MISTAKES IN AUDIOVISUAL TRANSLATION: LINGUISTIC AND DIDACTIC ASPECTS

Abstract

Introduction: Mistakes in audiovisual translation are generally caused by a wide range
of lingual and extralingual factors. Translators’ unawareness of the nature of these factors hampers
the process of translation and results in misinterpretation of the message by the addressee.
With fansubbing and crowdsourcing spreading worldwide, more and more experts are becoming
concerned with poor quality translations sprouting up before or simultaneously with the
professionally interpreted or dubbed versions. Ukraine seems to have finally overcome the hardly
comprehensible voiceover of pirate DVDs (a sad legacy of the early 1990s). However, Ukrainian
audience is still struggling to understand some of the ‘quick fix’ versions of TV series, which
appear to be too numerous to be properly translated.
Purpose: The objective of the article is to analyze typical mistakes that can occur
in audiovisual translation and to outline the major causes of these mistakes.
Methods: The research is based on randomly selected cases of inadequate voiceover
translation of English fiction and documentary series into Ukrainian and Russian. The choice
of the films was prompted by the commentaries of Internet-users who indicated insufficient
quality of translation of these films. Mistakes found were then analyzed from the point of view
of language and culture-specific constraints, interpreting mode constraints and personal constraints
that might have affected the translator’s choice.
Results: Apart from widely known linguistic phenomena of polysemy, homonymy,
lexical lacunas, there are other stumbling blocks to faithful translation, such as lack of attention
to historical and cultural context, inappropriate stylistic toning, thematic irrelevance, and even blunt incoherence of verbal and visual features, etc. Due to the multimode nature of audiovisual
translations some of the problems could easily be solved if translators actually watched the film,
instead of hastily working on the script.
Conclusions: Similar analysis of translators’mistakes is suggested as a means of teaching
novice translators to develop efficient tools of overcoming difficult cases while translating
foreign films.