning. As for subtitling, the length is always reduced in comparison to the length of the original, but the meaning has to correspond to the original as much as possible, because the audience can notice any minor discrepancy. On the other hand, the dubbed version has the same length as the original, but it is not necessary to stick to the exact meaning. What is important is only the plot-carrying meaning. In other words, if the adaptor needs to modify the dialogues in order to match the lip movements, he is perfectly allowed to do so.

4. Harry Potter

Harry Potter is the main character as well as the overall name of a series of novels by J. K Rowling and films inspired by these novels about a young wizard. The first book - Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - was published in 1997. Other volumes followed and six out of seven intended novels have now been published, the last being Harry Potter and the Half-Blooded Prince released in 2005. Four books have already been adapted for the screen, the first one in 2001.

The Harry Potter series very soon achieved a great success. The books were translated into more than 60 languages and over 300 million copies were sold in more than 200 countries. The story became a worldwide phenomenon, the children read the books although they are extremely thick and there are thousands of web pages concerning Harry Potter.

4. 1. Potential Translation Problems and their Czech Solutions

The translation of Harry Potter is a big challenge. There are many aspects which might cause some problems.

4. 1. 1. British Culture

The book was written for British children and thus includes many cultural aspects typical for Great Britain. The most obvious one is the British boarding school. More than a half of the story takes place in Hogwarts, which is a typical example of a boarding school, a kind of school that does not exist in the Czech Republic. The students play Quidditch just like real students in Great Britain play for instance rugby.

Although Czech students also sometimes have to stay in the town or city their school is in, it is nevertheless very different from the British system. The Hogwarts boarding school is thus something which might not be properly understood, especially by small children who are not used to foreign culture yet.

The translators have a choice: they can either leave it in the British setting or move it to the country of the target language audience, the latter being much more complicated with consequences leading to the need of changing almost the whole book.

The Czech translator, Vladimír Medek, decided to leave the original British setting. In the particular case of Harry Potter this seems to be a little bit less problematic than in many other books, as the story is a fairy tale, thus including many things that are quite far from real life. A school where students have to stay all the year round and wear uniforms can only contribute to the exoticism of the story. The translation problems of British school culture can be shown on particular examples:

Dudley had been accepted at Uncle Vernon's old school, Smeltings. Piers Polkiss was going there too. Harry, on the other hand, was going to Stonewall High, the local comprehensive.(40)

Ten už měl místo ve Smeltings, ve škole, do které kdysi chodil i strýc Vernon; Piers Polkiss tam šel také. Zato Harry měl chodit do stonewallské školy, což byla místní měš­ťanka. (35)

Two issues appear in this sentence. First of them is Smeltings which, understood from the context, is a high quality boarding school. But no explanation is given to the Czech readers. The second issue is the local comprehensive translated as místní měšťanka. This does not correspond properly to the meaning of the original. Translation such as střední škola would be maybe enough.

Another example of a similar problem is the Smeltings uniform (40) translated as smeltingský stejnokrj. (35) This can be a little bit confusing for people who do not know that British students are obliged to wear uniforms at school.

On the other hand, when one of the boys states that he is going to be a prefect next year, a footnote is used explaining that “v některých britských školách (zejména internátních) bývají vybraní studenti pověřeni dohledem nad ostatními.” (93) On the contrary, head boy (111) (which according to the Lingea Lexikon 2002 means “žák, který reprezentuje školu při společenských událostech” is translated simply as primus. (97)

Apart from the school problems, there are some others, which are less complex, but not at all less important. First of them are various kinds of food mentioned in the book.

He had never seen so many things he liked to eat on one table: roast beef, roast chicken, pork chops and lamb chops, sausages, bacon and steak, boiled potatoes, roast potatoes, fries, Yorkshire pudding, peas, carrots, gravy, ketchup, and, for some strange reason, peppermint humbugs. (135)

Ještě nikdy nevi­děl pohromadě na stole tolik věcí, které měl rád: ho­vězí pečeni, pečené kuře, vepřové a jehněčí kotlety, párky, slaninu a bifteky, vařené brambory, pečené brambory, hranolky, vaječný svítek, hrášek, mrkev, omáčku, kečup a z nějakého nevysvětlitelného dů­vodu i větrové bonbony. (118)

In this enumeration, the only food unknown in the Czech context is the Yorkshire pudding, while all others are perfectly understandable. But the Yorkshire pudding was translated as vaječný svítek which somehow translates the original, but Czech readers are certainly not very familiar with this expression.

Thus, when reading the translation, this word stands out very strongly, which certainly was not the intention of the author.

Similarly, in other enumerations of food, food unknown to the target language audience is either translated rather incomprehensibly (treacle tarts [137] become sirupové košíčky [119] and marshmallows [215] are translated as ibiškové pokroutky [185]. The latter could have stayed the same as the original since the word “marshmallow” is now quite commonly used in Czech, in any case more than “ibiškové pokroutky”. Cranberry sauce [220] becomes klikvová omáčka [189] (brusinková omáčka might have been better).

On the other hand, some others are explained rather than translated (trifle [137, 221] once as piškoty s ovocem a se šlehačkou [119] and once as piškot se smetanou [190], crumpets [215, 221] once as teplé chlebové placičky s máslem [190] and once as koláčky [185]).

There is almost no substitution used in the translation except for one case when chocolate eclairs (137) is translated as větrníky s čokoládovou polevou (119), the two desserts being similar, but not the same. But there are more British cultural aspects. A good example can be the sentence:

Perhaps people have been celebrating Bonfire Night early - it's not until next week, folks! (13)

Možná že ně­kdo začal předčasně pálit ohně - ale na ty je čas až příští týden, vážení! (12)

A Bonfire Night is mentioned here, a well-known British festivity with a lot of fireworks, which takes place at the beginning of November and commemorates Guy Fawkes who tried to set the parliament on fire in the early 17^th century. Not only is this event completely ignored in the Czech translation, but it just mentions fires without any context and thus is not comprehensible clearly enough.

On the contrary, when it is mentioned that somebody hummed “Tiptoe Through the Tulips“ (48), a well-known song in Britain, a straightforward translation is used and the name of the song in Czech is „Náruč plná tulipánů“ (43) which does not ring a bell at all.

Thus, all the above mentioned examples show that there is a certain inconsistency. Some things are kept, some of them translated, others explained. This confuses the target language reader.

4. 1. 2. Names, Spells and Neologisms

The names, spells and other neologisms are a typical feature of Harry Potter. J. K. Rawling coined many new words, some of them having a hidden meaning. She often uses French or Latin when coining the new expressions. But English is sometimes used as well. On the other hand, many of the new words do not seem to have any meaning and what matters is rather the sound of it.

As for spells, they are all in Latin. For instance, Hermione says oculus reparo when she wants to repair Harry's glasses. The Latin word oculus means “eye” or “sight” and reparo is the first person singular of the word “reparare” meaning “to repair”. Similarly, when she wants to turn a boy into stone, she uses the spell Petrificus totalus (294) which resembles to “total petrification” in English. There does not seem to be any special reason to translate these spells as the Latin sounds approximately the same to the English and the Czech readers.

As for the names, some of them are translated into Czech and same are not. This is again inconsistent up to a point.

If we take into account only the main characters of the book, only Dumbledore's name has been changed into Brumbál. All the other characters stayed the same. Dumbledore's name again seems to be inspired by French, “d'or” meaning “golden”. But none of the others were changed: Malfoy, coming from French “mal foi” (“bad faith”) or Voldemort (“vol de mort” meaning “flight of death”). There is no reason to translate these names as English readers probably do not understand the meaning better than the Czech ones.

On the other hand, names which have a meaning in English are much more problematic, especially if the names somehow correspond to the character's visual aspect or are in a way telling something about the character. A typical example of such a case is the Weasley family, the name being certainly inspired by “weasel” and all the characters with this name being red-haired.

Another example of the same problem is the list of books that Harry has to buy. Here the names of the authors are somehow connected to the titles of the books. They were translated in this way:

The Standard Book of Spells (Grade 1) by Miranda Goshawk (76)	Miranda Jestřábová: Příručka kouzelných slov a zaklínadel (1.stupeň) (67)
One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi by Phyllida Spore (77)	Phyllida Výtrusová: Tisíc kouzelnických bylin a hub (67)
Magical Drafts and Potions by Arsenius Jigger (77)	Arsenius Stopečka: Kouzelnické odvary a lektvary (67)
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by Newt Scamander (77)	Mlok Scamander Fantastická zvířata a kde je najít (67)
A Beginners' Guide to Transfiguration by Emetic Switch (76)	Emeric Cvak: Úvod do přeměňování (67)

but:

Magical Theory by Adalbert Waffling (76)	Adalbert Waffling: Teorie kouzelnického umění (76)
The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection by Quentin Trimble (77)	Quentin Trimble: Černá magie - příručka sebeobrany (76)

The fact that some names are translated into Czech while others remain in the original form, so much the more that they are right next to each other, contributes to the feeling of inconsistency.

In addition to spells and characters' names there are some other new coined words. Those that have come into general knowledge are especially the names of the houses - Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, Gryffindor and Slytherin. They are translated as Mrzimor, Havraspár, Nebelvír and Zmijozel successively.

As for the game of Quiditch, its Czech name is Famfrpál, the balls are called Camrál, Potlouk and Zlatonka (originally Quaffle, Bludger and Golden snitch).

The currency units Sickles and Knuts become srpce and svrčky, Galleons stay the same.

Others include names of some pets (Scabbers is changed to Prašivka, Fang is translatd literally as Tesák) and magic things (e.g. Rememberall becomes Pamatováček).

There are some puns such as Diagon Alley which is a homophone with diagonally. The Czech translation is Příčná ulice, where the equivoque is lost. Similarly, a spokesgoblin becomes mluvčí skřet banky which does not reflect the analogy with spokesman.

4. 1. 3. Language of the Characters

This concerns particularly Hagrid, one of the main adult characters. He is a non-educated man and his speech is very different from the others. He uses a specific dialect which is very typical of himself and its aim seems to be the accentuation of his primitiveness. In Czech he speaks just in a familiar way, no specific dialect was used. It can be shown on a short extract:

"I'm tellin' yeh, yer wrong!" said Hagrid hotly. "I don' know why Harry's broom acted like that, but Snape wouldn' try an' kill a student! Now, listen to me, all three of yeh -- yer meddlin' in things that don' concern yeh. (209)

„Říkám ti, že se mejlíš!“ namítl Hagrid ostře. „Ne­vím, proč Harryho koště vyvádělo takový věci, ale Snape by se nepokusil zabít nějakýho študenta! Teď mě poslouchejte, všecky tři - pletete se do věcí, do kterejch vám nic není. (180)

4. 2. Differences between the Book and the Film

Although the film is completely inspired by the novel, there are certain differences in the plot, characters as well as the dialogues. This is caused by several reasons. First of them is the fact that the book is too long to be transferred entirely into a film. The novel is more than 300 pages long and if everything was included in the film, it would take maybe more than ten hours. But the actual length of the film is approximately 2 hours and 15 minutes. Thus, logically, some things had to be left out, sometimes only dialogues, but sometimes the whole scenes. There are several possibilities:

1) A passage (part of a passage etc.) of the book is completely left out in the film

Those parts which are not relevant at all for the whole story are omitted without any compensation. On the other hand, if there is something in the left out passage which might be somehow important for the coherency of the film, this element is included in a different part of the film. For example, sometimes there is a character that does not appear in the film at all, but he says something important for the whole story in the book. In that case this is said by a different character in the film. The whole list of changes and omissions can be found on Wikipedia. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differences_between_book_and_film_versions_of_Harry_Potter_and_the_Philosopher%27s_Stone).

2) Passages described in the book by narrator appear in the film, but there is no dialogue

A technique probably typical of all film adaptations is the one when something which is written in the book is shown in the film in a condensed way. Actually, the viewer can see exactly what the reader reads and has to imagine himself.

3) What is said by the narrator in the book is included in the character's dialogues in the

film

There are some cases when something said by the narrator in the book is important, so it cannot be left out, but at the same time it is impossible to communicate it but in words. It is then said by the characters themselves. This happens for example when the three children approach to the sleeping dog: They could feel the dog's hot, smelly breath as they approached the giant heads. (297) This information is included in the film by a sentence pronounced by Ron: Ugh! It's got horrible breath.

4) What is said by the characters themselves in the book is included in the film dialogues

The last possibility is the one when the direct speech from the book appears in the film. If this is the case, there are again several possibilities:

a) They are completely different

Sometimes there are dialogues in the script which do not exist in the original or there is something said which has the same meaning in the book and in the film adaptation, but in each case completely different words are used. There seem to be two reasons for this radical change. First of them is simply the unsuitability of the original for the film. Some utterances may seem natural when they are read in a book, but when they are actually pronounced, it sounds odd. The second reason is connected to the above-mentioned omitting of some parts of the book: something is missing and therefore what remains has to be modified in order that the film is coherent and logical.

b) They are slightly changed or shortened

When dialogues are changed, it has either again something to do with the suitability of the book direct speech for the film or there is a different reason: the original dialogues are unnecessarily too long and they have to be shortened.

c) They stay exactly the same

Last but not least, there are many dialogues that are exactly the same in the book and in the film. These are quite important from the point of view of the translation, because if they are the same in English, they should logically be the same in the translation as well.

4. 3. Czech Audiovisual Translations of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

4. 3. 1. Official DVD Dubbing

The Dubbing was translated by Pavel Medek, who is the brother of the translator of the book and at the same time the translator of the Harry Potter books starting with the third volume. Vojta Kotek performs the role of Harry.

The dubbing is of a high quality as it corresponds to the above-mentioned rules and there do not seem to be any discrepancy as far as synchronism is concerned. Especially the lip fitting is done quite properly in close-ups, which often appear in the film.

For example when Dudley shouts at his father that he didn't get enough presents for his birthday: Thirty-six?! But last year last year I had thirty-seven!!! is changed to Třicet šest? Ale loni, loni jsem jich měl třicet sedum. The pronunciation of the letter “l” in this utterance is very well visible and the Czech version is thus appropriate.

Another example is even more striking. When the students have a flying lesson they are supposed to say “up” and the broom jumps into their hands. The literal translation of “up” is obviously “nahoru” or “vzhůru” which not only is too long, but as this scene is shot in a close-up, the bilabial in the word “up” has to be kept in the Czech translation. The dubbing uses “hop” which is a very good solution: it not only contains this bilabial but it also has the same number of syllables as the original word.

The only problem of this dubbing version are some sentences which do not correspond at all to the meaning of the original. These appear in moments when the original speech is very badly audible and is not very important for the story. When the Dursleys are leaving their home after Dudley has unwrapped his presents and are going to the zoo, Mrs. Dursley says: It should be a lovely day at the zoo. I'm really looking forward to it. But in Czech the woman says: Jenom třicet šest? To se teda hrozně omlouvám.

Similarly, after the hat has sorted the students out into their houses and some ghosts appear in the hall, Hermione says: It's the Bloody Baron! This exclamation is from an inexplicable reason translated as Hrozně tady táhne. Anyway, both these misleading translation do not cause any harm not only because they are not important for the story, but especially because they fit quite well into the context and those who do not know the original are not capable of noting any discrepancy.

4. 3. 2. Official DVD Subtitles

The subtitles were also translated by Pavel Medek and made by LS Productions together with SDI Media Group which is one of the leading and biggest audiovisual translation companies in the world.

From the point of view of the constraints that were dealt with in the first part of this work, these subtitles are quite well done. They stick to the rule saying that always only two lines can appear at a time, the lines are not too long, they are therefore well readable and the viewer feels quite at ease when watching the film.

As far as the shortening is concerned, this is again done in a way that does not cause any harm to the comprehensibility of the whole. The script contains over 51,000 signs while the subtitles only contain some 41,000. The subtitles thus convey approximately 80% of the original. That is quite a lot. This is probably caused by a relatively slow pace of the English dialogues thanks to which there was no need to a more extensive reduction.

Nevertheless, there are some cases when a rather radical abridgement was necessary. All four possible procedures (omission, paraphrase and simple syntax and vocabulary) were used in order to make it simple and short. The original sentence Oh, hello. I don't wish to be rude, but I'm in no fit state to entertain today was translated in the dubbing as Ahoj. Nechci bejt nezdvořilej, ale na hosty dneska fakt nemám čas. The translation in the subtitles is :

- Ahoj. Je mi líto, ale nemám čas.

Similarly, the sentence Come on now. Hurry up, you'll be late! Train's leaving. Go on. Come on, hurry up. is translated as Tak už poďte, pospěšte si, nebo vám to ujede. Vlak už odjíždí, běžte. Běžte. The subtitle translation is:

Vlak už odjíždí.

No tak, pospěšte si.

The subtitles also include some problematic issues. These are e.g. letters, newspaper articles and messages. They are always read by the character who obtains them and are thus subtitled between inverted commas and not in italics:

„Vážený pane Pottere,

s potěšením vám oznamujeme,

že jste byl přijat

na Školu čar a kouzel v Bradavicích.''

This letter, as well as some others, is quite peculiar in that the subtitles appear at the top of the screen, as they would cover the letter itself projected at the bottom. It seems that this technique is used rather too often and unnecessarily in the film, as it should be done only exceptionally when the original indispensably has to be legible.

Another issue is the use of italics. These appear especially in the spells such as Oculus Reparo, Wingardium Leviosa or Petrificus Totalus. The reason for the use of italics in this case is most likely the fact that they are in a foreign language - Latin. But when a password, which is also in Latin, is pronounced - “Caput draconis” - the italics are not used. It can thus be observed that there is again, similarly to the translation of the book, a certain inconsistency.

As far as the problem of inconsistency is concerned, there is another example: the numbers. Harry asks:

Pane, můžete mi říct,

kde je nástupiště devět a tři čtvrtě?

But a little bit later the answer is:

-Nástupiště 9 a tři čtvrtě je tam.

Besides, there are some other discrepancies. There is no indication of professor Quirrell's stuttering, which is quite important for the story line. For instance the sentence Harry P-p-potter. C-can't tell you how p-pleased I am to meet you. This is subtitled as:

Harry Potter. Ani nevíte,

jak mě těší, že vás poznávám.

Similarly Next to him who would suspect p-p-poor st-st-stuttering Professor Quirrell? is subtitled as:

Kdo by vedle něj podezříval

ubohého koktavého

profesora Quirrella.

In addition, the former example shows another imperfection: in the whole film, there is never used capital “V“ in words like “Vy“, “Vám“, “Vás“, “Vaše“ etc.

Last but not least, there is one mistake which is not at all unnoticeable. The crowd at the stadium shouts Harry Potter Gyffindor!, well translated in the dubbing as Ať žije Nebelvír! But in the subtitles appears:

Nebelvír do toho. . . !

This has a confusing effect as the game is already over.

4. 3. 3. Fake Subtitles

There are several versions of subtitles that can be found on the internet, the majority of them being on the same level as far as quality is concerned. Two of these versions could be considered as representative (the imperfections being similar in all these versions) and will be treated here in detail.

4. 3. 3. 1. Fake Subtitles 1

The author of the first version is anonymous. The subtitles are even less extensive than the original ones, forming approximately 76% of the script. There are several interesting issues worth noticing. These will be dealt with in separate points. In all examples the subtitles are left in their original form, thus including misprints and punctuation mistakes.

1) subtitling conventions

a) Number of lines

The author seems to be completely unaware of the rule that there can be maximally two lines at a time. He quite often uses three lines, which often leads to a big uneasiness and the viewer is sometimes unable to read the whole subtitle before it disappears.

No, Harry, a nestaly se ti zvláštní věci,

které se ti zdály nepochopitelní, když

jsi třeba byl rozčilený nebo se bál?

b) Line Breaks

The subtitles are sometimes divided into individual lines in a rather illogical way:

Školník pan Filch mě poprosil,

abych zopakoval, že

je zakázáno vstupovat do chodby ve 3 poschodí

na pravé straně.

or

Naučím vás zavřít do lahve

slávu, uvařit vděk a zastavit smrt.

c) Superfluous Phrases, Expressions and Letters

There are quite often phrases, expressions and letters that do not have to be subtitled as they only have a padding function. On the contrary, it is rather advisable to leave them out. As it was already said, the subtitles convey only about 76% of the original script, but the fact that this number includes these superfluous expressions logically means that they were used at the expense of a semantically more relevant content which has been lost.

Řekněte mi, je pravda, co se říká...

Oooh, a tady příchází náš malý oslavenec

V neděli žádná pošta ...haha

Aha, jsem rád, že vás poznávám.

d) Inverted Commas and Italics

While the inverted commas are sometimes used redundantly (indicating direct speech as if everything else that is uttered in the film was not direct speech), the italics are not used at all.

e) Punctuation

The punctuation is also a problem. Not only are there striking mistakes (e.g. missing commas), but sometimes wrong punctuation marks are used. There are also several cases when the same mark is redundantly repeated three times in order to be stressed.

Schody sa přemisťují? Vzpomínáte? (There should be a full stop instead of the first question mark.)

- Có, krev???

f) Capital Letters

The capital letters are used as an emphasis that somebody is shouting.

ŘEKNI PRAVDU! CO VIDÍŠ?

On the other hand, it is necessary to mention that there are many similar exclamations which are not capitalised.

g) Letters, Newspaper Articles and Messages

They are translated in a similar way as in the official subtitles, using inverted commas to indicate that the person is reading something.

2) Translation Issues

a) Style

There are sometimes stylistic discrepancies which contribute to the unnaturalness of the subtitled version. Between these discrepancies can be included for instance repeated use of certain words:

Oni opravdu...

Oni jsou jeho jediní příbuzní.

Tady najdem všechno, co potřebuješ.

Tady si můžeš koupit kouzelnické potřeby.

b) Translation which does not Make Sense in Czech

Sometimes there are sentences the meaning of which is not clear enough:

Až budeme odcházet, koupíme

ještě 2 nové dárky!

This would mean that they will buy the presents while leaving their house. In fact they will buy it when they will be out during the day.

c) Grammar

- Proč, a kdo ne? (It should be: -Proč? A kdo ne?)

d) Completely Different Meaning

Surprisingly, the subtitles in several moments do not correspond to the original which is being uttered in English. This fact has no obvious explanation. The original sentence Do you wanna stop Snape from getting that Stone or not? is subtitles as:

Přestaň už, s tím si nemůžeme zahrávat!

Similar example is the sentence She needs to sort out her priorities. This is subtitled as:

Jako kdybychom ji prosili,

aby šla s námi.

e) Similar Meaning

There are also some cases, when the subtitles more or less correspond to the original, but the meaning is not exactly the same. The explanation suggests itself much more than in d) - the subtitler did not understand properly the text he was translating. A good example is the dialogue between professor McGonagall and Harry and Ron when they are late at her lesson:

McGonagall: Perhaps it would be more useful if I transfigured Mr. Potter and yourself into a pocket watch. That way one of you might be on time.

Ron: We got lost.

McGongall: Then perhaps a map? I trust you don't need one to find your seats.

This is subtitled as:

Nejlepší by bylo

přečarovat Pottera na vaše hodinky.

Zabloudili jsme.

Tak používajte třeba mapu.

Doufám, že alespoň svoje místa najdete!

f) Literal Translation and Anglicisms

Literal translation is used in the scene when Hermione is looking for the entry “Nicolas Flamel” in an encyclopedia. She says: Famous Fire Eaters. Fifteenth Century Fiends. Flamel. Nicholas Flamel. Where are you? This is translated very well in the official subtitles:

Festivaly polykačů ohně.

Fantómové patnáctého století.

Flamele?

Nicholasi Flamele? Kde jsi?

But the fake subtitles do not reflect the necessity that all the words begin by the same letter:

"Slávné ohně..., Zázraky z 15. století"

...Flamel...Nicolas Flamel...

Kde jsi?

g) Slovak

It seems that these subtitles were not translated directly from English, but from Slovak which served as a pivot language, because there are many words and sometimes even phrases left in Slovak. For instance:

Prváci, poďte ku mňe

Ponáhľajte sa!

Niekedy sú tvoje čary strašidelné?

Fantastické ale strašideľné.

h) Inconsistency

It happens that one word is once translated in a different way than at another time:

To je Prašivka. Skvělý potkan, co?

Khhmmm..."Javor, buk, linda a platan

ať je tahle krysa zlatá!"

In addition to the above mentioned points, there is a fairly big number of misprints (such as Neměj jsem to říkat or Kámen mudrzů) and some parts of the dialogues are missing in the subtitles.

4. 3. 3. 2. Fake Subtitles 2

The second version of fake subtitles that will be treated here is also anonymous. It seems to be a little bit better than the first version.

Although these subtitles contain drawbacks very similar to the ones that are in the fake subtitles 1, the general impression from them is much more positive. The drawbacks again include the number of lines (sometimes even four), illogical line breaks, superfluous elements, unnecessary use of inverted commas (on the other hand missing when letters are read), no use of italics, bad punctuation, stylistic and grammatical errors as well as misleading meaning of some translations. As for the misprints, they exist in these subtitles, but are rather rare.

But there are also some differences between these two subtitles. The major one seems to be the attempt of the second subtitles to convey as much as possible. The dialogues are not simple enough which sometimes results in the impossibility to read them all before they disappear. This fact is very bothersome for the viewers.

A jeho jméno bylo V...

Jeho jméno bylo Vol.... (It would be enough to put it down only once)

Takový znamení může bejt způsobený

jen prokletím a jen tim nejhoršim z nich. (Better would be e.g. …jen tím nejhorším prokletím)

or similarly

Promiňte, mohl byste mi říct,

kde bych mohl najít nástupiště 9 a 3/4?

(…kde je nástupiště 9 a 3/4? would be much better)

This inability to use simple short sentences leads to the fact that some long sentences stretch through not only several lines, but even several subtitles. Moreover, if this is the case, three dots are redundantly used to indicate that it is still one single sentence:

Poslouchej, myslím, že Snape včera v noci

přivedl toho trolla, způsobil ten zmatek, aby se

mohl pokusit dostat přes tříhlavého psa,...

...ale ten pes ho pokousal,

proto ho bolí noha, proto kulhá.

The length of the subtitles can be also demonstrated by the number of signs they include. The number is approximately 47,000 which is more than 92% of the original.

In addition, there are some other details worth mentioning which differ these subtitles from the other ones:

1) Word order

The word order is sometimes incorrect:

Varuju tě, chlapče...

...jestli stane se nějaká divná věc...

2) Capital letters

Words are capitalised in a different way than they should be. The reason is not because the word is shouted out, but rather to emphasise something.

...hrajeme MY.

Ale no tak, kdo by psal TOBĚ?

3) Vulgarisms

There is only one, but as the film is designated primarily for children, its occurrence is hardly justifiable:

Třeba, když ta mu jeho posraná matka

dala tuhle hračku,...

...bude si svou hloupost

pamatovat možná i několik hodin.

4. 4. Differences between Audiovisual and Literary Translations

When discussing audiovisual translation of a film based on a book, it is certainly worth investigating what the relations are between these two types of translation and if the translation of the book serves as a basis for the translation of the film. The aim is to find out whether the interrelation between the translated version of the book and translated version of the film is at least approximately the same as the interrelation between the originals. There are two questions which can be asked:

1) Did the translator of the film solve the translation problems in the same way as the translator of the book?

2) When the film script and the book dialogues are approximately or even exactly the same, are also the translations the same? Or in other words: is the audiovisual translation inspired by the literary translation?

As for the translation problems, there are some that appear in the book, but not in the film. These are for example poems and rhymes which are certainly very interesting from the point of view of translation, but from the reason of shortening these poems were not used. On the other hand, there are many others which can be found both in the book and the film.

4. 4. 1. British Culture

There are not so many cultural aspects in the film in comparison with those in the book. The story of course again takes place at a boarding school, which is located somewhere in Great Britain. If there was a possibility to replace the story somewhere else (e.g. to the country where the target language is spoken) in the book, this possibility is close to zero in the film. Thus, if the translator of the book nevertheless decided in this way, such a fact would cause serious problems to the person doing the language transfer of the film.

4. 4. 2. Names, spells and neologisms

As far as the names, spells and neologisms are concerned, it is something completely different. They appear in the film and there are many of them. Not all of them are the same, some of those that were in the book are not in the film and vice versa.

4. 4. 2. 1. Names

As for the official dubbing and subtitles, the characters' names and names of things remain exactly the same. But as there are much fewer names in the film in comparison to the book, it is only the character of Dumbledore whose name has a Czech equivalent (Brumbál). The rest remain in the original form.

This is also the case of Ron Weasely which, however, is more problematic in the film than in the book. The reason for this fact is a slight change of the script in comparison with the original book dialogues. When Draco Malfoy meets Ron Weasley for the first time, he says in the book:

"Think my name's funny, do you? No need to ask who you are. My father told me all the Weasleys have red hair, freckles, and more children than they can afford."

But in the film he says something different:

Think my name's funny do you? No need to ask yours. Red hair and a hand-me-down robe? You must be a Weasley.

Moje jméno je k smíchu? Na tvoje se ptát nemusím. Zrzek a obnošený hábit. Musíš být Weasly. (Dubbing translation; others are similar.)

The difference is evident: in the film there is no mention about Draco's father who told him about the Weasleys. Draco deduces that Ron's name is Weasley, because he has got red hair just like the hair of a weasel. But this is not comprehensible enough in Czech. As for other character's names, any of them does not pose a problem like this.

As far as the two fake translations are concerned, there are much more elements worth noticing, particularly in fake subtitles 2.

The first fake subtitles translate names in the same way as the book. But the author of the second subtitles decided to leave the majority of the names in the original form. The problem is the fact that the majority of people who watch the film are already used to the Czech equivalents, because they have read the book. The non-translation is thus very confusing, especially for those who are not familiar with the original names. (For example those who read the book in English).

Another problem that arises, when the original forms are kept, is the Czech declension. When Czech suffixes are added to these words, it sounds rather strange. Besides, as the suffix that should be used is not always evident, there are some alternations:

Vítejte v Hogwarts.

V Hogwartsích?

Nevertheless, it seems that the author had some notion about the book translation. For example Diagon Alley was translated as Příčná ulice, Muddles became mudlové, Scabbers is Prašivka and Rememberall is pamatováček just like in the book.

The translation of everything concerning the game of Quidditch, particularly the names of the players, is also worth noticing.

When the players are mentioned for the first time, professor McGonnagall says in these subtitles:

Woode, našla jsem vám chytače.

But later Wood explains to Harry:

Každý tým má sedm hráčů:

Tři charsers, dva beaters, jednoho keeper

a jednoho seeker. To jsi ty.

“Seeker” means of course the same as “chytač” in the first example (“chytač” being the book translation of “seeker”). In addition, the latter is also a good example of the declension problems treated above. As for the names of the balls, their names remain in English.

When discussing the influence of the book translation on individual audiovisual translations, another oddity is worth noticing. The forest into which the students are not allowed to go is called Forbidden Forest in the book, but the name was changed to Dark Forest in the film. The book translation was Zapovězený les. Both the dubbing and official subtitles reflect this change and translate the Dark forest as Temmný les. But the first fake translation is začarovaný les (not capitalized) and, surprisingly, the second fake subtitles, which seem to pay almost no attention to the book, translate this as Zapovězený les, thus in the same way as it was translated in the book, without taking the scirpt change into consideration!

4. 4. 2. 2. Spells

There are several spells that appear both in the book and the film, but there are also some new ones, which were not used in the book.

The ones that are the same are the Latin ones. They remain the same in the official translations, but sometimes are misspelled in the fake translations, for instance Wingardium Leviosa written as Vingardium Leviosa.

Those that are new in the film are either in Latin or in English. The Latin ones remain the same in the DVD subtitles and the dubbing. As for the fake subtitles, they are also in Latin, but they are very often changed . Thus, Oculus Reparo becomes Okolous repedro in one subtitles and Oculus Repairus in the others. Similarly, Lacarnum Inflamare is once subtitled as Lacardum Inflemorium and once as Legardum et lumoren.

The spells that are in English are those that are not serious spells and do not work. These are always the same in the DVD subtitles and in the dubbing. On the other hand, the first fake subtitles are sometimes inspired by the official ones. The second fake subtitles are different.

4. 4. 3. Language of the characters

All the audiovisual translations reflect the specified way of Hagrid's speaking. In the dubbing as well as all subtitle versions he speaks in a familiar way similarly to the book translation. On the other hand it is worth mentioning, that sometimes his way of speaking is more familiar in the subtitles (including the official ones) in comparison to the way he speaks in the dubbed version. This is quite strange, as the subtitles should be usually closer to the standard language as they are written. Nevertheless, it is sometimes the other way round, for example words such as všecko or nejlepčí are used in the subtitles while všechno and nejlepší are used in the dubbing. On the other hand, the dubbing takes advantage of a specific intonation which is imparted to Hagrid by the Czech actor who dubbed him.

4. 4. 4. Addressing Students

There is also a difference in the way teachers address their students. In the book as well as in the dubbing, the official subtitles and the first fake subtitles the teachers and other adults use the polite form when speaking to children. The second fake subtitles are much less consistent and children are sometimes addressed in the second person. Sometimes even one person during one dialogue changes the attitude:

Byl jsem zvědavý,

kdy vás tu uvidím, pane Pottere.

Připadá mi, jako by to bylo včera,

když tady tvoje matka a otec

kupovali svoje první hůlky.

4. 4. 5. Dialogues

Approximately 20 - 30% of the film dialogues are directly inspired by the direct speeches in the book. This means that they are either exactly the same or changed only slightly.

As for the translations of these sentences there is a big difference between the official translations and the fake ones. The DVD subtitles and dubbing indicate that their translator was well aware of the book translation. There are several fundamental expressions and phrases which are the same. For example the phrase you don't use your eyes is translated as ty pro oči nevidíš.

Another proof of the fact that the translator of the subtitles and dubbing took the book into consideration is his translation of the sentence Rubeus Hagrid, Keeper of Keys and Grounds at Hogwart. This was translated in the book, dubbing and DVD subtitles as Rubeus Hagrid, klíčník a šafář v Bradavicích. On the other hand, the two other versions are different:

Rubeus Hagrid. Jsem and Rubeus Hagrid. Klíčník a

strážcem bradavických lesů a luk. správce Hogwartskejch pozemků.

But some examples indicating the contrary can be found, i.e. that the film is translated in a different way. The sentence “Honestly, woman, you call yourself our mother?” is translated in the book as „Prosím tě, to si říkáš naše matka?”

But that same sentence in the film changed to “Vážně mami, jsi vůbec naše matka?“ in the dubbing and -Vážně, mami, jsi vůbec naše? in the official subtitles. The other two subtitled versions are also different.

Thus, it can be observed that there are differences in particular cases as far as the interrelation between the dialogues in the book and the ones in the film is concerned. It might seem at first sight that this is caused by the dubbing and subtitling constraints. But this is not always true.

Very often, subtitles have to be shortened in order to be comfortably read and therefore words have to be replaced, or syntax has to be simplified. However, exception proves the rule. And there are several such exceptions in this film. The sentence I demand that you leave at once. You are breaking and entering. (translated in the book as „Žádám, abyste okamžitě odešel, pane!“… „To je přece vloupání!“) sounds in the Czech version as Okamžitě odejděte, pane! To je násilné vloupání! But in the subtitles it was changed to a form which is not shorter at all, just contrariwise:

Okamžitě odejděte, pane!

Dopustil jste se násilného vloupání.

Nonetheless, after having studied several examples of sentences that are the same in English, but different in Czech, it seems that the above treated constraints are only an additional cause for the alterations. The main reason seems to be just the fact that the translator did not consider it important to translate everything exactly in the same way.

5. Conclusion

The thesis treated the audiovisual translation from two points of view.

First, characteristic features of this kind of translation were dealt with in order to demonstrate its particularity and uniqueness within the field of translation studies. It was observed that both subtitling and dubbing are influenced by several constraints which make both these kinds of translation very different from the literary one. On the other hand, as the constraints are very different for these two techniques, the final results are also very different.

From this point of view, there are two things that have to be taken into account: 1) the length of the target language version and 2) the fidelity if its meaning. As for subtitling, the length is always reduced in comparison to the length of the original, but the meaning has to correspond to the original as much as possible, because the audience can notice any minor discrepancy. On the other hand, the dubbed version has the same length as the original, but it is not necessary to stick to the exact meaning. What is important is only the plot-carrying meaning. In other words, if the adaptor needs to modify the dialogues in order to match the lip movements, he is perfectly allowed to do so.

Second, the question of interrelation between audovisual and literary translations in the case of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was brought up with the aim to find out whether such an interrelation exists and what its extent is. Four audiovisual translations were taken into consideration: official DVD dubbing, official DVD subtitles and two versions of fake subtitles found on the internet. First, all these translations were examined in detail in order to be able to state their quality and try to find out whether their authors were aware of basic principles of subtitling and dubbing. The comparison of the audiovisual translations and the literary one followed.

While examining the four audiovisual translations it was observed that fundamental differences exist between them.

Both the official dubbing and the official subtitles meet an overwhelming majority of requirements that are necessary for a good understanding of the film by the target language audience.

On the contrary, the two fake subtitle versions are very badly done in many respects. They do not stick to the principles that would enable their comprehensibility and the number of language and formal errors is sometimes unbearable.

As for the interrelation between these audiovisual translations and their literary counterpart, it can be observed that the more the translation sticks to the principles of subtitling, the more it corresponds to the translation of the book.

But it is important to distinguish between the solutions to the translation problems and the translation of dialogues. While the official DVD dubbing and official DVD subtitles evidently have a connection with the literary translation as far as names, spells and neologisms are concerned, it is much more difficult to find such a connection in the translation of dialogues.

As for the two fake translations, there is a substantial difference between them. While the potential translation problems are often solved in the same way in the first fake subtitles version and the book, the second version takes the book into consideration very sporadically. But as far as the translation of the dialogues is concerned, neither of the authors was inspired by the literary translation of the dialogues.

It could thus be said, that if the translation of the film aims at an audience which is familiar with the translation of the book (provided that such a translation exists), this literary translation should be taken into account. Otherwise the film is badly comprehensible and the audience is confused.

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Rowlingová, J. K. Harry Potter a kámen mudrců. Trans. Vladimír Medek. Praha: Albatros, 2002

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