A socio-cultural study of taboo rendition in Sinhalese Fansubbing

Abstract

Audio-visual Translation is of utmost importance in the context of cultural and linguistic constraints that Sri Lankan society faces regarding access to foreign film products because of a variety of ideologies. This research examines the translation of taboo words in English language films subtitled into Sinhalese by Sri Lankan fansubbers. The corpus of the study is the English movie Deadpool and its' Sinhalese fansubs available on baiscope.lk, a leading fansub-providing website in Sri Lanka. The corpus was mainly selected based on two criteria: (1) a wide range of taboos used, and (2) availability of fan-produced Sinhalese subtitles. The present study attempts to investigate how taboo words, according to the ideologies in contemporary Sri Lankan society are presented. More specifically, this study addresses the following questions; 1) What are the strategies used by the translator in rendering taboo words in the target language? and 2) Does the translator tend to preserve the norms of the source or the target language in the rendition of taboo words? Two theoretical frameworks have been used for the classification of taboos, and analysis of translation strategies of taboos respectively. To identify and classify the taboo terms and expressions of the movie, the typology of tabo0 elements by Sharif and Darchinian was used. To analyse the translation strategies used to render them, translation strategies of taboos by Lovihandrie, Mujiyanto, and Sutopo were adopted. Based on the results, the translators' most used strategies for the translation of taboo words were identified as taboo for taboo, substitution, euphemism, omission, and translation by a more general word. Further analysis suggested that the translator's approach was influenced by the source culture norms rather than the target culture norms shown by the translator's attempts to preserve as many taboos as possible despite the cultural ideologies ingrained in Sri Lankan society.