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Politeness, Ellipsis, and Visual Codes in Film Subtitling

박윤철 1

1동국대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The film transfers the meanings and contents of the source text through the visual, audible, and written channels. These channels also have influence on the translation of subtitling respectively or together. In the analysis of subtitling until now, the meanings of politeness features which can be a good device in understanding the relation between two speakers, failed to relay the source contents by ellipsis or condensation, or transferred to change and lose them. Accordingly, this paper aims at observing the preservation of politeness meaning in subtitling though there is the shift like ellipsis, condensation in its process. The Face Threat Action(FTA), one of the politeness features is generally demanded to minimize its threat. It occurs the ellipsis or condensation in the shift process of subtitling. Such processes may cause the subtitling to change and lose the source meaning. However, the translation of the subtitling had usually been analyzed in context oriented aspect, and this perspective had not included the visual code information. And it rationalized that the translation of subtitling could have the redundant meanings between utterances and visual codes. These meanings cause the ellipsis and condensation in subtitling. Converting the English into Korean subtitling at films like Lake House(2006), Sweet November(2001), and Pride & Prejudice(2005), the politeness feature such as FTA remained at the target subtitling, and it was carried with weakened meaning more than the source text. Even though the meaning of the source more or less weakens, the meanings of politeness features in target subtitling remain similar to source text meanings by assistance of visual code contents. Therefore, it can be known that the politeness features in subtitling are carried fully with the support of visual codes and context situation regardless of ellipsis, condensation of subtitling.

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* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.