Title
“If I am translating a film, my emotion needs to appear in the translation”. Translators' narratives about subtitling
Conference name
Media for All 10 Conference
City
Country
Belgium
Modalities
Date
06/07/2023-07/07/2023
Abstract
The affective turn (Clough, 2007), whose basic premise is that emotions and affections play an essential role in personal, professional, and social life, determining our relationships and world experience, has gained space in translation studies in recent decades. In this context, and considering a transdisciplinary theoretical-methodological perspective, this talk aims to present part of a broader study that analyzes professional translators' oral narratives about the emotional effects of translating non-literary texts in their lives.
This presentation will bring some results of this ethnographic research arising from the analysis of excerpts from narratives of three Brazilian translators of subtitles of sensitive audiovisual material, such as documentaries about the holocaust, films about violence against women, and pornographic material.
The narratives show how the translators were affected by the translation and how this reverberated in the translation process, enabling a look at emotions based on the strategies adopted in these translations.
The method used in this study for data collection was semi-structured online interviews that lasted about one hour for each person. The interview focused on the emotional experience of the translators, and it raised specific issues of how the effects of emotion were perceived on the body and what strategies the translator adopted to avoid emotional involvement with the theme.
The selected narratives show, at first, an ambivalence between the recognition that the person is affected during and even after finishing the translation and a fear of showing this involvement to the client. In this sense, it was possible to observe the translators'concern with the impression that they may give to the client if they express an emotional involvement with the translation, as they understand that he expects neutrality and impartiality.
In agreement with Lehr (2021), Hubscher-Davidson (2018), and Rojo (2017, the analyzes of these narratives indicate that the study of affective and emotional aspects and their influence on the translation process and the translators´ lives can contribute to the training of translators, enabling discussions about personal and professional engagement, interference in ethical decisions and greater awareness about emotional and physical reactions resulting from translation.
As a transdisciplinary theoretical framework guiding the analyses, we resort to the characteristics of narrative (temporality, relationality, causal articulation, and selective appropriation) by Baker (2006; 2018), on emotion studies (Damasio, 2012; Barret, 2017; Hokkanen and Koskinen, 2018) and the performative (Austin, 1990; Robinson, 2003; 2015). It is expected to demonstrate that the translator's emotional engagement with the translation can be something positive and that the translator's role becomes more, rather than less, important in the informational age.
This presentation will bring some results of this ethnographic research arising from the analysis of excerpts from narratives of three Brazilian translators of subtitles of sensitive audiovisual material, such as documentaries about the holocaust, films about violence against women, and pornographic material.
The narratives show how the translators were affected by the translation and how this reverberated in the translation process, enabling a look at emotions based on the strategies adopted in these translations.
The method used in this study for data collection was semi-structured online interviews that lasted about one hour for each person. The interview focused on the emotional experience of the translators, and it raised specific issues of how the effects of emotion were perceived on the body and what strategies the translator adopted to avoid emotional involvement with the theme.
The selected narratives show, at first, an ambivalence between the recognition that the person is affected during and even after finishing the translation and a fear of showing this involvement to the client. In this sense, it was possible to observe the translators'concern with the impression that they may give to the client if they express an emotional involvement with the translation, as they understand that he expects neutrality and impartiality.
In agreement with Lehr (2021), Hubscher-Davidson (2018), and Rojo (2017, the analyzes of these narratives indicate that the study of affective and emotional aspects and their influence on the translation process and the translators´ lives can contribute to the training of translators, enabling discussions about personal and professional engagement, interference in ethical decisions and greater awareness about emotional and physical reactions resulting from translation.
As a transdisciplinary theoretical framework guiding the analyses, we resort to the characteristics of narrative (temporality, relationality, causal articulation, and selective appropriation) by Baker (2006; 2018), on emotion studies (Damasio, 2012; Barret, 2017; Hokkanen and Koskinen, 2018) and the performative (Austin, 1990; Robinson, 2003; 2015). It is expected to demonstrate that the translator's emotional engagement with the translation can be something positive and that the translator's role becomes more, rather than less, important in the informational age.