Intonation Transferring: An Analysis Of Pitch Movements In Dubbed Translation

Abstract

The present article depicts the role of pitch movements in dubbing translation of the film from English into Russian. The special focus is placed on what implicit meaning intonation can convey. Using a comparative analysis of Australian sitcom and its Russian dubbed version, this paper tends to answer the question: whether the implicit meaning attached to the pitch contours of the original text is rendered in the target text in Russian or lost. The article analyses and discusses to what extent the implicatures in the original oral text are rendered in Russian translation or completely lost. The results revealed that a comparatively small percentage of implicatures has been transmitted and partially the loss of meaning is observed. But the findings obtained showed that viewers of the film can easily restructure the lost implicatures made by tone variations mostly due to the play of the actors and the situation on the whole.

Keywords: Audiovisual translation, dubbing, intonation, pitch movements

Introduction

Transmitting of intonation remains the most problematic area in the sphere of Audiovisual translation (hence after AVT). It is a widely held view that a few research papers show their findings in translation of pitch movements and other parameters of intonation in dubbed dialogues. It is almost certain that intonation conveys linguistic function, plays a key role in regulating discourse and serves as an important indicator of speaker’s identity, age, gender, psychological state and sociolinguistic membership (Shevchenko, 2015). Because of all these researchers have become concerned about the way foreign language speakers and listeners perceive English intonation in the translated version of the film. This concern has led to a number of investigations of transmitting English intonation into other languages. For instance, the Spanish researcher Sánchez-Mompeán (2019) contributed a lot into the area of translation implicatures made by intonation from English into Spanish. However, such research works haven’t been made so far in English-Russian translation. Baños-Piñero and Chaume (2009) indicate that intonation becomes as a super communicative device which status in translation remains unknown. Mateo (2014) also says about the crucial role of intonation in transmitting different shades of meaning and the importance of transmitting into other languages. Indeed, how the characters of the film speak explains the situation of communication and general understanding of the speech.

A much debated question is whether the difference in pitch movements in languages can influence the listeners’ interpretation. There is still uncertainty, however, whether the meaning of the sentence can be changed due to the change in pitch direction. The difference in the phonetic structure of the speech should be taken into account if we speak about different languages. As a matter of fact, English conveys more information via intonation in comparison with other languages (Wells, 2006). Studies of Hatim and Munday show the importance of acquiring the equivalent translation which requires the offsetting of the lost implications made by intonation and correspondence to the norms of the target language (TL) as well (Hatim & Munday, 2004). Moreover, as Koryachkina (2017) reported, the complete change of sound while dubbing allows altering the semantic content of the utterance and the structure of communication itself.

The present article will highlight the difficulties of transferring intonation with special concern in dubbing where the change in pitch direction immediately change the pragmatic and attitudinal functions of conversation resulting in the loss of meaning. This complexity makes this study of a special interest especially from an AVT perspective.

Problem Statement

In spoken languages, intonation serves diverse linguistic and paralinguistic functions, ranging from the marking of sentence modality to the expression of emotional and attitudinal nuances. It is Bolinger’s (1986) view when he claims that intonation is part of a gestural complex, a relatively autonomous system with attitudinal effects. Linguistic and paralinguistic meanings can add different nuances to the speaker's words depending on the context and become a rich source of information for both the addresser and the addressee. The implicatures (Grice, 1975) added by intonation can affect the content in varying degrees. When the speaker's use of intonation changes the denotative content of the original sentence, word or phrase, intonation affects propositional content. Conversely, when the speaker's intonation adds implicatures to the denotative content of the sentence, it affects presuppositional content rather than propositional one (Wennerstrom, 2001).

One major issue in Tench (1996) research concerned the fact that intonation can give meaning to the linguistic content simultaneously operating by three subsystems. Firstly, a speaker should structure the utterance by dividing it into logical parts. Secondly, he/she chooses the most prominent word, i.e. the nucleus, and last but not least, a speaker chooses a particular pitch contour. As for Wells (2006) a speaker can add implicational meaning to the utterance by simply changing the pitch of the voice.

The question has been raised that translation is not only choosing the equivalents for the TL words and phrases but also the interpretation of the meaning and adaptation it to the target audience and to the linguistic environment of the TL. Translation is about the embedding the meaning into another cultural system (Pym, 2010). Much uncertainty still exists about a dubbed translator whose task is even more complicated since he works with many signifying codes that operate simultaneously to produce the meaning. As a result of such interference of codes is the production of verbal and non-verbal signs one of which is intonation. In spite of the fact that the priority in transferring is given to the verbal content (problematic issue in the discourse of cinema) intonation is required a special attention of a translator. A translator can lose implying meaning together with the intonation. All these make intonation transferring a problematic area in translation.

Research Questions

By means of comparative analysis of intonation in two languages (English and Russian) our research tends to answer the questions: What kind of sentences can have implicatures? Are the pitch movements changed in the translation of the film? Is the meaning attached to source language (SL) intonation conveyed in TL or lost in translation?

The material for our paper is the aural and visual instances drawn from the Australian sitcom Mako Mermaids (Source Text (ST)) (Shiff & Clarry, 2013a) and their corresponding translations into Russian target text (TT). The plot of the series is based on the adventures of three mermaids and their land friend Zac who turns accidentally into a merman. In order to deprive him from his power to control the water, mermaids need to overcome different tasks.

Three episodes (3, 9 and 13) from Season one, which aired on Network Tena and Nickelodeon beginning from 2013 up to 2016 were selected arbitrarily for the comparative analysis and examined in full length. Three original and three dubbed episodes, total duration of 140 minutes, were analyzed in both languages.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this research is to find out whether the form of the nuclear tone is conveyed in translation or not and what happens if the pitch movement changes. This paper also attempts to show to what extent the implicit meaning attached to intonation is conveyed or lost in translation and to decide whether the significant variations in the meaning of tone in translation influences the denotative content of the target text.

Research Methods

Findings

Percentage of transmitted and non-transmitted nuclear tones

After the analysis of intonation in both languages we managed to find out as shown in Figure 1 that only in 34 % of cases the content of the message was transformed via the same use of nuclear tone. In 66 % of cases the content of the message was not transformed because there was the change in the nuclear tone. Despite remarkable high percent of ‘not transmitted’ pitch movement we can’t speak about the drastic ‘loss of information’ (only 16.5 % of instances).

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The obtained results were divided into two groups whether or not the implications made by the intonation was transmitted into the target text or not. The first group constitutes the cases where intonation was managed to be transmitted into the Russian text. All implications carried by intonation in English were saved in Russian dubbed dialogues through the coincidence with the same tone or just the meaning of intonation was clear via visual code. Not transmitted instances are those which failed to reflect the meaning attached to the tonal patterns. The latter group includes two types of examples. The first subgroup shows no loss of information in spite of the loss or change of nucleus. The second subgroup includes instances which bring drastic changes in the meaning of the original character.

Conclusion

The present paper tends to find out the function of the pitch of the voice to be the means to express the additional shades of meaning and potentially be the means to resolve the ambiguity. According to our findings, the dubbed dialogues are characterized by a high percent of non-transmitted pitch movements. We found out that in oral discourse especially in the dubbed translation there is a wide range of communicative types of sentences which can possess difficulties for a translator of AVT.

For both languages various means of expressing emotions are required, thus demanding the translator thinks about not only what the characters say but as well as how they say. As results show only in 34 % of instances the pitch variations were rendered in TT whereas in 66% of instances there was the loss on a nuclear tone. However, as results illustrate that in 49.5 % of instances with a loss of nucleus in TT there was not a loss of equivalence where the viewers can catch the implicit meaning of a sentence due to visual code. And only in 16.5 % of instances there was a complete loss of meaning where even the denotative content of the sentence is changed.

Our research showed that the transferring of meaning made by tone presented difficulties in translation. The change in pitch in TT can cause the change of the speaker’s attitude, lead to undesirable associations as well as changes of the communicative intention of the speaker. Only good knowledge of meaning of English tones might be the key to produce pragmatically efficient text in other language.

We also found out that despite the case of the loss of nucleus, viewers of the film can easily recover the lost implicatures made by tone variations mostly due to the play of the actors and the situation on the whole.

References

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• Bolinger, D. L. (1986). Intonation and its Parts. Melody in Spoken English. Stanford University Press.

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• Shevchenko, O. G. (2015). Sociolinguistic Perspective on Teaching English Intonation for Adult Learners. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 200, 607–613. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282314167_Sociolinguistic_Perspective_on_Teaching_English_Intonation_for_Adult_Learners

• Shiff, J. M., & Clarry, E. (2013a). Mako Mermaids [Motion picture]. Network Ten and Nickelodeon.

• Shiff, J. M. (2013b). The Siren [Television series season 1, episode 9], in J. Shiff (Producer) Mako Mermaids. Network Ten and Nickelodeon.

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