Hello, everyone.
Welcome.
Welcome to our first parallel session.
So we have here three speakers.
One of them, they're going to Co-Present.
So the topic of our first Barlow
session is fostering language awareness through that. Yes.
And we have Judy Siddig, our first speaker,
with the presentation on the use
of dubbing texts for increasing language awareness.
So briefly introduced. You did?
Yeah, you did.
So there is apparently is a senior lecturer
at the Yale University's Department of Translation Interpreting.
And she holds a B.A.
in communication with studies as well as an M.A.
Degree in Translation interpretation and different translation program
with a focus on artificial translation and improved.
The language of dubbing has an impact on the use of
verbs like
out of emergency
writing.
That means finding and resolution leads
from studies in the Hungarian and international markets.
And this is also the directions that
we intentions of books on her resume.
She was moving to Atlanta for the summer reading
to the launch of the first unabridged to narrow postgraduate course
Translation.
Well, she acts as a teacher of various questions,
such as preserving translations, updating techniques, Introduction to
audio, visual translation Studies and Introduction to Foreign Students.
It's a wonderful series of 20 minutes
to present more questions.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for the introduction
and thank you for being here.
I'm a bit nervous to start after such great
opening presentations, but I hope you will enjoy this one as well.
So I'm a bit of a sore thumb here because I'm an audio
visual translator and I basically I only teach translators
in my profession.
But but I think that the that the research and the
and the video I developed for this research might be of use
for for for teaching second language as well.
But you will be the judge of that.
So first, I would like to start with a small anecdote,
which are basically what lead me to this
this road to research.
And it happened on the subway in Budapest when I overheard
a group of teenage girls
talking about a date one of them had the other day.
And she said, and it's a literal translation from Hungarian.
And she said that
it was good, you know, but there were no butterflies in my stomach.
And what you have to know
is that this expression does not exist in Hungarian.
It was basically a mere translation from the English expression.
And before that I only heard it in doublings,
and I always considered it a bad choice of words.
And maybe writing a few times in in young adult
books or places like that.
I don't know if you had these in Spanish.
I found I found it on the internet that has this Santamaria process.
And alas, Miguel,
I don't know if it's a matter of translation as well, or you had it
before,
but in Hungarian it was definitely a mirror translation.
And, and what was interesting is that they used it completely naturally.
Like, like everyone understood it.
The group was completely okay with it.
And that's what started me thinking.
If the if the language of dubbing
may have an impact on on the language use of of people
and I wanted to see if, if when we are asking them
to actively pay attention to dubbing
if they might realize that their and natural elements in it
because it seems that they don't realize it when they are just
just listening to two dubbing texts.
Just a few words about the language used in dubbing.
Usually there are three things mentioned when talking about
the language of dubbing. One of them is illusory.
Illusory in a sense that
it gives the impression that the actors
are talking in our native language, in the native language of the users.
But of course it's an illusion.
The second thing, it's prefabricated, meaning that it gives
the impression of natural speech, natural spoken language.
But in reality
it is written by script writers and then translated by translators.
So so it's not really authentic spoken language.
And the third thing usually mentioned, it has a natural elements
coming from interferences of the of the of the source language and
and also coming from the restrictions of that being.
So you have to keep the poses, you have to keep the lip sync.
And it's mainly to a natural sounding
words and sentences ended up being text.
But as Ramiro Fresco coined, the term suspension of disbelief
is the way viewers are coping with this and naturalness.
And that's why they accept basically
every natural element in dubbing, because they want to enjoy the movie.
So they suspend their disbelief.
They don't mind if it's not really spoken language.
It's not really
natural
because they want to enjoy, to enjoy the movie.
But what I was interested in is what happens
when we suspend the suspension of disbelief
and we ask them to actively listen to the dubbing
if it changes anything.
Another thing I would like to mention here
is that the naturalness of dubbing is not coming from
from grammar errors
or things that are not correct in the in the target language.
They are coming from norm violations, which is different because when you
when you break a rule using a language,
the the sentence, the language you use will be incorrect.
And it's very easy to explain because that's just, okay,
you made a mistake.
It's not not how we say it, but with norms, it's a bit different
because norms are usually correct in a way,
but they are not appropriate, they are not adequate.
And that certain
context
has to define the types of norm violations.
He has six categories. Yeah.
And the first one
is the use of different language variation than expected.
That's quite straightforward.
When someone uses slang in
an official communication, that's a that's an annoying violation.
The second one is for the performance.
These are mainly in speech
when we are starting over a sentence or we have a slip of the tongue.
For example.
The third is insecurities are a deficiency of language.
Use competence.
When a person does not
use words or idioms correctly uses metaphors
when they are mixing idioms.
For example, one when we
when someone says we'll burn that bridge,
when we get to it, of course
it's coming from two different idioms and they are mixed up.
The fourth is ambiguity in the system of the language.
It's one the the rules are not clear.
We have different versions of of idioms, different versions of words.
And and it's not clear which one
we should use in a certain context.
And the most interesting is the last two.
One of them is the changes in the language system, which is a
it's also based on Chesterman
that norms can change and can compete with each other
so new norms can start to be more and more acceptable.
And these butterflies in the stomach
thing is just a good example for that,
because it was evident that for those teenage girls
it was completely acceptable and it wasn't a norm violation.
But for me I feel that it is.
And, and the last one is interferences from another language.
And that's the most important for us
because those are words and idioms and everything else
that's coming through from the from another language.
And in dubbing, we can find a lot of instances of interferences
and why dubbing
yesterday we already heard why it is why it is beneficial to use
to use dubbing and audio visual translation in general.
Of course it is interesting
dubbing is good because it can be used in both ways.
There are many content to adopt into English
now, so so we can we can see those as well.
Thanks to Netflix, thanks to other streaming services
and they are not so good.
So it's very good because we have
a lot of interferences to to see and talk about.
Also, it is spoken language.
Even if it's prefabricated, it has to adhere to the norms
of spoken language.
So we can talk about spoken language and almost as well
and as I mentioned before, interferences can become norms and
and in a way, dubbing can be norms setting butterflies in the stomach.
Once again, a good example for that because it's definitely coming
from an interference that's becoming slowly a norm in Hungarian.
Okay.
And what is this video I, I used for my research?
Well, it took years to make
to tell the truth, because it's a 12 minute
video made from short clips from us and UK series dubbed into Hungarian.
And the thing is they are very popular series, but
I had to watch a lot of them because because I needed the experts
that had the freedom to fight known violations in them.
So I had to find a lot of instances of norm violations and then add
the few randomly chosen segments because I wasn't interested in
if they find the same norm violations as I identified previously.
But I wanted to know if they find others that I didn't
think about in advance.
So doing the research, a
layman, ordinary
viewers and translators watched this video and I asked them
without any further instruction to just
just underline mark the the the parts that they find
strange and natural
that they feel something is not right with
with the language of the dubbing.
And so there were viewers who didn't
speak English at all, just just Hungarian.
And they were also translators because I was interested
if they have different results with with the two groups
and the results was very interesting because both groups
identified more elements then than I have previously thought.
So it turned out that when they are asked to listen,
then they they they can see the and that you're on that.
So that being much better than I than I anticipated.
And since then, since I did this research
I continue to use this video
on the on May on May courses
when we are
watching this video and after that we are talking about why they think
they they've chosen dose specific elements in the in the text
and let's see what kind of natural elements
they identified or non violations
more like
they're mirror translations of of videos
that were false friends and mistranslations
I will talk about these in in in a bit more details
and there were also the register discrepancies
when the translator used poetic words in the spoken language
which was strange for the for the viewers.
They were a natural birth order, usually mirroring the English word
order in in the Hungarian version, there were lost
referential connections when the when the translator
just lost the links
between between the sentences and and
and the viewers couldn't follow the train of thoughts.
And they were also translation choices not attributing
to native speech norms, which was very interesting because there are
there are a typical
question answer types or there are
one welcoming someone, there are typical expressions used
and then they are not used in the in the Hungarian.
Then it comes across as strange.
Usually that that's one
is usually because of the of the restrictions of dubbing.
So they can't use that
because the Hungarian expression is much more long.
For example.
And I would like to present a few examples.
Maybe these are the easiest
to understand without without knowing Hungarian.
The first one is are we good?
Which has been the mirror translated into dubbing.
And it is.
And it is one of the instances
where the acceptance level is growing year by year.
I can see that every year less and less.
The students find it strange when it's mirror translated.
Although we have a Hungarian expression saying just the same. But.
But it's back translated here.
It's everything's all right.
And basically a Hungarian.
The second one once was drinks like a fish.
That's still strange when translated into Hungarian
the same way with fish, because we have an expression
saying that and it drinks like a pelican.
So many of people still recognize this as strange.
There's butterflies in the stomach.
Again, we can see that that that the acceptance level is raising
and plucking nerve, which we again
have a Hungarian expression puts my hand in it, basically. And
and it's strange for for people and it's interesting
because I did not identify this one previously.
That was a randomly chosen segment.
And but many of the viewers find it strange.
Also, we have false friends.
I don't want to go into details.
It's just that we have similar sounding birds,
but with very different meaning in Hungarian and all these
all these instances, they used similar sounding birds.
Of course, it was easy because then it's for due
to the dubbing restrictions and many of them
is getting more and more acceptable, especially pathetic and epic.
They are both getting more and more into Hungarian.
And I heard them and I heard them being used
by mostly by teenagers, but but also also
people in their twenties as well.
Lame. Lame is an interesting
is an
interesting thing because there because it was translated by
I think it was a creative attempt on on behalf of the translator.
It was translated by Lama which is lama the animal in Hungarian.
It doesn't really work.
I mean, most of the people find it strange still,
and we have mistranslations
for example,
in one excerpt, the you're welcome
at the end of a conversation was
was translated into welcome.
And it was really strange because you don't use welcome
at the end of a conversation.
So almost everyone everyone pinpointed this
that's a good example for for waiting expected speech formulates.
Another one is Martha's Vineyard.
The translator
didn't realize that it's a place and it's the name of the place.
And we had an entire conversation about
about the characters wanting
to rent a house from Martha, who has a vineyard
and and we just don't get it because who is Martha and why?
They want to want to rent a wine yards.
It's really strange.
And and all of the people realize that something
is not okay with this conversation.
Even those who had no idea
what the original one about the original was, even those
that do not speak English at all and never heard of Martha's Vineyard
even then feel that something is not right here.
Another one cover for me,
it was used in the battlefield expression.
But but in reality, in the in the experts, it was used for
for a verb situation.
So it becomes strange again.
And I promise and trust me, they have two different contextual
meanings and they were translated with non appropriate one,
and they are usually coming across strange.
So those were the results and but what is it good for and why?
I think it can be used for, for second language teaching as well.
I think it is very good because when talking about and hearing these
these norm violations we are identifying and the and the students
I and I are identifying language norms and that rules.
And it's very important because when we are learning second
language, I think it's much harder to to get the hang of the norms
of that language than than the actual rules.
And through analyzing interference and then talking about those
those instances of interference, we have a more systemic
view of the source language in relation to the target language.
And since it can be used both way, we can use it to to
make make the students more aware
of the of the differences between the two languages.
And also it is spoken language.
So we can talk about spoken language norms instead of
written language norms. Yeah.
And these no matter Francis I try to keep the time.
I think I managed it
and thank you
for your passion.
Thank you very much.
Very good with the time and we appreciate that.
It's another time for questions.
Many thanks for your interesting presentation.
I meant to ask whether these idioms drink like a fish,
have their counterparts in the target language.
They do well, how were they translated?
Well, drinks like a fish has a counterpart, but not with fish.
It had this pelican, but it was translated like right.
Like a fish as a mirror translated.
So it kept it.
Yeah.
They kept the fish instead of changing it to the pelican.
All right.
Also, butterflies in the stomach is a strange thing
because I don't think we have a a very exact equivalent in Hungarian.
And maybe that's why it's coming across.
Because. Because we can.
We can say that his heart was racing or things like that,
but nothing with the stomach.
We don't have the stomach in relation to love and.
No. Nervous. Yes. Yes.
But was
the translator not aware of the fish?
Think of the pelican.
That's a very good question.
I don't know.
But they are coming.
These interferences are coming across
again and again.
And I don't know why.
Maybe because of the dubbing industry.
They have to work really fast
and probably not paying enough attention.
Jumps up, jumps up to our minds to something that's different.
The culture from the language is standard idiom in the language.
One would would think about it without even hesitating.
So Fish was transferred over to the target language.
Yeah, it was like a mechanic way of way of translating.
And, and this I think it's interesting.
Once again, because we have now, although it's mostly for subtitling,
but we have now machine translation
added into the mix and I think that's the kind of mistake
a machine translator would probably do.
And, and someone who's, who's working with, with the text
after that should change it back to Vulkan in, in Hungarian.
But I don't know if they will so if they can variety
without machine translation then then there's the question
if it will be more and more of that kind of interferences in the future.
Thank you.
And keep.
Hi, Judith. Thanks very much.
I have a question.
You mentioned that translation or choices can also be a problem
if they don't adhere to native speech norms.
It sounds quite like a large definition.
So I was wondering, do maybe have a concrete example for that?
And wouldn't that be a problem because we have the suspension
of disbelief.
And if I see that as a Hungarian viewer,
I might think, yeah, but they're not Hungarian
because they don't do what I do.
So last question, maybe an example.
And the second one, do you know how that affects how you see this then?
Yeah, I have a good example in Hungarian,
but I think it's will it will
be of use for example in English when they say high it's very short.
And in Hungarian we have TR which is much longer
and we have a upwards maybe which is even longer.
And, and there's another expression
which is short, but no one uses it in, in, in real speech.
We have it, but no one uses it.
And translators, they just put it in everywhere when there's a high
and it's very bad because, because in real life no one uses it.
And that's an example because when when they are seeing
drops that I don't think they they find it strange anymore
because there are so many of it
in that that's also another one is that
cheers in English and I gave you this I gather that's just that's just
you just can do that
and then you use Kido for example, which is getting on it.
And that's again, it's no longer strange in dubbing because
because everyone knows it, but still no one uses it.
These are very strict in spoken language norms.
And and that's that's where they suspended this
That's okay in dubbing they say they say cheerio and they never
it says I guess she says that because just there's no place to
to put it in.
Yeah probably Yeah it can happen definitely.
When the questions
you. Know Thank you again.
Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.