Revisiting Gottlieb's strategies to overcome non-equivalence above word-level in subtitling: A case of the movie Sthūtiyi Nævata Enna

Abstract

Non-equivalence articulates the difficulty of transferring the meaning between two languages. It is a pivotal issue in setting subtitles for translations. Mona Baker (1992) defines non-equivalence above word level as the problems arising at units, larger than individual words such as problems associated with the translation of idioms and collocations. The main objective of the present study is to identify and analyze the use of Gottlieb's (1992) strategies employed to overcome non-equivalence above word level in the official English subtitling of the Sinhala movie Sthūtiyi Nævata Enna (2010). Forty-six (46) extracts of non-equivalence at word level with their English subtitles which were categorized as per Gottlieb's strategies of addition, deletion, paraphrase, transfer, dislocation, imitation, transcription, condensation, decimation and resignation were analyzed using a descriptive and qualitative approach. The frequency of the use of each strategy was observed. Out of the ten strategies, addition, imitation and transcription have not been utilized by the subtitler to overcome non-equivalence above word level. Out of 46 extracts, paraphrase has been used 13 times and 12 extracts have been subtitled using dislocation. The strategies of transfer, condensation, decimation, deletion and resignation were used in 03, 05, 03, 03 and 02 instances respectively. Further, the researcher found three new strategies which were termed as linguistic neutralization, cultural neutralization and cultural equivalence which were used in 02, 01 and 02 instances respectively. In conclusion, the findings suggested that rather than creating the exact replication rendered in the Sinhala language, the subtitler of the selected movie preferred the adaptive strategies to sound it natural to the target audience. However, future researchers are encouraged to observe the non-equivalence in subtitling, using more movies as references to generalize the applicability of the findings.