MASARYKOVA UNIVERZITA

FILOZOFICKÁ FAKULTA

DIPLOMOVÁ PRÁCE

BRNO 2006 PAVEL REICH

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 MASARYK UNIVERSITY
FACULTY OF ARTS

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND AMERICAN STUDIES

THE FILM AND THE BOOK

IN TRANSLATION

PAVEL REICH

SUPERVISOR: PHDR. JARMILA FICTUMOVÁ

BRNO 2006

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Hereby I declare that I have worked on this diploma thesis independently using
only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

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I would like to express my sincere thanks to my supervisor PhDr. Jarmila
Fictumová for her ideas, inspiring guidance and kind assistance.

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Contents
1. Introduction.............................................................................................................................7
2. Audiovisual Translation..........................................................................................................8
2. 2. Subdivision of audiovisual translation............................................................................8
2. 3. Intralingual Audiovisual Translation..............................................................................9
2. 3. 1. Subtitling for the hard-of-hearing and the deaf.......................................................9
2. 3. 2. Audio description for the blind..............................................................................9
2. 3. 3. Live Subtitling (e.g. news broadcasts)...................................................................9
2. 3. 4. Surtitling for the opera and the theatre................................................................10
2.4. Interlingual audiovisual translation................................................................................10
2. 4. 1 Interlingual Audiovisual Translation in the Past...................................................11
2. 4. 1. 1. Early History.................................................................................................11
2. 4. 1. 2. History of Subtitling.....................................................................................11
2. 4. 1. 3. History of Dubbing.......................................................................................12
2. 4. 2. Interlingual Audiovisual Translation at Present...................................................14
2. 4. 2. 1. Situation in Europe.......................................................................................14
2. 4. 2. 2. Subtitling vs. Dubbing..................................................................................15
2. 4. 2. 3. Costs of Various Audiovisual Translation Types.........................................16
2. 4. 2. 4. Various Types of Audiovisual Translation as perceived by the audience....16
2. 4. 2. 5. Globalisation of Audiovisual Translation.....................................................17
2. 4. 2. 6. The Job of Audiovisual Translator...............................................................18
2. 4. 2. 7. Fake Subtitles................................................................................................18
3. Differences between Literary and Audiovisual Translations................................................19
3. 1. Subtitling.......................................................................................................................20
3. 1. 1. The Process of Subtitling......................................................................................20
Position on the Screen...................................................................................................21
Number of Lines...........................................................................................................21
Text Positioning............................................................................................................21
Number of Characters per Line.....................................................................................22
Typeface and Distribution.............................................................................................22
3. 1. 2. Duration of a Subtitle............................................................................................22
3. 1. 3. Synchronisation.....................................................................................................23
3. 1. 4. Punctuation...........................................................................................................24
3. 1. 5. Other Conventions................................................................................................25
3. 1. 6. Translation and adaptation of the subtitles...........................................................26
3. 1. 6. 1. Omission.......................................................................................................27
3. 1. 6. 2. Use of simple vocabulary..............................................................................27
3. 1. 6. 3. Simple syntax................................................................................................27
3. 1. 7. Subtitles Editing....................................................................................................28
3. 1. 7. 1. Subtitling of written texts..............................................................................29
3. 1. 8. ESIST....................................................................................................................29
3. 2. Revoicing.....................................................................................................................30
3. 2. 1. Voice-over, narration and free commentary.........................................................30
3. 2. 2. Dubbing.................................................................................................................30
3. 2. 2. 1. Dubbing Translation....................................................................................31
3. 2. 2. 2. Dubbing Adaptation......................................................................................31
3. 2. 2. 3. Synchronism.................................................................................................31
3. 3. Conclusion on Subtitling and Dubbing.........................................................................33

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4. Harry Potter...........................................................................................................................34
4. 1. Potential Translation Problems and their Czech Solutions...........................................34
4. 1. 1. British Culture.......................................................................................................34
4. 1. 2. Names, Spells and Neologisms.............................................................................37
4. 1. 3. Language of the Characters..................................................................................39
4. 2. Differences between the Book and the Film.................................................................39
4. 3. Czech Audiovisual Translations of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone............41
4. 3. 1. Official DVD Dubbing.........................................................................................41
4. 3. 2. Official DVD Subtitles.........................................................................................42
4. 3. 3. Fake Subtitles........................................................................................................44
4. 3. 3. 1. Fake Subtitles 1............................................................................................44
4. 3. 3. 2. Fake Subtitles 2............................................................................................49
4. 4. Differences between Audiovisual and Literary Translations........................................51
4. 4. 1. British Culture.......................................................................................................51
4. 4. 2. Names, spells and neologisms..............................................................................51
4. 4. 2. 1. Names...........................................................................................................51
4. 4. 2. 2. Spells.............................................................................................................53
4. 4. 3. Language of the characters...................................................................................54
4. 4. 4. Addressing Students..............................................................................................54
4. 4. 5. Dialogues..............................................................................................................55
5. Conclusion............................................................................................................................56
Works Cited..............................................................................................................................58
Primary Sources................................................................................................................58
Secondary Sources............................................................................................................58

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1. Introduction
Audiovisual translation (and subtitling in particular) is a branch of translation studies,
which has been neglected by translatology scholars until very recently. As a result of this
marginalization, no subtitler actually knew how exactly the job should be done. This situation
has been improving in recent years owing particularly to the European Association for Studies
in Screen Translation. Academic research has started in this field and several works
concerning audiovisual translation have been published. The aim of this work is to contribute
to the exploration of this interesting field of study.
Its first part deals with audiovisual translation as such since this kind of translation is
characterized by certain particularities. In case of subtitling it is especially the lack of space
and time. The translation is influenced by confined space available for the subtitle text, the
time available for and between subtitle exposures, the timing of subtitle insertion and removal
and last but not least the display and format of the subtitles. Besides, the subtitler has to take
into account the average reading speed of the viewers.
As for the dubbing, its main aim is to seem natural and authentic. The performed
translation must match the lip movements of the speaker on the screen as closely as possible,
especially when the actor is shown in a close-up. There are usually more people cooperating,
one of them making a raw translation and another one rewriting it in order to match it with the
lip movements of the person seen on the screen.
All these factors influence the translation and make it very different from a literary
translation.
The second part of the thesis deals with a particular film – Harry Potter and the
Philosopher’s Stone. First of all, the translation of the book is examined with emphasis being
laid on potential translation problems and their solutions in the Czech translation. In order to
be able to treat the translation differences between a film and a book on which it is based, it is
also necessary to know the differences between the book and the film themselves. Thus,
various kinds of changes (particularly elision which is almost mandatory in all films based
on novels) are treated in a separate chapter.
There are two basic aims of the thesis. The first one is to find out what the difference
is between the subtitled versions and the dubbed version as far as content and means of
expression are concerned and to find out whether it corresponds to the theoretical principles
mentioned in the first part of the work.

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 The second aim is to find out whether the solution to the potential translation problems
is the same in the book and in the film and whether the audiovisual translations are inspired
by their literary counterpart in cases when the film script and book dialogues are the same.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is an ideal choice for such a study. It is
based on a novel, which has become well known all over the world and has been translated
into many languages. Moreover, there are many die-hard fans that know the book almost by
heart and are capable of noting almost any minor discrepancy in the translation of the film.

2. Audiovisual Translation
“Audiovisual translation refers to the translation of products in which the verbal
dimension is supplemented by elements in other media” (Diaz-Cintas,
http://www.literarytranslation.com/workshops/almodovar).
Diaz-Cintas suggests three possibilities: 1) the message is conveyed only auditorily as,
for example, in songs and radio programmes, or 2) the only channel used is the visual one:
comic strips, published advertisements, etc. or 3) both auditory and visual channels convey
the message as in products such as films, CD-ROMs or documentaries. Because of the mix of
different communication systems such as images, sound (music, noise) and the verbal
component (oral production, written text), the translation of audiovisual materials is
characterised by particular limitations. These make audiovisual translation very different from
literary translation.

2. 2. Subdivision of audiovisual translation

Serban devides audiovisual translation into two groups: intralingual and interlingual.

1) Intralingual Audiovisual Translation

In this kind of translation the source language is the same as the target language. There
are three main types of intralingual audiovisual translation: subtitling for the hearing
impaired, audio description for the blind, live subtitling and surtitling for the opera and
theatre.

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2) Interlingual audiovisual translation
Television programmes and films are translated to foreign languages. The interlingual
translation can be either visual which is known as subtitling, or aural, in which case the whole
soundtrack is replaced (Luyken, 11).

2. 3. Intralingual Audiovisual Translation

2. 3. 1. Subtitling for the hard-of-hearing and the deaf

As stated by Ivarsson and Carroll, subtitles for the hard-of-hearing and the deaf are
intended especially for people with hearing problems although other people can benefit from
them as well. They are prepared specifically for this target group and are transmitted via
teletext (129 – 133).
Ivarsson and Carroll also maintain that the subtitles for the hearing impaired differ
from translated subtitles mainly in that they adhere to slightly different norms for reading
speed and syntax and include additional information (e.g. indication of who is saying what,
usually by assigning a special colour of subtitles to each of the main characters).

2. 3. 2. Audio description for the blind

Ivarsson and Carroll also speak about audio description for the blind. This kind of
translation is an additional narrative that fits between the original dialogue and describes
everything that is seen in the film or on the stage. It includes descriptions of e.g. actions,
facial expressions, clothing and scenery and helps the blind to understand the plot of the story.
As far as TV, video and DVD are concerned, the description has to be carefully balanced with
the original soundtrack. As for the theatre, there are usually several people working as
describers, as the task would be too demanding for one person.

2. 3. 3. Live Subtitling (e.g. news broadcasts)

Live subtitling might be sometimes used during news broadcasts. The main problem is
that as writing at the same speed as normal speech is practically impossible with a standard
keyboard, even with highly developed abbreviation programmes, special “chord keyboards”

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have to be used. These allow the typist to press two or more keys at the same time, i.e. to
write syllables and even whole words instead of single letters. Together with special
programmes, which are capable of correcting errors, it is possible to obtain the subtitles in a
reasonable time limit (Ivarsson and Carroll, 133).

2. 3. 4. Surtitling for the opera and the theatre

Ivarsson and Carroll also deal with surtitles or supertitles. These are often used during
musical performances, especially the opera. In general, they are the translated or transcribed
lyrics projected above the scene. They may be used either to translate the meaning of the
lyrics to the audience’s language, or to transcribe lyrics that may be difficult to understand in
the sung form. They are usually displayed using a supertitling machine.
Surtitling for theatre follows the same principles as subtitling for television. The only
exception is the speed of the surtitles. As the audience have to move their gaze a great
distance from the actors to the display above the stage, the surtitles have to be even slower
than subtitles in a film (Ivarsson and Carroll, 19 – 20).

2.4. Interlingual audiovisual translation

The aim of interlingual translation is to make the audiovisual production (films, TV
programmes etc.) comprehensible for audiences who cannot understand the language in which
it was made, and thus improve the possibility of exporting it abroad.
Interlingual translation, designated for all cinema, television or video, can be divided
into two groups: 1) revoicing, which consists of lip-sync dubbing, voice-overs and narration
and 2) subtitling.
Luyken describes revoicing as “the replacement of a programme’s voice track by a
version, either of the same or new dialogue, translated into another language or dialect. The
visual appearance of the programme remains unaltered from the original, but is usually edited
so as to accommodate optimum lip-synchronisation” (39). Subtitles are described by the same
author as “mostly condensed translations of original dialogue (or on-screen text) which appear
as lines of text usually positioned towards the foot of the screen. The subtitles appear and
disappear in time with the corresponding portion of original dialogue or text. Some subtitles
are ‘reduced’ or they can be bilingual” (39).

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 Although these two types of production of audiovisual translation are obviously very
different, they have one major feature in common: they interfuse linguistics, science,
technology, art and aesthetics. All these have to be mixed harmoniously enough so as the final
result (subtitles or dubbing) is comprehensible and comfortable as much as possible for the
viewer. Any inconvenience can annoy the audience and thus negatively affect the final
perception of the whole audiovisual product by the target language viewers.

2. 4. 1 Interlingual Audiovisual Translation in the Past

2.4.1.1. Early History

Although all the production in the early years of film industry was silent, there was,
according to Ivarsson and Carroll, very strong intention to convey to the viewers the dialogue,
which is spoken by actors on the screen. This was solved by intertitles – a predecessor of
today’s subtitles. The intertitles were short texts written on a paper and inserted between
sequences of a film. Later on they started to be called subtitles. Translating such a dialogue
was very easy. Intertitles or subtitles in the original language were removed and after the
translation they were placed again into the film. But there existed even easier ways.
Sometimes a speaker translated the text simultaneously in the cinema during projection (9).
But after the invention of sound film in late 1920s, a new serious problem appeared as
far as translation of the dialogue is concerned. According to Kautský, the first way of dealing
with this problem was multilingual filming. This means that one film was shot several times,
successively in English, German, Italian and French. The scenario of such a film was
translated into these languages and every scene had to be shot four times on the same set.
When English actors have finished, Kautský claims, they were replaced by Germans, who
were then replaced by Italians etc. But it is obvious that this way of film internationalisation
had to be abandoned very soon. Not only was it extremely expensive, but it was also very
time-consuming (the shooting itself as well as the journey of European actors to the United
States). Furthermore, people who did not speak any of these four languages did not
understand the film anyway. That is why new ways of film translation had to be found.

2.4.1.2. History of Subtitling

Subtitles directly followed intertitles. As maintained by Ivarsson, the main difference
was that they were not inserted between film sequences, but directly into the picture. The

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process was rather complicated and the results were very poor. Scientists in several European
countries (mainly Hungary, France and Scandinavian countries) tried to improve the way of
inserting subtitles on the distribution copies of the film. Success came in 1933 when chemical
subtitling was invented in Hungary and Sweden (although the first subtitled film ever was
shown in Copenhagen as early as 1929). Other techniques of transferring the translated
subtitles to film followed (mechanical and thermal, photochemical, optical, laser) (7).
Ivarsson also claims that an important landmark in the history of subtitling was its
emergence on TV. When television broadcasting started to operate, it was only a matter of
time when foreign cinema films would be shown in this new medium. That moment came in
August 1938 when Arthur Robinson’s Der Student von Prag was presented on BBC.
However, the showing itself was rather disappointing. It was found immediately, that subtitles
made for the cinema are not convenient enough for television. As the picture on a TV set has
a narrower contrast range than that on a cinema screen, the subtitles were almost illegible.
Furthermore, the ability of the audience to read subtitles on a TV screen is much slower than
on a cinema screen. It thus started to be necessary to produce subtitles for TV, different from
those designated for the cinema (7 – 8).
Later stages of sutbtitling history are described by Ivarsson and Carroll. As for the
making of subtitles, it was done by several people in separate work processes. The spotting
was done by a technician who usually had no knowledge of the source language. He just
marked the in times and out times of every utterance into a dialogue list. Afterwards, these
times were converted to a specific number of characters. The translator then had to fit his
translation into this number of characters, usually without ever having seen the film. Finally,
another technician had the job of typing the subtitles onto the type plates or later on, onto the
computer disks from which they were transferred to the film. The final result was very often
full of errors. A turning point came in the 1980s. Advances in computer technology and new
subtitling programmes allowed translators to carry out the whole process of subtitling (timing,
translation and revision) on their own. They had the film on a videocassette and thus only
needed a video recorder connected to their personal computer. Even that is now history, as
films are now stored on DVDs which can be inserted directly into the computer.

2.4.1.3. History of Dubbing

The history of dubbing is treated in detail by Kautský. His findings can be summarized
as follows.

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 The evolution of dubbing is different from the one of subtitling in that it varies from
one country to another. Its origins are in the United States, but it has been used mainly in
Europe, where it first appeared in 1936.
Kautský claims that first attempts at dubbing date back to the 1930s. The quality was
very poor and it was rejected. At the beginning, it was usually one person (often the translator
himself) who dubbed all the characters of a film. A typical example of such a dubbing is H.C.
Raymakery’s “Na stopě”, which was translated, spoken, edited and mixed by one person. This
was also the first film ever dubbed in Czechoslovakia (1933). Later, several people started to
perform postsynchronisation. But the quality did not improve much. The dialogues sounded
unnatural, the text was badly synchronised, the performance of the actors was usually rather
poor and as a whole it was acoustically very badly done. All these facts were very irritating
for the spectators. But there was another problem, which contributed to the unpopularity of
early dubbing in Czechoslovakia: the audience simply could not get used to the fact that
people in the United States or France speak Czech instead of English or French. This was,
according to Kautský, considered very funny and uncomfortable.
As stated by Kautský, the evolution of dubbing was strongly contributed to by
television. It was decided that all films in Czechoslovak television would be dubbed. The
main reason was the supposition that viewers should feel as much at ease in front of the TV as
possible. If the films were subtitled, they would have to concentrate much more than when
they are dubbed. Another reason was the unsuitability of cinema subtitles for television.
In the early days of TV dubbing, as claimed by Kautský, only a few actors were
involved. They simply read the subtitles at the same time when the subtitles were shown on
the screen. One actor dubbed several film characters. Later on, an unsubtitled version of the
film was broadcasted, but the performance of the dubbers was not much better.
The next evolution stage of dubbing was “live dubbing”. In this process the dialogue
was translated specifically for this purpose and the number of dubbing actors was the same as
the number of characters in the film. But the main inconvenience was the fact that it was
broadcasted live, which means that actors were performing only once without any possibility
of correction or change. They successively took their turns on one chair using one pair of
earphones. All the noise they made (such as coughing, moving the chair, putting the
earphones on and off, steps) was heard in the dubbing. The quality of the final product was
obviously very low. It was only in 1964 when loop dubbing started. Its quality increased
progressively and Czech dubbing soon became one of the best in Europe. In the loop system
the whole film is divided into several parts or loops, all actors are present and dub the whole

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loop so many times until the director is satisfied. This method ensures high quality of the
dubbing, but is very time-consuming.
As stated by Bajerová, Škovrová and Tomíček, full opening of the market for foreign
films, the possibility of watching films on video and new TV channels in the 1990s caused a
sudden rise in the demand for dubbing. New dubbing studios appeared, especially in Prague.
As everything had to be done as fast as possible, the quality of dubbing has dropped. This
situation seems to be improving in the last few years as only the best of these studios have
survived and as the expertise of people doing this job has improved
(http://www.dabing.info/historie.html).
Besides, a new method appeared in the 1990s. It was the unilinear dubbing – there is
always only one actor present in the studio who dubs his character continuously from the
beginning to the end of the film. If the director is dissatisfied, they only have to redo only the
particular part in which they made a mistake. As the unilinear dubbing is faster and cheaper
than the loop dubbing, it is now preferred by an overwhelming majority of dubbing studios
(Bajerová, Škvorová, Tomíček, http://www.dabing.info/historie.html).

2. 4. 2. Interlingual Audiovisual Translation at Present

2. 4. 2. 1. Situation in Europe
Luyken divides European countries into several groups according to their attitude towards
translating audiovisual production. There are 1) dubbing countries, 2) subtitling countries 3)
countries using both subtitling and dubbing, and 4) countries using other types of audiovisual
translation (mainly voice-over) (31 – 39).

1) Dubbing countries are those that use lip-synchronisation both at cinema and television.
They are Germany (together with Austria), France, Italy and Spain. Only in such
countries the market is large enough so that the expensive production of dubbing can
be profitable. Spain can be here considered as an exception, Luyken claims, since the
main reason why dubbing started to be used in this country was a big proportion of
illiterate population.
2) Subtitling countries are, on the other hand, those which subtitle everything, being it for
the cinema or television. They are small Western European countries where foreign-

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 language programme has a high share of total programme output and where the
market is not big enough to sustain dubbing. Typical examples of such countries are
the Netherlands, Portugal or Scandinavian countries. The only case in which subtitling
countries use dubbing are films and TV programmes for children who are not able to
read the subtitles.
3) The third group is formed by Central European countries (Czech Republic, Slovakia,
Hungary) using both subtitling and dubbing, the former for cinema, the latter for
television broadcast. Sometimes subtitled programmes appear on TV as well,
especially those meant for particular viewers.
4) The fourth group is the one of rather poor Central and Eastern European countries
using voice-over. Especially Poland is well-known for this practice, but there are
others (e.g. Latvia, Lithuania or Estonia).

2. 4. 2. 2. Subtitling vs. Dubbing

Both these main techniques of audiovisual translation have their pros and cons and it is
important to stress that neither of them is better than the other in a general way. Advocates of
subtitling point out that it is much cheaper than dubbing, it keeps the original dialogue and
that the viewer can hear the original actor’s voice (unlike dubbing where it is lost). Another
important reason is the fact that films with subtitles promote learning of foreign languages as
the audience can hear the foreign language and at the same time reads the translation.
According to many, this might contribute to the fact that the majority of inhabitants of the
dubbing countries are much worse at learning foreign languages (English in particular) than
inhabitants of the subtitling countries.
But, on the other hand, subtitling also has substantial disadvantages. Not only is the
reduction of original information much higher than in the case of dubbing, but subtitles also
distract the viewers, which means that the audience has to perceive the written text together
with the image and that can be very inconvenient. Furthermore, the viewer cannot follow the
story whenever he is distracted from watching. These are only some pros and cons of
subtitling and dubbing. As far as voice-over is concerned, there is only one advantage: low
cost. This technique thus cannot be considered as equipollent to the ones of subtitling and
dubbing.
As it is impossible to state which of these practices (subtitling and dubbing) is better, it
seems that there are two things that influence the decision whether a certain programme will

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be subtitled or dubbed: 1) economic reasons and 2) audience expectations and wishes (Diaz-
Cintas, http://www.literarytranslation.com/workshops/almodovar/).

2. 4. 2. 3. Costs of Various Audiovisual Translation Types

According to Luyken, the costs can be divided into two groups: investment costs for
equipment (capital costs) and labour costs influenced by time (operational costs) (90).
He states that the average cost of one hour of television programme subtitling in
Europe (in 1991) is € 740. Lip-synch dubbing of the same one hour costs on average €
11,000 and voice-over for the same period of time can be produced for about € 1,100. But it is
important to stress that these are only average amounts as they vary significantly from one
country to another (from € 275 to € 1,957 for subtitling and from € 3,460 to € 24,000 for
dubbing) (90 – 108).
It is thus observed that dubbing is approximately 15 times more expensive than
subtitling. There are two main explanations of this fact: it takes much more time to dub a film
than to subtitle it and there are much more people needed. That increases financial demands
enormously. On the other hand, the capital and equipment costs of subtitling and dubbing are
almost the same (around € 130,000) (Luyken, 105).
It is important to stress in this context that the cost of both subtitling and dubbing is
closely connected to its quality. If the whole process is done faster and fewer people are
engaged (especially in the case of dubbing), then the costs can be significantly reduced.
Nevertheless, this is always at the expense of the quality of the overall product.

2. 4. 2. 4. Various Types of Audiovisual Translation as perceived by the audience

As far as preferences of the audience are concerned, it is important to note that they are
always primarily determined by audiovisual practices they are used to (Luyken, 185).
Almost all viewers in a subtitling country such as the Netherlands will always opt for
subtitles, while those in the dubbing countries expect everything to be dubbed. In a similar
way, the majority of the audience in the Czech Republic expect that almost all TV
programmes will be dubbed, but cinemagoers are unpleasantly surprised if a foreign film is
dubbed (except for some particular cases, e.g. films for children).
But, on the other hand, there are some other factors influencing attitudes of viewers to
both methods. They are age, education and socio-economic standard.

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 “The younger, the better educated and the more affluent viewers
are more likely to claim across Europe to prefer subtitled versions,
or ‘viewing the original’, rather than dubbed adaptations. This is
partly because higher multilingualism and familiarity with reading
in this particular target group make subtitled programmes easier
for them to comprehend and enjoy” (Luyken, 186).

2. 4. 2. 5. Globalisation of Audiovisual Translation

Efforts to reduce costs and duration of the translation process led to new ways of
doing the job of audiovisual translator. This concerns particularly DVD subtitling of
Hollywood films. Nowadays, they are almost all translated in London into about 40 languages
and only then distributed to the target countries. The majority of these multilingual subtitling
companies in London originally produced only closed captions in English for British
television programmes and commercials. After several fusions and takeovers, they moved to
the production of multilingual subtitles and are now key providers of DVD subtitles of
Hollywood films. Nonetheless, their origins in closed captioning for the hard of hearing are
still reflected in their style of timing subtitles (Carroll, http://fr46.uni-
saarland.de/atrc/images/artikel_carroll.pdf).
Carroll claims that formerly these companies provided only so-called templates (also
known as master list or “Genesis” file). Such templates were files containing English subtitles
with all in and out times. They were sent by e-mail to various countries where local
translators translated them into their languages. The translators also usually worked with a
VHS cassette, which was shipped to them. According to Carroll, the templates were useful
especially in the case of bonus material on the DVD such as documents about shooting the
film. As the original language script for these bonuses is usually not available (unlike the
main film) and they are usually very badly comprehensible, templates helped the subtitler in
the target country to manage the translation.
The main disadvantage was that the translators usually were not able to change the
spotting and their work thus resembled more the localisation of texts rather than subtitling as
such. This led the subtitling companies to a new strategy: employing foreign translators
directly in London. Such a strategy had also other positive effects: privacy risks were reduced
and no time had to be spent by shipping the cassettes (Carroll, http://fr46.uni-
saarland.de/atrc/images/artikel_carroll.pdf).

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2. 4. 2. 6. The Job of Audiovisual Translator
There is a substantial difference between a subtitler and a dubbing translator. The
subtitlers do a complex job – spotting, translation and subtitle composition. They can be either
permanent staff of subtitling studios or TV stations or they can be free-lancers. These free-
lancers are, however, usually used on a more or less regular basis. On the other hand, the
dubbing translator only has to do a rough translation of the dialogue. He usually translates the
script word by word, sometimes suggesting various possibilities of translation and than passes
it on to the dubbing writers (or adaptors) who then compose a dubbing dialogue which is
synchronous with the original one.
Luyken claims that the actual translation expenditure in lip-sync dubbing is the single
smallest item of the entire cost involved, representing between 13 and 20% of a total dubbing
budget. However, he admits that the majority from this share goes to the pocket of the adaptor
and the translator usually only gets very little. There are even cases when he receives only
1.5% of the dubbing budget. This is, according to Luyken, the direct result of the fact that
dubbing companies are looking for ways to cut costs. The first victims are then the translators,
because there are many of them and their job is not the final product. Translators thus earn
between € 80 and 145 per working day which translates, on the assumption of full-year
employment, to a gross salary equivalent of some € 26 500 pa. On the other hand, the gross
annual income of a subtitler in Western Europe is estimated at some € 34 000 per year
(approximately € 170 per working day) (90 – 108).

2. 4. 2. 7. Fake Subtitles
Fake subtitles are those which can be found on the internet. They are produced by
movie fans and usually serve to those who have a fake copy of the film. The films themselves
can be downloaded from peer to peer networks. Users can download whatever they want for
free, in return they only have to share programmes, films, music etc. that they have on their
own disks. Czech fake subtitles can be found for instance on www.titulky.com or
www.subtitles.cz. The quality of such subtitles varies widely as they are usually produced by
people who not only have no knowledge in translatology and subtitling theory, but even their
knowledge of English is sometimes very poor.
The fake subtitles are usually translated from time-coded dialogue lists with no or little
attention being paid to the rules and constraints described in this work. Whatever is the
original language of the film, almost all Czech fake subtitles are translated from English

18
which serves as a pivot language. Thus, as the translation into English is usually very bad and
then the translation from English into Czech is even worse, the final result is crappy. Incorrect
spelling and syntax errors occur very often.

3. Differences between Literary and Audiovisual

Translations
Luyken deals with the difference between literary and audiovisual translations in his
chapter on semiotics of audiovisual language transfer (153 – 165). He comes to the
conclusion that subtitling and dubbing certainly are a form of translation. However, there are
some special features that make them different from the translation of a written text.
When translating a book, the text is transferred from one language to another. In this
case the new work completely replaces the original and the two are completely independent.
On the other hand, the message of a film is expressed by various elements such as image,
acting, sound or language. And obviously only some of these are replaced. When a film is
dubbed, the visual component stays completely the same, only the auditory component is
changed. And it is even more interesting in the case of subtitling, as both visual and auditory
components remain, the actual translation only being added to the original work. Thus, the
transferred form of one element of a work has to ‘coexist’ with other elements of the same
work. Those remain in the original form (Luyken, 153).
The particularity of audiovisual translation also lies in reduced scope of the translator.
If there is something which has to be explained in the literary translation, the translator can
use a footnote or he can include the explanation directly into the text. This is impossible in a
film.
A big problem arises when there is a difference between the average word length of
the source and target languages. Such an example is English and Czech. There are many short
words or phrases in English the translation of which is much longer in Czech. (“I think so” –
“Myslím, že ano”; “I did it” – “udělal jsem to”, or sometimes even “já jsem to udělal”). This
leads to a necessary condensation of the translated text which has to be done by the translator.
Thus, according to Luyken, audiovisual translation

“…adds information to that contained in the original text and leaves

some out. It can never attempt to transfer every bit of information from

19
 one language into the other. It is at one and the same time both more
and less than conventional translation. Less, because it does not translate
everything. More, because the audiovisual Translator/Writer has to make
editorial decisions all the time about omissions or condensation of the
original text, and about new information that has to be inserted into it.
This all has profound implications for the programme which is subject
to any form of Language Transfer” (154).

These were some particular features shared by both subtitling and dubbing. Needless
to say, there are many others, which are specific only for subtitling or only for dubbing. These
will be treated in detail in the following chapters.

3. 1. Subtitling

3. 1. 1. The Process of Subtitling

As stated by Ivarsson and Carroll, the subtitler usually works with a script or dialogue
list, which are provided to him in the source language. In the best case he obtains a post-
production script which includes the whole dialogue (even the parts which are very badly
audible). If he is lucky enough, he also has a glossary where dialect words, slang, insider
jokes etc. are explained. But it is important that every such dialogue list is checked. There are
sometimes mistakes and discrepancies between this list and the actual film dialogue. It is
always important to fit the subtitles to what is really being said (79 – 80).
According to the same authors, when the film is supposed to be subtitled into many
language versions, a master list is available. This contains the in and out times, prepared by a
technician in the country of origin. In addition, there is a transcription of the source language
dialogue, but these are abridged. The subtitler’s job is then just to transform it into his
language. He has to observe the previous spotting as well as the subtitle length. This can be
very inconvenient as the translator is not able to adjust is to the needs of his language (54 –
57).
In case the subtitler has not got the master list, he must do the spotting himself. He
uses specialised software such as Poliscript which facilitates the job significantly. All
subtitling systems nowadays use time codes. Such a time code “provides an 8-digit address
for every frame of a videotape (or every image of a film)” (Ivarsson and Carroll, 141). In the

20
past, when a video recorder was used for subtitling, this was recorded on the tape and when
needed, it could be displayed. But in new subtitling programmes it is not necessary to use the
VHS any more, the films are imported directly into the computer and are converted into an
mpeg file. In such programmes the time codes are shown permanently.
The time code shows “hours:minutes:seconds.frames” like e.g. 01:28:15.09. There are
colons between hours, minutes and seconds, but between seconds and fames there is a dot.
“The number of frames per second depends on the standard: 24 frames a second for film, 25
frames a second for PAL or SECAM video and some films, and 30 frames a second for NTSC
video” (Ivarsson and Carrol, 141).
With the assistance of the time codes, the subtitler can spot the film and then prepare
the subtitles. During the whole process, however, he has to bear in mind certain rules which
should be observed, as stated by Ivarsson and Carroll:

Position on the Screen

Subtitles should be placed at the bottom of the screen in order not to interrupt the
image action. The only case when the subtitle can change its position is the one when
something important is shown in the part of the screen where subtitles are inserted. These can
be for example captions. The subtitles can then move either above these captions or even to
the top of the screen.

Number of Lines
There can be two lines at a maximum, otherwise the subtitles would cover too much of
the screen, which would be very disturbing. Furthermore, three lines would be difficult to
read in the short time available. If there is only one line displayed, it can be positioned either
on the upper or lower line. The former is easier for the viewer to read as he is used to the
beginning of the subtitle. The latter, on the other hand, interferes much less to the background
image.

Text Positioning
The subtitles can be either centred or they can appear at the left margin of the screen.
In Western Europe, centred subtitles are used in the cinema while left-justified subtitles are
used in the television. In the Czech Republic and some other countries, however, even the TV
usually displays centred subtitles. This seems to be “due to unconscious adoption of the

21
principle applying in the cinema, or possibly to the fact that optical film stock was used for
the subtitles” (Ivarsson and Carroll, 49).

Number of Characters per Line

The majority of sources state that there should be maximally 35 – 40 characters in
each line. If there were more, the characters would have to be too small and it may be difficult
for the audience to read. On the other hand, if there were less, the text reduction and
omissions would be unbearable.

Typeface and Distribution

According to Ivarsson and Carroll, it is advisable to use typefaces with no serifs such
as Arial as their legibility is better than that of typefaces with serifs such as Times New
Roman. As for the distribution, proportional types are preferable to monospace ones as the
former save space (42).

3. 1. 2. Duration of a Subtitle
While spotting, it is essential to bear in mind the fact that “subtitles which remain on
the screen long enough to be read more than once are just as irritating as subtitles that
disappear before the audience has had time to finish reading them” (Ivarsson and Carroll, 67).
That is why rules concerning the maximum and minimum duration of one subtitle have been
introduced. Karamitroglou states that that the average reading speed of subtitles is 150 – 180
words per minute, which is 2.5 – 3 words per second. As a full two-line subtitle contains
about 14 – 16 words, it should be projected for some 5.5 minutes. After the addition of the
time necessary for the eye to notice that a subtitle has appeared at the bottom of the screen, we
get to the final result – 6 seconds. Thus, a full two-line subtitle should remain on the screen
for 6 seconds, but at the same time it should not exceed this time, because viewers would
immediately start to reread it (Karamitroglou, http://accurapid.com/journal/04stndrd.htm).
As for a single-line subtitle, Karamitroglou argues that the optimum time for which it
should remain on the screen is about 3.5 seconds. The half second is added because it has
been proven that viewers tend to read two-line subtitles a little bit faster than separate one-line
subtitles. These 3.5 seconds are again not only minimum time, but also maximum time.
Karamitroglou also introduces a rule for the minimum time of a single-word subtitle,
however short or simple this word may be. He fixes this time at 1.5 seconds. If it disappeared

22
sooner, the viewer’s eye would not be able to recognise it, and it would seem just like an
irritating flash.
If there are two consecutive subtitles, Karamitroglou maintains, there has to be at least
a ¼ second gap between them. This is necessary for the eye to notice that there has been a
change in the subtitles. If this break was not maintained, the viewer would not be able to
distinguish the two different subtitles and would think it is still the previous one, especially if
the two are approximately of the same length.
All these are of course recommendations rather than hard and fast rules and the times
can vary according to the audience it is designated to (as the reading speed of the elderly is
certainly lower than that of teenagers). Nevertheless, the more these rules are observed, the
higher the quality of the subtitles.
Likewise, it is important to stick to the speed consistency. As the viewers very quickly
get used to the reading rhythm, it should stay the same during the whole film and there should
not be any deviations such as sudden acceleration or deceleration of the subtitles (Ivarsson
and Carroll, 69).

3. 1. 3. Synchronisation
As stated by Ivarsson and Carroll, in the early days the basic principle was to
synchronise perfectly the subtitles with the speech. The subtitle appeared exactly at the same
moment when the utterance started and disappeared the moment it ended. But the attitude
soon changed and this practice has been abandoned (72).
The leading-in time should stick to the beginning of the utterance. Nevertheless,
Karamitroglou argues that it is better to make a delay of ¼ of a second, as this is
approximately the time the brain needs to “process the advent of spoken linguistic material
and guide the eye towards the bottom of the screen anticipating the subtitle” (Karamitroglou,
http://accurapid.com/journal/04stndrd.htm).
On the other hand, according to Karamitroglou, the lagging-out time does not have to
stick so closely to the end of the utterance and the subtitle can remain on the screen even after
the utterance has been pronounced. Nevertheless, he argues that this should not exceed 2
seconds, because if it remains longer, the viewer has the impression that the subtitles do not
correspond exactly to what is being said.
As for the synchronisation with camera takes and cuts, Karamitroglou claims that the
subtitles should observe the major ones which signify thematic change and thus the subtitles

23
should disappear before them. In case the cut is not particularly significant and does not mean
any substantial change, the subtitle can remain on the screen.

3. 1. 4. Punctuation
Punctuation in subtitles is usually the same as in any other written language form.
There are, however, some cases, stated e.g. by Ivarsson and Carroll, when particular rules are
applied for subtitles in order to facilitate their reading to the audience. These rules have to be
consistent and logic, otherwise they could confuse the viewers rather than help them to
understand the film translation.
Two punctuation marks essential for subtitling seem to be hyphens and suspension
dots. These have to follow particular rules.
According to Ivarsson and Carroll, hyphens are used at the beginning of subtitles
translating dialogue. As this is considered to be their main role in subtitling, all other usage of
hyphens should be avoided (111):

-What happened?
-He had a car accident.

However, the same authors stress that it is important not to mix hyphens with dashes,
which are slightly longer and have a different meaning. They are used in subtitling for
distinguishing between sentences uttered by a single person which are addressed to different
people:

Did you prepare the meal? – You can

tell us what you wanted to, Frank.

Suspension dots are also treated in detail by Ivarsson and Carroll. If they are used
without spaces in the middle of a sentence, it means that the character is hesitating (113 –
114):

He said…that he doesn’t love her any more?

On the other hand, if a space follows, they mean the character was interrupted:

24
He said… Yes, that he doesn’t love her.

It is necessary to repeat the suspension dots if they coincide with a subtitle break:

It is necessary…

…that we pay a visit to the parents

and ask if they don’t need anything.

As for other punctuation, the quotation marks, exclamation and question marks and
commas usually observe the same rules as in any other written text, while underlying,
semicolons and parentheses should be completely avoided (Ivarsson and Carroll, 114 – 116).

3. 1. 5. Other Conventions
There are certain other rules which effect the subtitles. Although these may vary in
different countries, there is a tendency to bring them into line. These include the use of upper
case and italics as well as some other particularities (subtitling of songs or letters).

According to Ivarsson and Carroll, upper case can be used in the subtitles to translate
shouting or exclamations which are very loud (116):

CATCH HIM !

The same authors also state that the use of italics is quite common in subtitling. They
usually signify 1) speech which is not uttered by the character on screen – this can be for
example a voice from telephone, radio or TV, 2) interior monologue and dream scenes, 3)
narrator’s voice, 4) songs, and 5) everything which would be written in italics in a normal text
such as words in a foreign language or titles and names (Ivarsson and Carroll, 118).

A specific case are songs. If the lyrics are translated, Ivarsson and Carroll argue, it is
advisible to put them down in italics. However, these authors stress that not every song in a
film needs to be translated. It only has to be subtitled if it is important for the story or there is
another serious reason. It is not necessary that the song translation rhymes, nevertheless it
should stick to the rhythm of the song so that it is easy to read while listening to the original.

25
Sometimes it is enough to subtitle only the beginning of the song in order that the viewer has
some idea what it is about (Ivarsson and Carroll, 120 – 122).
Very interesting is the subtitling of letters. It happens very often that a letter is read
aloud in a film. The way this is subtitled differs according to various factors. Ivarsson and
Carroll state six possibilities (119):

1) The writer of the letter thinks to himself while writing the text = interior monologue -
- italics
2) The writer thinks aloud while writing the text = audible speech – normal style
3) The writer reads the letter aloud after writing it = quotation – normal style + quotation
marks
4) The writer’s voice is heard while the addressee is reading it - italics
5) The recipient reads the letter aloud – normal style + quotation marks
6) The voice of the recipient is heard while he reads the letter without moving his lips
= interior monologue – italics + quotation marks

There are, of course, other things which might cause some problems. These are for
example currency, units of measurement, abbreviations or proper names and brand names. It
is not necessary, however, to treat these here in detail, as the film translation of these usually
observe exactly the same rules as the literary translation. The same applies for strong
language used in a film.

3. 1. 6. Translation and adaptation of the subtitles

It is evident that if the above mentioned rules and time constraints are to be observed,
the subtitles have to be considerably shortened in comparison to the original dialogue. It is the
subtitler’s job to decide what will be kept and what will be omitted.
According to Ivarsson and Carroll, the subtitler sometimes has to decide between
omission and paraphrase. Omission means that a whole part of the dialogue is left out,
paraphrase, on the other hand, stands for modification of the dialogue in order to make it
shorter. Out of these two, Ivarsson and Carroll argue, the former is more convenient as it
seems to be less annoying for those who understand the original. Thus, the sentence “Well, I
just want to tell you that yesterday Jane came to our room and told us that she has heard that

26
everybody will have to sit the exam again some time in September.” should be subtitled in
this way:

Yesterday Jane told us

that everybody will have to sit the exam again.
.
Nevertheless, subtitlers usually take advantage of both these methods and use them
simultaneously (Ivarsson and Carroll, 87).

3. 1. 6. 1. Omission
There are certain words and expressions which can be omitted without lowering the
quality of the translation. As stated by Karamitroglou, these include particularly two groups:

1) Padding expressions such as “you know”, “well” etc. can be omitted as they usually do not
contribute to the semantic meaning of the utterance.

2) Words that are presumably known to the target language audience and are pronounced
separately do not have to be necessarily subtitled. Such words are for example “yes”, “no”,
“sorry”, “please”, “thanks” or “ok”. Similarly, according to Karamitroglou, names of the
characters can be omitted if they are called out. But on the other hand, if these expressions are
included in a larger context, they always have to be subtitled.

3. 1. 6. 2. Use of simple vocabulary

Ivarsson and Carroll claim that, if possible, common and simple words should be
preferred to unusual ones. When the subtitler has the possibility of choosing between several
words with the same or similar meaning, he should always bear in mind that the more
common and simple the word, the faster it is read by the viewer. The only exception from this
rule is, of course, the case when florid language plays a vital part either in the whole film or in
the speech of a certain character (Ivarsson and Carroll, 89).

3. 1. 6. 3. Simple syntax
Syntactic structures should also be simplified as much as possible. There are very often
cases, when reduction of a complex sentence is possible without changing the meaning.
Karamitroglou states seven such particular cases:

27
 1) Active for passive constructions:
“It is believed by many people.” => “Many people believe.”

2) Positive for negative expressions:

“We went to a place we hadn’t been before.” => “We went to a new place.”

3) Temporal prepositional phrases for temporal subordinate clauses:

“I’ll study when I finish watching this movie.” => “I’ll study after this movie.”

4) Modified nouns for the referring relative clauses:

“What I’d like is a cup of coffee.” => “I’d like a cup of coffee.”

5) Gapping for double verb insertion:

“John would like to work in Germany and Bill would like to work in France.” => “John
would like to work in Germany and Bill in France.”

6) Straightforward question sentences for indicative pragmatic requests:

“I would like to know if you are coming.” => “Are you coming?”

7) Straightforward imperative sentences for indicative pragmatic requests:

“I would like you to give me my keys back.” => “Give me my keys back.”

3. 1. 7. Subtitles Editing
As one line usually is not enough, the translator often has to split the subtitle into two
lines. This has to be done very carefully and the breaks should not be in contradiction with the
sense of what is being said – each line should be logically and grammatically compact.
Moreover, according to Ivarsson and Carroll, one subtitle should correspond to one phrase or
sentence or should be composed of several short phrases or sentences. On the other hand,
Ivarsson and Carroll argue, one long sentence spreading across several subtitles should be
avoided (93 – 96).

28
 When the dialogue is too fast, two line subtitles are used. Each line then corresponds
to what is being said by one character. The beginning of such a subtitle is always hyphenated
and if it is a question and an answer, the former should always be on the top line and the latter
on the second line. The only exception is the case when the answer cannot appear in the
subtitle before it is actually uttered (Ivarsson and Carroll, 94).

-Have you seen that film? But: -I couldn’t believe what he did. .
-Yes, I have. -What did he do?

-He killed her.

3. 1. 7. 1. Subtitling of written texts

Not only speech, but also written texts which appear in the production and are
important for the understanding of the film, have to be translated. These are not only titles,
but also captions (small texts indicating when and where the scene is taking place in feature
films or names of speaking persons in documents) as well as various newspaper headlines,
letters etc.
Translation of all these texts should “appear and disappear simultaneously with the
original and they should correspond typographically as closely to the original as the subtitling
system allows. Capitals should be written as capitals and handwritten texts as italics”
(Ivarsson, 97).

3. 1. 8. ESIST
Although all the above mentioned rules are recommendations, their observing is
essential for high quality of the translation. Subtitling suffers by the non-existence of hard and
fast rules which all subtitle producers would be obliged to observe. An important effort to
change this situation seems to be the Code of Good Subtitling Practice published by ESIST
(European Association for Studies in Screen Translation) which can be found on this
association’s web pages (www.esist.org). The Code states some basic principles a high
quality subtitler should always stick to.

29
3. 2. Revoicing
Revoicing is the second alternative as far as translation of a film or TV programme is
concerned. It consists in replacement of the original voice track by a target language one.
Luyken distinguishes between four subcategories of revoicing: 1) dubbing, 2) voice-over, 3)
narration and 4) free commentary.

3. 2. 1. Voice-over, narration and free commentary

These are three names for approximately the same thing: a method when the new
soundtrack is carried out by one single person or several people with no attempt to
synchronise the lip movements with what is being said. The original sound is either not heard
at all or is audible at a very low level. Sometimes at the beginning and at the end of a speech
the original is allowed to be heard. The difference between voice-over and narration is only
very slight: the voice-over refers usually to a single monologue while narration is a translation
of the whole programme. Free commentary differs from the former two in that it is not a
faithful translation of the original (Luyken, 80 – 84).
According to Luyken, all these methods are quite simple and cheap. They are used
mainly in documentaries and other non-feature programmes. Nevertheless, in some European
countries such as Poland, it is used in TV for all production including feature films and series.

3. 2. 2. Dubbing
Lip-synchronised dubbing is the most common type of revoicing. It is performed by
professional actors, usually each of them dubbing one character and its aim is to have the
same effect on the target language audience as the original has on the source language
audience.
One of the main differences between dubbing and subtitling is the fact that several
people participate in the preparation of dubbing, while almost the whole process of subtitling
is nowadays done by only one person.
Individual steps involved in the whole process of dubbing are treated by Luyken (73 –
79). After registration and verification of a master and dialogue list a time-coded working
copy is produced and spotted. Then a raw translation is made which serves as a basis for the
adaptation. At the same time casting is carried out. Next step is the recording itself. After that,
the final product is mixed, edited and approved and thus prepared for transmission. In the case

30
of a one hour programme all this takes from a few working days to a maximum of 3 – 4
weeks. Luyken claims that the actual duration is influenced my many factors, e.g. the
difficulty of the original script or the quality which is demanded.
Steps which are decisive from the point of view of our topic are translation and
adaptation.

3. 2. 2. 1. Dubbing Translation
As stated by Kautský, the dubbing translation is very different from the literary one.
According to Kautký, the main distinction between them is the fact that the translation in
dubbing is not the final product which is presented to the audience, but only a semifinished
work which is then passed on to the adaptor who finishes it. He claims that the translator
usually produces a word-by-word translation, sometimes even with several suggestions how
something could be translated. It is essential, Kautský argues, that the adaptor knows the exact
meaning so that he can capture the sense and transfer it into the target language in utterly
different words which enable the synchronisation. Thus, the translation has to be very raw.

3. 2. 2. 2. Dubbing Adaptation
The adaptor then works with the raw translation. He does not necessarily have to
speak the source language of the original, but if he does, it is undoubtedly a big advantage.
Sometimes the translator and the adaptor are the same person.
Unlike subtitling, the final text does not have to be reduced in relation to the original, it has
to have exactly the same length, start and end simultaneously with the original dialogue.
Nevertheless, there are some other rules the adaptor has to observe.

3. 2. 2. 3. Synchronism
Paquin speaks about three types of synchronism: phonetic, semantic and dramatic.

According to Paquin, phonetic synchronism is simply matching the lip movements.

“Phonetic synchrony is achieved when the lip movements of the screen actor match perfectly
the sounds produced by the studio actor, not only words, but also breathing, grunts, screams,
etc. Actors do that in the studio, even if they are invisible. They make gestures, and get into
their roles” (Paquin, http://accurapid.com/journal/05dubb.htm).
According to Paquin, the adaptor has to stick to these basic rules if he wants to achieve good
phonetic synchronism:

31
 1) the number of syllables of the adaptation should correspond to the number of syllables
of the original (this contributes to the credibility of the adaptation. On the other hand
this rule is sometimes not observed and that does not necessarily mean that the
dubbing is bad).
2) The main hard and fast rule is fitting the bilabials. If the protagonist pronounces “m”,
“v”, “p”, “b”, “f” then the dubbing actor has to use one of these consonants too. They
are well interchangeable and the audience is not able to tell them apart.

Thus, for example, Czech word “opice” can be used for the original “monkey”
without any problem. Even the fact that there is a vowel preceding the bilabial in the Czech
word “opice” does not pose any problem, as the audience is not able to notice its
pronunciation. It is important to fit the bilabials at the beginning and the end of words. Here
they are most noticeable.
Kautský argues that if the actor markedly closes his mouth at the end of his speech
although the last sound he pronounced was a vowel, or, on the other hand, he markedly opens
his mouth after a final bilabial, then the adaptor has to conform to what is seen and not what is
heard in the original.
The best way of the adaptor to help himself if he cannot find appropriate equivalents
in the target language is to change completely the word order. Then it is much easier to find a
matching word.
Last but not least, it is important to say that phonetic synchronism should not, if
possible, be achieved at the expense of appropriate syntax and lexis (e.g. one register should
be stuck to and no inadequate provincialisms should be used).

According to Paquin, semantic synchronism means that the new dialogue in the
target language should have the same meaning as the original. Nevertheless, Paquin argues,
there are certain cases when this is not true. This concerns for example numerals, occupations
etc. When for example the occupation is not important for the story it can be changed in the
target language in order to achieve more convenient phonetic synchronism. Thus, it can be
said that semantic synchronism is more important than phonetic synchronism only if the
original meaning is essential for the whole story. In other cases the meaning can be slightly
changed without any problem.

32
 The last synchronism Paquin speaks about is dramatic synchronism. It is the realism
with which the characters speak in the target language. What they say has to correspond to
what they do (a person shaking his head obviously cannot say yes and vice versa) and the way
they speak must be in accordance with what the audience expects. Thus, e.g. a queen should
not use colloquial speech when it is not appropriate, a prostitute should not express herself in
archaisms etc.
This is also why, for example, the dubbing of Latin American soap operas may
sometimes seem unnatural: the lip movements are matched, but monotonous Czech language
does not fit exaggerated gestures of the actors.

Last but not least, a fourth kind of synchronism can be added. It is the nucleus
synchronism introduced by Luyken. “Nucleus-sync concerns the fact that movements of the
body, slight nods, raising of the eyebrows, or making gestures always coincide with the
uttering of stressed syllables, which in linguistics are referred to as nuclei. Possibly, this
parallel occurrence of stressed syllables and other movements can be seen as instrumental in
the perception of speech” (Luyken, 160).

3. 3. Conclusion on Subtitling and Dubbing

It can be thus said that both subtitling and dubbing are influenced by several
constraints which make both these kinds of translation very different from the literary one. On
the other hand, as the constraints are very different for these two techniques, the final results
are also very different.
From this point of view, there are two things that have to be taken into account: 1) the
length of the target language version and 2) the fidelity if its meaning. As for subtitling, the
length is always reduced in comparison to the length of the original, but the meaning has to
correspond to the original as much as possible, because the audience can notice any minor
discrepancy. On the other hand, the dubbed version has the same length as the original, but it
is not necessary to stick to the exact meaning. What is important is only the plot-carrying
meaning. In other words, if the adaptor needs to modify the dialogues in order to match the lip
movements, he is perfectly allowed to do so.

33
4. Harry Potter
Harry Potter is the main character as well as the overall name of a series of novels by
J. K Rowling and films inspired by these novels about a young wizard. The first book - Harry
Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone - was published in 1997. Other volumes followed and six
out of seven intended novels have now been published, the last being Harry Potter and the
Half-Blooded Prince released in 2005. Four books have already been adapted for the screen,
the first one in 2001.
The Harry Potter series very soon achieved a great success. The books were translated
into more than 60 languages and over 300 million copies were sold in more than 200
countries. The story became a worldwide phenomenon, the children read the books although
they are extremely thick and there are thousands of web pages concerning Harry Potter.

4. 1. Potential Translation Problems and their Czech Solutions

The translation of Harry Potter is a big challenge. There are many aspects which might
cause some problems.

4. 1. 1. British Culture
The book was written for British children and thus includes many cultural aspects
typical for Great Britain. The most obvious one is the British boarding school. More than a
half of the story takes place in Hogwarts, which is a typical example of a boarding school, a
kind of school that does not exist in the Czech Republic. The students play Quidditch just like
real students in Great Britain play for instance rugby.
Although Czech students also sometimes have to stay in the town or city their school
is in, it is nevertheless very different from the British system. The Hogwarts boarding school
is thus something which might not be properly understood, especially by small children who
are not used to foreign culture yet.
The translators have a choice: they can either leave it in the British setting or move it
to the country of the target language audience, the latter being much more complicated with
consequences leading to the need of changing almost the whole book.
The Czech translator, Vladimír Medek, decided to leave the original British setting. In
the particular case of Harry Potter this seems to be a little bit less problematic than in many

34
other books, as the story is a fairy tale, thus including many things that are quite far from real
life. A school where students have to stay all the year round and wear uniforms can only
contribute to the exoticism of the story. The translation problems of British school culture can
be shown on particular examples:

Dudley had been accepted at Uncle Vernon's old school, Smeltings. Piers Polkiss was going
there too. Harry, on the other hand, was going to Stonewall High, the local comprehensive.
(40)
Ten už měl místo ve Smeltings, ve škole, do které kdysi chodil i strýc Vernon; Piers Polkiss
tam šel také. Zato Harry měl chodit do stonewallské školy, což byla místní měšťanka. (35)

Two issues appear in this sentence. First of them is Smeltings which, understood from
the context, is a high quality boarding school. But no explanation is given to the Czech
readers. The second issue is the local comprehensive translated as místní měšťanka. This does
not correspond properly to the meaning of the original. Translation such as střední škola
would be maybe enough.
Another example of a similar problem is the Smeltings uniform (40) translated as
smeltingský stejnokrj. (35) This can be a little bit confusing for people who do not know that
British students are obliged to wear uniforms at school.
On the other hand, when one of the boys states that he is going to be a prefect next
year, a footnote is used explaining that “v některých britských školách (zejména internátních)
bývají vybraní studenti pověřeni dohledem nad ostatními.” (93) On the contrary, head boy
(111) (which according to the Lingea Lexikon 2002 means “žák, který reprezentuje školu při
společenských událostech” is translated simply as primus. (97)
Apart from the school problems, there are some others, which are less complex, but
not at all less important. First of them are various kinds of food mentioned in the book.

He had never seen so many things he liked to eat on one table: roast beef, roast chicken, pork
chops and lamb chops, sausages, bacon and steak, boiled potatoes, roast potatoes, fries,
Yorkshire pudding, peas, carrots, gravy, ketchup, and, for some strange reason, peppermint
humbugs. (135)
Ještě nikdy neviděl pohromadě na stole tolik věcí, které měl rád: hovězí pečeni, pečené kuře,
vepřové a jehněčí kotlety, párky, slaninu a bifteky, vařené brambory, pečené brambory,
hranolky, vaječný svítek, hrášek, mrkev, omáčku, kečup a z nějakého nevysvětlitelného dů-
vodu i větrové bonbony. (118)

In this enumeration, the only food unknown in the Czech context is the Yorkshire
pudding, while all others are perfectly understandable. But the Yorkshire pudding was

35
translated as vaječný svítek which somehow translates the original, but Czech readers are
certainly not very familiar with this expression.
Thus, when reading the translation, this word stands out very strongly, which certainly
was not the intention of the author.
Similarly, in other enumerations of food, food unknown to the target language
audience is either translated rather incomprehensibly (treacle tarts [137] become sirupové
košíčky [119] and marshmallows [215] are translated as ibiškové pokroutky [185]. The latter
could have stayed the same as the original since the word “marshmallow” is now quite
commonly used in Czech, in any case more than “ibiškové pokroutky”. Cranberry sauce
[220] becomes klikvová omáčka [189] (brusinková omáčka might have been better).
On the other hand, some others are explained rather than translated (trifle [137, 221]
once as piškoty s ovocem a se šlehačkou [119] and once as piškot se smetanou [190],
crumpets [215, 221] once as teplé chlebové placičky s máslem [190] and once as koláčky
[185]).
There is almost no substitution used in the translation except for one case when
chocolate eclairs (137) is translated as větrníky s čokoládovou polevou (119), the two desserts
being similar, but not the same. But there are more British cultural aspects. A good example
can be the sentence:

Perhaps people have been celebrating Bonfire Night early - it's not until next week, folks! (13)
Možná že někdo začal předčasně pálit ohně - ale na ty je čas až příští týden, vážení! (12)

A Bonfire Night is mentioned here, a well-known British festivity with a lot of

fireworks, which takes place at the beginning of November and commemorates Guy Fawkes
who tried to set the parliament on fire in the early 17th century. Not only is this event
completely ignored in the Czech translation, but it just mentions fires without any context and
thus is not comprehensible clearly enough.
On the contrary, when it is mentioned that somebody hummed “Tiptoe Through the
Tulips“ (48), a well-known song in Britain, a straightforward translation is used and the name
of the song in Czech is „Náruč plná tulipánů“ (43) which does not ring a bell at all.
Thus, all the above mentioned examples show that there is a certain inconsistency.
Some things are kept, some of them translated, others explained. This confuses the target
language reader.

36
4. 1. 2. Names, Spells and Neologisms
The names, spells and other neologisms are a typical feature of Harry Potter. J. K.
Rawling coined many new words, some of them having a hidden meaning. She often uses
French or Latin when coining the new expressions. But English is sometimes used as well. On
the other hand, many of the new words do not seem to have any meaning and what matters is
rather the sound of it.
As for spells, they are all in Latin. For instance, Hermione says oculus reparo when
she wants to repair Harry’s glasses. The Latin word oculus means “eye” or “sight” and reparo
is the first person singular of the word “reparare” meaning “to repair”. Similarly, when she
wants to turn a boy into stone, she uses the spell Petrificus totalus (294) which resembles to
“total petrification” in English. There does not seem to be any special reason to translate these
spells as the Latin sounds approximately the same to the English and the Czech readers.
As for the names, some of them are translated into Czech and same are not. This is
again inconsistent up to a point.
If we take into account only the main characters of the book, only Dumbledore’s name
has been changed into Brumbál. All the other characters stayed the same. Dumbledore’s name
again seems to be inspired by French, “d’or” meaning “golden”. But none of the others were
changed: Malfoy, coming from French “mal foi” (“bad faith”) or Voldemort (“vol de mort”
meaning “flight of death”). There is no reason to translate these names as English readers
probably do not understand the meaning better than the Czech ones.
On the other hand, names which have a meaning in English are much more
problematic, especially if the names somehow correspond to the character’s visual aspect or
are in a way telling something about the character. A typical example of such a case is the
Weasley family, the name being certainly inspired by “weasel” and all the characters with this
name being red-haired.
Another example of the same problem is the list of books that Harry has to buy. Here
the names of the authors are somehow connected to the titles of the books. They were
translated in this way:

The Standard Book of Spells (Grade 1)
by Miranda Goshawk (76)
One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi
by Phyllida Spore (77)
Magical Drafts and Potions by Arsenius
Miranda Jestřábová: Příručka kouzelných slov a
zaklínadel (1.stupeň) (67)
Phyllida Výtrusová: Tisíc kouzelnických bylin a
hub (67)
Arsenius Stopečka: Kouzelnické odvary a lektvary

37
Jigger (77) (67)
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them Mlok Scamander Fantastická zvířata a kde je najít
by Newt Scamander (77) (67)
A Beginners' Guide to Transfiguration Emeric Cvak: Úvod do přeměňování (67)
by Emetic Switch (76)

but:

Magical Theory by Adalbert Waffling (76) Adalbert Waffling: Teorie kouzelnického umění
(76)
The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection by Quentin Trimble: Černá magie - příručka
Quentin Trimble (77) sebeobrany (76)

The fact that some names are translated into Czech while others remain in the original
form, so much the more that they are right next to each other, contributes to the feeling of
inconsistency.

In addition to spells and characters’ names there are some other new coined words.
Those that have come into general knowledge are especially the names of the houses –
Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, Gryffindor and Slytherin. They are translated as Mrzimor, Havraspár,
Nebelvír and Zmijozel successively.
As for the game of Quiditch, its Czech name is Famfrpál, the balls are called Camrál,
Potlouk and Zlatonka (originally Quaffle, Bludger and Golden snitch).
The currency units Sickles and Knuts become srpce and svrčky, Galleons stay the same.
Others include names of some pets (Scabbers is changed to Prašivka, Fang is translatd
literally as Tesák) and magic things (e.g. Rememberall becomes Pamatováček).
There are some puns such as Diagon Alley which is a homophone with diagonally.
The Czech translation is Příčná ulice, where the equivoque is lost. Similarly, a spokesgoblin
becomes mluvčí skřet banky which does not reflect the analogy with spokesman.

4. 1. 3. Language of the Characters

This concerns particularly Hagrid, one of the main adult characters. He is a non-
educated man and his speech is very different from the others. He uses a specific dialect
which is very typical of himself and its aim seems to be the accentuation of his primitiveness.

38
In Czech he speaks just in a familiar way, no specific dialect was used. It can be shown on a
short extract:

"I'm tellin' yeh, yer wrong!" said Hagrid hotly. "I don' know why Harry's broom acted like
that, but Snape wouldn' try an' kill a student! Now, listen to me, all three of yeh -- yer
meddlin' in things that don' concern yeh. (209)
„Říkám ti, že se mejlíš!“ namítl Hagrid ostře. „Nevím, proč Harryho koště vyvádělo takový
věci, ale Snape by se nepokusil zabít nějakýho študenta! Teď mě poslouchejte, všecky tři -
pletete se do věcí, do kterejch vám nic není. (180)

4. 2. Differences between the Book and the Film

Although the film is completely inspired by the novel, there are certain differences in
the plot, characters as well as the dialogues. This is caused by several reasons. First of them is
the fact that the book is too long to be transferred entirely into a film. The novel is more than
300 pages long and if everything was included in the film, it would take maybe more than ten
hours. But the actual length of the film is approximately 2 hours and 15 minutes. Thus,
logically, some things had to be left out, sometimes only dialogues, but sometimes the whole
scenes. There are several possibilities:

1) A passage (part of a passage etc.) of the book is completely left out in the film
Those parts which are not relevant at all for the whole story are omitted without any
compensation. On the other hand, if there is something in the left out passage which might be
somehow important for the coherency of the film, this element is included in a different part
of the film. For example, sometimes there is a character that does not appear in the film at all,
but he says something important for the whole story in the book. In that case this is said by a
different character in the film. The whole list of changes and omissions can be found on
Wikipedia.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differences_between_book_and_film_versions_of_Harry_Potter
_and_the_Philosopher%27s_Stone).

2) Passages described in the book by narrator appear in the film, but there is no
dialogue
A technique probably typical of all film adaptations is the one when something which
is written in the book is shown in the film in a condensed way. Actually, the viewer can see
exactly what the reader reads and has to imagine himself.

39
3) What is said by the narrator in the book is included in the character’s dialogues in the
film
There are some cases when something said by the narrator in the book is important, so
it cannot be left out, but at the same time it is impossible to communicate it but in words. It is
then said by the characters themselves. This happens for example when the three children
approach to the sleeping dog: They could feel the dog’s hot, smelly breath as they approached
the giant heads. (297) This information is included in the film by a sentence pronounced by
Ron: Ugh! It’s got horrible breath.

4) What is said by the characters themselves in the book is included in the film dialogues
The last possibility is the one when the direct speech from the book appears in the
film. If this is the case, there are again several possibilities:

a) They are completely different

Sometimes there are dialogues in the script which do not exist in the original or there
is something said which has the same meaning in the book and in the film adaptation, but in
each case completely different words are used. There seem to be two reasons for this radical
change. First of them is simply the unsuitability of the original for the film. Some utterances
may seem natural when they are read in a book, but when they are actually pronounced, it
sounds odd. The second reason is connected to the above-mentioned omitting of some parts of
the book: something is missing and therefore what remains has to be modified in order that
the film is coherent and logical.

b) They are slightly changed or shortened

When dialogues are changed, it has either again something to do with the suitability of
the book direct speech for the film or there is a different reason: the original dialogues are
unnecessarily too long and they have to be shortened.

c) They stay exactly the same

Last but not least, there are many dialogues that are exactly the same in the book and
in the film. These are quite important from the point of view of the translation, because if they
are the same in English, they should logically be the same in the translation as well.

40
4. 3. Czech Audiovisual Translations of Harry Potter and the
Philosopher’s Stone

4. 3. 1. Official DVD Dubbing

The Dubbing was translated by Pavel Medek, who is the brother of the translator of
the book and at the same time the translator of the Harry Potter books starting with the third
volume. Vojta Kotek performs the role of Harry.
The dubbing is of a high quality as it corresponds to the above-mentioned rules and
there do not seem to be any discrepancy as far as synchronism is concerned. Especially the lip
fitting is done quite properly in close-ups, which often appear in the film.
For example when Dudley shouts at his father that he didn’t get enough presents for
his birthday: Thirty-six?! But last year last year I had thirty-seven!!! is changed to Třicet
šest? Ale loni, loni jsem jich měl třicet sedum. The pronunciation of the letter “l” in this
utterance is very well visible and the Czech version is thus appropriate.
Another example is even more striking. When the students have a flying lesson they
are supposed to say “up” and the broom jumps into their hands. The literal translation of “up”
is obviously “nahoru” or “vzhůru” which not only is too long, but as this scene is shot in a
close-up, the bilabial in the word “up” has to be kept in the Czech translation. The dubbing
uses “hop” which is a very good solution: it not only contains this bilabial but it also has the
same number of syllables as the original word.
The only problem of this dubbing version are some sentences which do not correspond
at all to the meaning of the original. These appear in moments when the original speech is
very badly audible and is not very important for the story. When the Dursleys are leaving
their home after Dudley has unwrapped his presents and are going to the zoo, Mrs. Dursley
says: It should be a lovely day at the zoo. I'm really looking forward to it. But in Czech the
woman says: Jenom třicet šest? To se teda hrozně omlouvám.
Similarly, after the hat has sorted the students out into their houses and some ghosts
appear in the hall, Hermione says: It’s the Bloody Baron! This exclamation is from an
inexplicable reason translated as Hrozně tady táhne. Anyway, both these misleading
translation do not cause any harm not only because they are not important for the story, but

41
especially because they fit quite well into the context and those who do not know the original
are not capable of noting any discrepancy.

4. 3. 2. Official DVD Subtitles

The subtitles were also translated by Pavel Medek and made by LS Productions
together with SDI Media Group which is one of the leading and biggest audiovisual
translation companies in the world.
From the point of view of the constraints that were dealt with in the first part of this
work, these subtitles are quite well done. They stick to the rule saying that always only two
lines can appear at a time, the lines are not too long, they are therefore well readable and the
viewer feels quite at ease when watching the film.
As far as the shortening is concerned, this is again done in a way that does not cause
any harm to the comprehensibility of the whole. The script contains over 51,000 signs while
the subtitles only contain some 41,000. The subtitles thus convey approximately 80% of the
original. That is quite a lot. This is probably caused by a relatively slow pace of the English
dialogues thanks to which there was no need to a more extensive reduction.
Nevertheless, there are some cases when a rather radical abridgement was necessary.
All four possible procedures (omission, paraphrase and simple syntax and vocabulary) were
used in order to make it simple and short. The original sentence Oh, hello. I don't wish to be
rude, but I'm in no fit state to entertain today was translated in the dubbing as Ahoj. Nechci
bejt nezdvořilej, ale na hosty dneska fakt nemám čas. The translation in the subtitles is :

- Ahoj. Je mi líto, ale nemám čas.

Similarly, the sentence Come on now. Hurry up, you'll be late! Train's leaving. Go on.
Come on, hurry up. is translated as Tak už poďte, pospěšte si, nebo vám to ujede. Vlak už
odjíždí, běžte. Běžte. The subtitle translation is:
Vlak už odjíždí.
No tak, pospěšte si.

The subtitles also include some problematic issues. These are e.g. letters, newspaper
articles and messages. They are always read by the character who obtains them and are thus
subtitled between inverted commas and not in italics:

42
„Vážený pane Pottere,
s potěšením vám oznamujeme,

že jste byl přijat

na Školu čar a kouzel v Bradavicích.''

This letter, as well as some others, is quite peculiar in that the subtitles appear at the
top of the screen, as they would cover the letter itself projected at the bottom. It seems that
this technique is used rather too often and unnecessarily in the film, as it should be done only
exceptionally when the original indispensably has to be legible.
Another issue is the use of italics. These appear especially in the spells such as Oculus
Reparo, Wingardium Leviosa or Petrificus Totalus. The reason for the use of italics in this
case is most likely the fact that they are in a foreign language – Latin. But when a password,
which is also in Latin, is pronounced – “Caput draconis” – the italics are not used. It can thus
be observed that there is again, similarly to the translation of the book, a certain
inconsistency.
As far as the problem of inconsistency is concerned, there is another example: the
numbers. Harry asks:

Pane, můžete mi říct,

kde je nástupiště devět a tři čtvrtě?

But a little bit later the answer is:

-Nástupiště 9 a tři čtvrtě je tam.

Besides, there are some other discrepancies. There is no indication of professor

Quirrell’s stuttering, which is quite important for the story line. For instance the sentence
Harry P-p-potter. C-can't tell you how p-pleased I am to meet you. This is subtitled as:

Harry Potter. Ani nevíte,

jak mě těší, že vás poznávám.

Similarly Next to him who would suspect p-p-poor st-st-stuttering Professor Quirrell?
is subtitled as:

Kdo by vedle něj podezříval

ubohého koktavého

43
profesora Quirrella.

In addition, the former example shows another imperfection: in the whole film, there
is never used capital “V“ in words like “Vy“, “Vám“, “Vás“, “Vaše“ etc.
Last but not least, there is one mistake which is not at all unnoticeable. The crowd at
the stadium shouts Harry Potter Gyffindor!, well translated in the dubbing as Ať žije
Nebelvír! But in the subtitles appears:

Nebelvír do toho. . . !

This has a confusing effect as the game is already over.

4. 3. 3. Fake Subtitles
There are several versions of subtitles that can be found on the internet, the majority of
them being on the same level as far as quality is concerned. Two of these versions could be
considered as representative (the imperfections being similar in all these versions) and will be
treated here in detail.

4. 3. 3. 1. Fake Subtitles 1
The author of the first version is anonymous. The subtitles are even less extensive than
the original ones, forming approximately 76% of the script. There are several interesting
issues worth noticing. These will be dealt with in separate points. In all examples the subtitles
are left in their original form, thus including misprints and punctuation mistakes.

1) subtitling conventions

a) Number of lines

44
The author seems to be completely unaware of the rule that there can be maximally two lines
at a time. He quite often uses three lines, which often leads to a big uneasiness and the viewer
is sometimes unable to read the whole subtitle before it disappears.

No, Harry, a nestaly se ti zvláštní věci,

které se ti zdály nepochopitelní, když
jsi třeba byl rozčilený nebo se bál?

b) Line Breaks
The subtitles are sometimes divided into individual lines in a rather illogical way:

Školník pan Filch mě poprosil,

abych zopakoval, že

je zakázáno vstupovat do chodby ve 3 poschodí

na pravé straně.

or

Naučím vás zavřít do lahve

slávu, uvařit vděk a zastavit smrt.

c) Superfluous Phrases, Expressions and Letters

There are quite often phrases, expressions and letters that do not have to be subtitled as they
only have a padding function. On the contrary, it is rather advisable to leave them out. As it
was already said, the subtitles convey only about 76% of the original script, but the fact that
this number includes these superfluous expressions logically means that they were used at the
expense of a semantically more relevant content which has been lost.

Řekněte mi, je pravda, co se říká...

Oooh, a tady příchází náš malý oslavenec
V neděli žádná pošta ...haha
Aha, jsem rád, že vás poznávám.
d) Inverted Commas and Italics
While the inverted commas are sometimes used redundantly (indicating direct speech as if
everything else that is uttered in the film was not direct speech), the italics are not used at all.

45
e) Punctuation
The punctuation is also a problem. Not only are there striking mistakes (e.g. missing
commas), but sometimes wrong punctuation marks are used. There are also several cases
when the same mark is redundantly repeated three times in order to be stressed.

Schody sa přemisťují? Vzpomínáte? (There should be a full stop instead of the first question
mark.)
- Có, krev???

f) Capital Letters
The capital letters are used as an emphasis that somebody is shouting.

ŘEKNI PRAVDU! CO VIDÍŠ?

On the other hand, it is necessary to mention that there are many similar exclamations which
are not capitalised.

g) Letters, Newspaper Articles and Messages

They are translated in a similar way as in the official subtitles, using inverted commas to
indicate that the person is reading something.

2) Translation Issues

a) Style
There are sometimes stylistic discrepancies which contribute to the unnaturalness of the
subtitled version. Between these discrepancies can be included for instance repeated use of
certain words:

Oni opravdu...
Oni jsou jeho jediní příbuzní.

Tady najdem všechno, co potřebuješ.

Tady si můžeš koupit kouzelnické potřeby.

b) Translation which does not Make Sense in Czech

46
Sometimes there are sentences the meaning of which is not clear enough:

Až budeme odcházet, koupíme

ještě 2 nové dárky!

This would mean that they will buy the presents while leaving their house. In fact they will
buy it when they will be out during the day.

c) Grammar
- Proč, a kdo ne? (It should be: -Proč? A kdo ne?)

d) Completely Different Meaning

Surprisingly, the subtitles in several moments do not correspond to the original which is being
uttered in English. This fact has no obvious explanation. The original sentence Do you
wanna stop Snape from getting that Stone or not? is subtitles as:

Přestaň už, s tím si nemůžeme zahrávat!

Similar example is the sentence She needs to sort out her priorities. This is subtitled as:

Jako kdybychom ji prosili,

aby šla s námi.

e) Similar Meaning
There are also some cases, when the subtitles more or less correspond to the original, but the
meaning is not exactly the same. The explanation suggests itself much more than in d) – the
subtitler did not understand properly the text he was translating. A good example is the
dialogue between professor McGonagall and Harry and Ron when they are late at her lesson:

McGonagall: Perhaps it would be more useful if I transfigured Mr. Potter and yourself into a
pocket watch. That way one of you might be on time.
Ron: We got lost.
McGongall: Then perhaps a map? I trust you don't need one to find your seats.

This is subtitled as:

Nejlepší by bylo
přečarovat Pottera na vaše hodinky.

Zabloudili jsme.

47
Tak používajte třeba mapu.
Doufám, že alespoň svoje místa najdete!

f) Literal Translation and Anglicisms

Literal translation is used in the scene when Hermione is looking for the entry “Nicolas
Flamel” in an encyclopedia. She says: Famous Fire Eaters. Fifteenth Century Fiends. Flamel.
Nicholas Flamel. Where are you? This is translated very well in the official subtitles:

Festivaly polykačů ohně.

Fantómové patnáctého století.

Flamele?
Nicholasi Flamele? Kde jsi?

But the fake subtitles do not reflect the necessity that all the words begin by the same letter:

"Slávné ohně..., Zázraky z 15. století"

...Flamel...Nicolas Flamel...
Kde jsi?

g) Slovak
It seems that these subtitles were not translated directly from English, but from Slovak which
served as a pivot language, because there are many words and sometimes even phrases left in
Slovak. For instance:

Prváci, poďte ku mňe

Ponáhľajte sa!

Niekedy sú tvoje čary strašidelné?

Fantastické ale strašideľné.

h) Inconsistency
It happens that one word is once translated in a different way than at another time:

To je Prašivka. Skvělý potkan, co?

Khhmmm..."Javor, buk, linda a platan

ať je tahle krysa zlatá!"

48
In addition to the above mentioned points, there is a fairly big number of misprints (such as
Neměj jsem to říkat or Kámen mudrzů) and some parts of the dialogues are missing in the
subtitles.

4. 3. 3. 2. Fake Subtitles 2
The second version of fake subtitles that will be treated here is also anonymous. It
seems to be a little bit better than the first version.
Although these subtitles contain drawbacks very similar to the ones that are in the fake
subtitles 1, the general impression from them is much more positive. The drawbacks again
include the number of lines (sometimes even four), illogical line breaks, superfluous
elements, unnecessary use of inverted commas (on the other hand missing when letters are
read), no use of italics, bad punctuation, stylistic and grammatical errors as well as misleading
meaning of some translations. As for the misprints, they exist in these subtitles, but are rather
rare.
But there are also some differences between these two subtitles. The major one seems
to be the attempt of the second subtitles to convey as much as possible. The dialogues are not
simple enough which sometimes results in the impossibility to read them all before they
disappear. This fact is very bothersome for the viewers.

A jeho jméno bylo V...

Jeho jméno bylo Vol.... (It would be enough to put it down only once)

Takový znamení může bejt způsobený

jen prokletím a jen tim nejhoršim z nich. (Better would be e.g. …jen tím nejhorším prokletím)

or similarly

Promiňte, mohl byste mi říct,

kde bych mohl najít nástupiště 9 a 3/4?
(…kde je nástupiště 9 a 3/4? would be much better)

This inability to use simple short sentences leads to the fact that some long sentences
stretch through not only several lines, but even several subtitles. Moreover, if this is the case,
three dots are redundantly used to indicate that it is still one single sentence:

Poslouchej, myslím, že Snape včera v noci

přivedl toho trolla, způsobil ten zmatek, aby se

49
mohl pokusit dostat přes tříhlavého psa,...

...ale ten pes ho pokousal,

proto ho bolí noha, proto kulhá.

The length of the subtitles can be also demonstrated by the number of signs they
include. The number is approximately 47,000 which is more than 92% of the original.
In addition, there are some other details worth mentioning which differ these subtitles
from the other ones:

1) Word order
The word order is sometimes incorrect:

Varuju tě, chlapče...

...jestli stane se nějaká divná věc...

2) Capital letters
Words are capitalised in a different way than they should be. The reason is not because the
word is shouted out, but rather to emphasise something.

...hrajeme MY.
Ale no tak, kdo by psal TOBĚ?

3) Vulgarisms
There is only one, but as the film is designated primarily for children, its occurrence is hardly
justifiable:

Třeba, když ta mu jeho posraná matka

dala tuhle hračku,...

...bude si svou hloupost

pamatovat možná i několik hodin.

4. 4. Differences between Audiovisual and Literary Translations

When discussing audiovisual translation of a film based on a book, it is certainly
worth investigating what the relations are between these two types of translation and if the

50
translation of the book serves as a basis for the translation of the film. The aim is to find out
whether the interrelation between the translated version of the book and translated version of
the film is at least approximately the same as the interrelation between the originals. There are
two questions which can be asked:
1) Did the translator of the film solve the translation problems in the same way as the
translator of the book?
2) When the film script and the book dialogues are approximately or even exactly the same,
are also the translations the same? Or in other words: is the audiovisual translation inspired by
the literary translation?
As for the translation problems, there are some that appear in the book, but not in the
film. These are for example poems and rhymes which are certainly very interesting from the
point of view of translation, but from the reason of shortening these poems were not used. On
the other hand, there are many others which can be found both in the book and the film.

4. 4. 1. British Culture
There are not so many cultural aspects in the film in comparison with those in the
book. The story of course again takes place at a boarding school, which is located somewhere
in Great Britain. If there was a possibility to replace the story somewhere else (e.g. to the
country where the target language is spoken) in the book, this possibility is close to zero in the
film. Thus, if the translator of the book nevertheless decided in this way, such a fact would
cause serious problems to the person doing the language transfer of the film.

4. 4. 2. Names, spells and neologisms

As far as the names, spells and neologisms are concerned, it is something completely
different. They appear in the film and there are many of them. Not all of them are the same,
some of those that were in the book are not in the film and vice versa.

4. 4. 2. 1. Names
As for the official dubbing and subtitles, the characters’ names and names of things
remain exactly the same. But as there are much fewer names in the film in comparison to the
book, it is only the character of Dumbledore whose name has a Czech equivalent (Brumbál).
The rest remain in the original form.

51
 This is also the case of Ron Weasely which, however, is more problematic in the film
than in the book. The reason for this fact is a slight change of the script in comparison with
the original book dialogues. When Draco Malfoy meets Ron Weasley for the first time, he
says in the book:

"Think my name's funny, do you? No need to ask who you are. My father told me all the
Weasleys have red hair, freckles, and more children than they can afford."

But in the film he says something different:

Think my name's funny do you? No need to ask yours. Red hair and a hand-me-down robe?
You must be a Weasley.
Moje jméno je k smíchu? Na tvoje se ptát nemusím. Zrzek a obnošený hábit. Musíš být
Weasly. (Dubbing translation; others are similar.)

The difference is evident: in the film there is no mention about Draco’s father who
told him about the Weasleys. Draco deduces that Ron’s name is Weasley, because he has got
red hair just like the hair of a weasel. But this is not comprehensible enough in Czech. As for
other character’s names, any of them does not pose a problem like this.
As far as the two fake translations are concerned, there are much more elements worth
noticing, particularly in fake subtitles 2.
The first fake subtitles translate names in the same way as the book. But the author of
the second subtitles decided to leave the majority of the names in the original form. The
problem is the fact that the majority of people who watch the film are already used to the
Czech equivalents, because they have read the book. The non-translation is thus very
confusing, especially for those who are not familiar with the original names. (For example
those who read the book in English).
Another problem that arises, when the original forms are kept, is the Czech declension.
When Czech suffixes are added to these words, it sounds rather strange. Besides, as the suffix
that should be used is not always evident, there are some alternations:

Vítejte v Hogwarts.
V Hogwartsích?

52
 Nevertheless, it seems that the author had some notion about the book translation. For
example Diagon Alley was translated as Příčná ulice, Muddles became mudlové, Scabbers is
Prašivka and Rememberall is pamatováček just like in the book.
The translation of everything concerning the game of Quidditch, particularly the
names of the players, is also worth noticing.
When the players are mentioned for the first time, professor McGonnagall says in
these subtitles:

Woode, našla jsem vám chytače.

But later Wood explains to Harry:

Každý tým má sedm hráčů:

Tři charsers, dva beaters, jednoho keeper

a jednoho seeker. To jsi ty.

“Seeker” means of course the same as “chytač” in the first example (“chytač” being the book
translation of “seeker”). In addition, the latter is also a good example of the declension
problems treated above. As for the names of the balls, their names remain in English.
When discussing the influence of the book translation on individual audiovisual
translations, another oddity is worth noticing. The forest into which the students are not
allowed to go is called Forbidden Forest in the book, but the name was changed to Dark
Forest in the film. The book translation was Zapovězený les. Both the dubbing and official
subtitles reflect this change and translate the Dark forest as Temmný les. But the first fake
translation is začarovaný les (not capitalized) and, surprisingly, the second fake subtitles,
which seem to pay almost no attention to the book, translate this as Zapovězený les, thus in the
same way as it was translated in the book, without taking the scirpt change into consideration!

4. 4. 2. 2. Spells
There are several spells that appear both in the book and the film, but there are also
some new ones, which were not used in the book.
The ones that are the same are the Latin ones. They remain the same in the official
translations, but sometimes are misspelled in the fake translations, for instance Wingardium
Leviosa written as Vingardium Leviosa.

53
 Those that are new in the film are either in Latin or in English. The Latin ones remain
the same in the DVD subtitles and the dubbing. As for the fake subtitles, they are also in
Latin, but they are very often changed . Thus, Oculus Reparo becomes Okolous repedro in
one subtitles and Oculus Repairus in the others. Similarly, Lacarnum Inflamare is once
subtitled as Lacardum Inflemorium and once as Legardum et lumoren.
The spells that are in English are those that are not serious spells and do not work.
These are always the same in the DVD subtitles and in the dubbing. On the other hand, the
first fake subtitles are sometimes inspired by the official ones. The second fake subtitles are
different.

4. 4. 3. Language of the characters

All the audiovisual translations reflect the specified way of Hagrid’s speaking. In the
dubbing as well as all subtitle versions he speaks in a familiar way similarly to the book
translation. On the other hand it is worth mentioning, that sometimes his way of speaking is
more familiar in the subtitles (including the official ones) in comparison to the way he speaks
in the dubbed version. This is quite strange, as the subtitles should be usually closer to the
standard language as they are written. Nevertheless, it is sometimes the other way round, for
example words such as všecko or nejlepčí are used in the subtitles while všechno and nejlepší
are used in the dubbing. On the other hand, the dubbing takes advantage of a specific
intonation which is imparted to Hagrid by the Czech actor who dubbed him.

4. 4. 4. Addressing Students
There is also a difference in the way teachers address their students. In the book as
well as in the dubbing, the official subtitles and the first fake subtitles the teachers and other
adults use the polite form when speaking to children. The second fake subtitles are much less
consistent and children are sometimes addressed in the second person. Sometimes even one
person during one dialogue changes the attitude:

Byl jsem zvědavý,

kdy vás tu uvidím, pane Pottere.

Připadá mi, jako by to bylo včera,

když tady tvoje matka a otec

kupovali svoje první hůlky.

54
4. 4. 5. Dialogues
Approximately 20 – 30% of the film dialogues are directly inspired by the direct
speeches in the book. This means that they are either exactly the same or changed only
slightly.
As for the translations of these sentences there is a big difference between the official
translations and the fake ones. The DVD subtitles and dubbing indicate that their translator
was well aware of the book translation. There are several fundamental expressions and
phrases which are the same. For example the phrase you don’t use your eyes is translated as ty
pro oči nevidíš.
Another proof of the fact that the translator of the subtitles and dubbing took the book
into consideration is his translation of the sentence Rubeus Hagrid, Keeper of Keys and Grounds
at Hogwart. This was translated in the book, dubbing and DVD subtitles as Rubeus Hagrid,
klíčník a šafář v Bradavicích. On the other hand, the two other versions are different:

Rubeus Hagrid. Jsem and Rubeus Hagrid. Klíčník a

strážcem bradavických lesů a luk. správce Hogwartskejch pozemků.

But some examples indicating the contrary can be found, i.e. that the film is translated
in a different way. The sentence “Honestly, woman, you call yourself our mother?” is translated in
the book as „Prosím tě, to si říkáš naše matka?”
But that same sentence in the film changed to “Vážně mami, jsi vůbec naše matka?“ in the
dubbing and -Vážně, mami, jsi vůbec naše? in the official subtitles. The other two subtitled
versions are also different.
Thus, it can be observed that there are differences in particular cases as far as the
interrelation between the dialogues in the book and the ones in the film is concerned. It might
seem at first sight that this is caused by the dubbing and subtitling constraints. But this is not
always true.
Very often, subtitles have to be shortened in order to be comfortably read and
therefore words have to be replaced, or syntax has to be simplified. However, exception
proves the rule. And there are several such exceptions in this film. The sentence I demand
that you leave at once. You are breaking and entering. (translated in the book as „Žádám,

55
abyste okamžitě odešel, pane!“… „To je přece vloupání!“) sounds in the Czech version as
Okamžitě odejděte, pane! To je násilné vloupání! But in the subtitles it was changed to a form
which is not shorter at all, just contrariwise:

Okamžitě odejděte, pane!

Dopustil jste se násilného vloupání.

Nonetheless, after having studied several examples of sentences that are the same in
English, but different in Czech, it seems that the above treated constraints are only an
additional cause for the alterations. The main reason seems to be just the fact that the
translator did not consider it important to translate everything exactly in the same way.

5. Conclusion
The thesis treated the audiovisual translation from two points of view.
First, characteristic features of this kind of translation were dealt with in order to
demonstrate its particularity and uniqueness within the field of translation studies. It was
observed that both subtitling and dubbing are influenced by several constraints which make
both these kinds of translation very different from the literary one. On the other hand, as the
constraints are very different for these two techniques, the final results are also very different.
From this point of view, there are two things that have to be taken into account: 1) the
length of the target language version and 2) the fidelity if its meaning. As for subtitling, the
length is always reduced in comparison to the length of the original, but the meaning has to
correspond to the original as much as possible, because the audience can notice any minor
discrepancy. On the other hand, the dubbed version has the same length as the original, but it
is not necessary to stick to the exact meaning. What is important is only the plot-carrying
meaning. In other words, if the adaptor needs to modify the dialogues in order to match the lip
movements, he is perfectly allowed to do so.
Second, the question of interrelation between audovisual and literary translations in
the case of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was brought up with the aim to find out
whether such an interrelation exists and what its extent is. Four audiovisual translations were
taken into consideration: official DVD dubbing, official DVD subtitles and two versions of
fake subtitles found on the internet. First, all these translations were examined in detail in
order to be able to state their quality and try to find out whether their authors were aware of

56
basic principles of subtitling and dubbing. The comparison of the audiovisual translations and
the literary one followed.
While examining the four audiovisual translations it was observed that fundamental
differences exist between them.
Both the official dubbing and the official subtitles meet an overwhelming majority of
requirements that are necessary for a good understanding of the film by the target language
audience.
On the contrary, the two fake subtitle versions are very badly done in many respects.
They do not stick to the principles that would enable their comprehensibility and the number
of language and formal errors is sometimes unbearable.
As for the interrelation between these audiovisual translations and their literary
counterpart, it can be observed that the more the translation sticks to the principles of
subtitling, the more it corresponds to the translation of the book.
But it is important to distinguish between the solutions to the translation problems and
the translation of dialogues. While the official DVD dubbing and official DVD subtitles
evidently have a connection with the literary translation as far as names, spells and
neologisms are concerned, it is much more difficult to find such a connection in the
translation of dialogues.
As for the two fake translations, there is a substantial difference between them. While
the potential translation problems are often solved in the same way in the first fake subtitles
version and the book, the second version takes the book into consideration very sporadically.
But as far as the translation of the dialogues is concerned, neither of the authors was inspired
by the literary translation of the dialogues.
It could thus be said, that if the translation of the film aims at an audience which is
familiar with the translation of the book (provided that such a translation exists), this literary
translation should be taken into account. Otherwise the film is badly comprehensible and the
audience is confused.

57
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