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AN ANALYSIS OF SUBTITLING STRATEGIES IN THE MAGIC OF BELLE ISLE MOVIE

I NYOMAN ADITYA DARMA

Extension Program Faculty of Letter and Culture Udayana University

Abstrak

Permasalahan yang dikaji dalam penelitian ini adalah (1) Strategi pernerjemahan yang digunakan oleh penerjemah pada film “The Magic of Belle Isle”, (2) Strategi penerjemahan yang sangat sering digunakan dalam proses penerjemahan film “The Magic of Belle Isle”. Adapun tujuan dari penelitian ini yaitu menganalisa strategi penerjemahan yang digunakan dalam film dan mengungkapkan strategi-strategi penerjemahan dalam subtitling film dan juga menentukan strategi penerjemahan yang sangat sering digunakan pada proses penerjemahan. Jenis penelitian ini adalah deskriptif kualitatif. Objek penelitian ini berupa terjemahan film “The Magic of Belle Isle” dimana teks bahasa inggris menjadi teks sumber dan bahasa indonesia menjadi bahasa tujuan yang kemudian dianalisa dengan menggunakan teori 10 strategi penerjemahan dari Gottlieb (1998) dan 1 strategi penerjemahan dari Hariyanto (2005). Hasil penelitian menunjukan bahwa penerjemah menggunakan semua strategi penerjemahan dimana strategi transfer merupakan strategi yang sangat sering digunakan oleh penerjemah dalam menerjemahkan subtitle film “The Magic of Belle Isle”.

  • 1.    BACKGROUND

Foreign films especially Hollywood films have dominated the movie industry in Indonesia. The audiences are not only adults or teenagers but also children. The high quality pictures and also interesting in terms of the story, make Hollywood films increasingly in demand by the Indonesian. Almost all of Hollywood movies/films are produced in English, which are difficult to understand by Indonesians , this condition can be a problem, i.e. the difference of language used. Therefore, the film producers must transfer English as the source language to certain target language, in this case Indonesian language, in order to make audience easier to understand and enjoy the films. So, the field of film translation began to set the pace in translation study and screen translation or Audiovisual Translation (AVT) is the central to it.

AVT is conventionally categorized into subtitling and dubbing. Each of them interfered with the original text to different extent. Basically, dubbing is refered to any technique of covering the original voice in an audio-visual production by another voice. On the other hand, the activity of subtitling is the process of translation where one language as source language is transffered into other language as the target language. It involves transferring the characteristics of spoken dialogue to the written mode. For the subtitler, subtitling is not always an easy job because it has some constraints and limitations. Many of the translators have tried various ways to cover the constraints, attempts have been done to observe what strategies are adopted in subtitling work. Gottlieb has devised ten strategies which he classifies as expansion, paraphrase, transfer, imitation, transcription, dislocation, condensation, decimation, deletion, and resignation.

Based on the facts explained above knowing and studying subtitling strategies which are used in The Magic of Belle Isle movie is interesting since this drama movie contains many dramatical sentences and the transfered idea to Indonesian subtitle will give many findings to be analyzed. Thus, if the subtitler of The Magic of Belle Isle movie could not translate and transfer the subtitle and the main idea of that movie well, misunderstanding and misinterpretation will happen. This study attempts to classify the subtitling strategies used in transfering the meaning from English into Indonesian subtitle.

  • 2.    Problem of The Study

The study aims to provide answer to these following questions :

  • 1.    What kind of subtitling strategies were found in the movie entitled The Magic of Belle Isle?

  • 2.    Which strategies mostly occured in the subtitling The Magic of Belle Isle movie?

  • 3.    Aims of The Study

There are two major purposes by which the researcher expected to find out as the answer to the problems mentioned earlier :

  • 1.    To describe the subtitling strategies found in the The Magic of Belle Isle movie.

  • 2.    To analyze the mostly used subtitling procedures to translate script of The Magic of Belle Isle movie into Indonesian.

  • 4.    Research Method

The study employed a qualitative research and the technique of analysis descriptive research method. This is descriptive research, which attempts to describe the subtitling strategies which are used in The Magic Of Belle Isle movie. Descriptive research studies are designed to obtain information concerning the status of phenomena. They are directed toward determining the nature of a situation, as it exists at the time investigated. In this research, the researcher chooses descriptive qulitative method because the purpose of this study is to describe the phenomena of translation, especially the subtitling strategies which are used in The Magic Of Belle Isle movie.

  • 5.    Analysis

Subtitling strategy found in The Magic of Belle Isle,

  • a.    Transfer, there is no added explanation or modifying of view, because the subtitler translates the dialogue by literal word. In addition, the usage of this strategy also maintains the structure of the original text.

Example: Monte: I Need a drink

Monte: Aku butuh minum

This subtitling uses transfer strategy. There is no addition or deletion in that phrase. The subtitler translates the dialogue literally. “I need a drink” which was translated “Aku butuh minum” and was very similar in the syntax and meaning. Transfer strategy was used in this translation process because all the words were translated.

  • b.    Expansion is used when the original text (SL) requires an addition explanation in translation because of some cultural nuance not retrievable in TL.

Example: Clown: I’m attempting to defraud

Clown: Aku berniat defraud (menipu)

The phrase “I’m attempting to defraud” was translated into “aku berniat defraud (menipu)”. The explanation word in the bracket was purposively added by the subtitler to clarify the dialogue. For some people in TL, word “defraud” was not strange, but for most of the TL speakers this word could be unusual; therefore, the subtitler tries to retain the word “defraud” by explaining the word that contain punchline with bracket.

  • c.    Paraphrase is used when the subtitler does not use the same syntactical rules in subtitling the dialogue. In other words, using this strategy the subtitler changes the structures of the subtitle and makes it easier to understand and readable by the audience. Example: Monte: She’s black-hearted whore and i’m done with her.

Monte: Dia pelacur berhati jahat dan aku sudah tak mau berurusan dengannya.

The use of paraphrase strategy could be seen on “black- hearted” which was translated into “berhati jahat”. “black hearted” which was a figurative language meaning “disposed to doing or wishing evil” or “without any moral quality or goodness”, and black was close to the dark and evil world so the subtitler translated it “berhati jahat” which had a similar meaning.

  • d.    Condensation is making the text brief to miss unneccesary utterance using the shorter utterance, but it does not lose the message. Sometimes pragmatic effect can be lost by using condensation strategy. Therefore, the real aim of the text must be conveyed.

Example: Monte: Ah, I don't believe I will.

Monte: Aku takkan bisa.

On the subtitle above, it could clearly be seen that the subtitler used condensation strategy, if it was translated into word-to-word the sentence structure in TL, the meaning is the same as SL text.

  • e.    Decimation is used to translate when the actors are quarrelling with the fast speaking. So, the translator is also condensing the utterance because the utterances have difficulty absorbing unstructured written text quickly.

Example: Monte: You're not, by any chance, referring to Spot, are you?

Monte: Maksud anda Spot?

The phrase “You’re not, by any chance, referring to Spot, are you?” was translated “Maksud anda spot?” It was not translated word-to-word because it was represented by “are you?” which in TL could be translated “maksud anda?”.

  • f.    Imitation is re-writing the word the original text. Imitation is ussualy used to deal with the name of person, place, names of magzine, journals, newspapers, the titles of as yet untranslated literary works, name of company and instituitions, addresses, etc.

Example: Charlotte: Did your Jubal McLaws ever love a woman?

Charlotte: Apa Jubal Mclaws pernah jatuh cinta?

“Jubal McLaws” was a name of a character in a story; therefore, the subtitler did not have to translate it.

  • g.    Transcription: is used in those case where a term is unusual even in the source text; for example, the use of a third language, or nonsense language.

Example: Monte: Railroad Pinkertons are hot on our trail, amigo

Monte: Jalur kereta Pinkertons sasaran kita, teman

Transcription strategy was used in translating the dialogue. It could be seen in word “amigo” which was translated into “teman”. The word “amigo” was a third language which was a Spanish word meaning friend.

  • h.    Dislocation is adopted when the original employs some sort of special effect; for example, a silly song in cartoon film, where the translation of the effect is more important than the content.

  • i.    Deletion is refers to the elimination of parts of a text.

Example: Charlotte: That’s enough

Charlotte: Cukup

The words “that’s enough” into “cukup”. The word “that’s” in this term carry less semantic meaning; therefore, it can be deleted without changing the information to the audience.

  • j.    Resignation is used to describe the strategy adopted when no translation solution can be found and meaning is inevitably lost.

  • k.    Taming: proposed by Hariyanto (2005) is used to translate the impolite word to be polite word in order to be received by audiences.

Example: Willow tree: If my phone’s ruined, you’re dead!

Willow tree: Kalau ponselku rusak, habislah kau!

The word “dead” has similar meaning to “habislah” in TL, but was translated to be more polite. The word “dead” in context means no longer felt, ended, extinguished. Therefore, the subtitler translated it into “habislah”. The word “dead” can also be translated “mati” but this word sounds rude in TL.

  • l.    Conclusions

This study is a qualitative study. After analyzing and classifying the subtitling strategies, the researcher builds several conclusions. First, the subtitler used the ten subtitling strategies devised by Gottlieb and taming strategy by Hariyanto in translating The Magic of Belle Isle’s movie subtitles. The research found that transfer strategy is

mostly used by subtiltler in this movie, where the subtitler translated the dialogues completly and accurately. It might be as a result of the fact that the dialogues in this movie are using homely language, with the purpose that , the dialogues/ subtitles are easy to be translated. This point makes the target audience still easy to understand since the meaning of the dialogues/subtitles are still maintained by the subtitler. Even though the structure of some dialogues are changed syntactically and semantically, the target audience is still easy to enjoy the movie. However, the use of transfer strategy in translating the movie’s subtitles is very simple, since this strategy is the best choice to translate simple and short dialogues.

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