Cover not available
Article published In:
Traduire, écrire, réécrire dans un monde en mutation / Writing and Translating as changing Practices: Volume I
Edited by Fayza El Qasem and Freddie Plassard
[FORUM 15:2] 2017
► pp. 288–304

Subtitling for a global audience

Handling the translation of culture-specific items in TEDx talks

 | Universitat Politècnica de València
TED.com is a platform to share ideas through influential talks in video format on topics that range from science and technology to business that engages volunteers from all over the world to help transcribe, subtitle and translate their scripts in more than 100 languages. The justification to engage volunteer transcribers is that transcribed talks can reach a wider audience because they are accessible for hearing impaired individuals, can be indexed in search engines and can achieve TED’s mission of spreading ideas by making transcripts available for translation through TED’s Open Translation Project.
Therefore, talks transcribers play a crucial role in the overall translation workflow and dissemination process as they are responsible for transcribing the contents and foundations of what will be later on translated into different languages. The objective of this paper is to analyse a corpus of talks originally delivered in different variants of Spanish to identify the most common strategies used by volunteer transcribers to handle local or idiomatic expressions and culturally biased items to reach the maximum audience possible and facilitate translation.
Keywords: subtitling, translation, TEDx, localization, neutral Spanish
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.TED talks and community translation
    • 2.1Subtitling
  • 3.Culture-specific items in translation
  • 4.Analysis and discussion
    • 4.1Greetings and ways of addressing the audience
    • 4.2Culture-specific references
    • 4.3Idiomatic expressions and lexical differences
  • 5.Conclusions
  • References
Published online: 1 December 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/forum.15.2.07can
References (29)
References
Chaume, Frederic. 2013. “The Turn of Audiovisual Translation: New Audiences and New Technologies.” Translation Spaces 2 (1): 105–123. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cronin, Michael. 2010. “The Translation Crowd.” Tradumàtica: tecnologies de la traducció 81: 1–7.Google Scholar
Díaz-Cintas, Jorge, and Pablo Muñoz-Sánchez. 2006. “Fansubs: Audiovisual Translation in an amateur environment.” The Journal of Specialised Translation 61: 37–52.Google Scholar
Díaz Cintas, Jorge, and Aline Remael. 2014. Audiovisual Translation: subtitling. New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fernandez Costales, Alberto. 2011. “Crowdsourcing and collaborative translation: Mass phenomena of silent threat to translation studies.” Hermeneus 151: 85–110.Google Scholar
Fernández Vítores, David. 2016. El español: Una lengua viva. Informe 2016. Madrid: Instituto Cervantes. Accessed July 10, 2016. [URL]
Guardini, Paola. 1998. “Decision‐making in subtitling.” Perspectives 6 (1): 91–112. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jiménez Crespo, Miguel Ángel. 2013. Translation and Web Localization. New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Katan, David. 1999. Translating Cultures. An introduction for Translators, Interpreters and Mediators. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing.Google Scholar
Kelly, Nataly, Rebecca Ray, and Donald A. De Palma. 2011. “From crawling to sprinting: Community translation goes mainstream.” Linguistica Antverpiensia, New Series – Themes in Translation Studies 101: 75–94.Google Scholar
Leppihalme, Ritva. 1997. Culture bumps. An empiric approach to the translation of allusions. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Newmark, Peter. 1981. Approaches to Translation. Oxford: Pergamon Press.Google Scholar
. 1988. A Textbook on Translation. Hertfordshire: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Nida, Eugene. 1964. Towards a Science of Translating with special reference to principles and procedures involved in Bible translating. Leiden: E.J. Brill.Google Scholar
O’Brien, Sharon. 2011. “Collaborative translation” In Handbook of Translation Studies 21, ed by Yves Gambier, and Luc van Doorslaer, 17–20. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
O’Hagan, Minako and David Ashworth. 2002. Translation Mediated Communication in a Digital World: Facing the challenges of globalization and localization. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
O’Hagan, Minako. 2009. “Evolution of User-generated Translation: Fansubs, Translation Hacking and Crowdsourcing.” Journal of Internationalisation and Localisation 1 (1): 94–121. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
O’Hagan, Minako. 2011. “Community Translation: Translation as a social activity and its possible consequences in the advent of Web 2.0 and beyond.” Linguistica Antverpiensia, New Series – Themes in Translation Studies 101: 11–23.Google Scholar
Olohan, Maeve. 2014. “Why do you translate? Motivation to volunteer and TED translation.” Translation Studies 7 (1): 17–33.Google Scholar
Open Translation Project (OTP). Accessed May 20, 2016. [URL]
Paul, Michael, Marcello Federico, and Sebastian Stüker. 2010. “Overview of the IWSLT 2010 evaluation campaign.” In Proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Spoken Language Translation 101: 3–27.
Pedersen, Jan. 2007. “Cultural interchangeability: The effects of substituting cultural references in subtitling.” Perspectives: Studies in Translatology 15 (1): 30–48. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pérez Fernández, Lucila María. 2010. “La localización de videojuegos: una propuesta didáctica” In La traducción en contextos especializados. Propuestas didácticas, ed by Esperanza Alarcón Navío, Granada: Atrio, 277–286.Google Scholar
Perrino, Saverio. 2009. “User-generated Translation: The Future of Translation in a Web 2.0 Environment.” The Journal of Specialised Translation 121: 55–78.Google Scholar
Reiss, Katharina and Hans Vermeer. 1996. Fundamentos para una teoría fundacional de la traducción. Madrid: Akal.Google Scholar
Vázquez Ayora, Gerardo. 1977. Introducción a la traductología. Curso básico de traducción. Washington: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Vinay, Jean-Paul and Jean Darbelnet. 1965. Stylistique comparée du français et de l’anglais. Méthode de traduction. Paris: Didier.Google Scholar
Vlakhov, Sergei and Sider Florin. 1970. “Neperevodimoe v perevode: realii,” [The unstranslatable in translation, realia] In Mastersvo perevoda. Moscú: Sovetskii pisatel, 432–456.Google Scholar