Speech Acts, Directness and Politeness in Dubbing

Speech Acts, Directness
and Politeness in Dubbing

American Television Series
in Hungary

Károly Polcz

PETER LANG
Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • New York • Wien

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.

Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche National-bibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Polcz, Károly, 1968- author.

Title: Speech acts, directness and politeness in dubbing : American television series in Hungary / Károly Polcz.

Description: New York : Peter Lang, 2020. | Series: New trends in translation studies ; 30 | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019020818 | ISBN 9781788742320 (alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Dubbing of television programs--Hungary. | Translating and interpreting--Hungary. | English language--Translating into Hungarian.

Classification: LCC P306.93 .P65 2019 | DDC 418/.02--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019020818

Cover design by Peter Lang Ltd.

ISSN 1664-249X

ISBN 978-1-78874-232-0 (print)  •  ISBN 978-1-78874-233-7 (ePDF)

ISBN 978-1-78874-234-4 (ePub)  •  ISBN 978-1-78874-235-1 (mobi)

DOI: 10.3725/b13174

© Peter Lang AG 2020

Published by Peter Lang Ltd, International Academic Publishers,

52 St Giles, Oxford, OX1 3LU, United Kingdom

oxford@peterlang.com, www.peterlang.com

Károly Polcz has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this Work.

All rights reserved.

All parts of this publication are protected by copyright.

Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems.

This publication has been peer reviewed.

About the author

Károly Polcz is Senior Lecturer in the Department of International Business Languages at Budapest Business School, University of Applied Sciences. He obtained his PhD in linguistics with a specialization in translation studies from Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. He has been teaching translation studies and English for specific purposes for more than twenty years. His research interests lie in business and audiovisual translation, terminology, pragmatics and the methodology of English for specific purposes. He is a member of the Associations of Hungarian Applied Linguists and Language Teachers.

About the book

The culture specificity of speech acts may pose daunting challenges in translating audiovisual products. This volume offers intriguing insights into the ways dubbing translators seek to establish pragmatic equivalence in speech acts such as requests, instructions, advice, invitations and offers. What is the nature of pragmatic equivalence in speech acts? What types of pragmatic shifts do translators employ in the pursuit of pragmatic equivalence? Do shifts in directness have a bearing on target language politeness? While focused on a relatively large amount of linguistic data retrieved from more than 700 episodes of twenty different television series, the study introduces a multidimensional model that can be used as a heuristic tool in the analysis of speech acts in translation studies. This venture into the realm of pragmatics and translation research is aimed at capturing dominant patterns in translating speech acts in audiovisual translation, which, as the author claims, could be tied to translation universals.

This eBook can be cited

This edition of the eBook can be cited. To enable this we have marked the start and end of a page. In cases where a word straddles a page break, the marker is placed inside the word at exactly the same position as in the physical book. This means that occasionally a word might be bifurcated by this marker.

Contents

List of Figures

List of Tables

Acknowledgements

List of Abbreviations

Introduction

Chapter 1

Speech acts in translation

Chapter 2

Pragmatic equivalence in the translation of speech acts

Chapter 3

Speech acts, directness and sociopragmatic variables

Chapter 4

Research design

Chapter 5

Pragmatic shifts between the directness categories

Chapter 6

Pragmatic shifts within the directness categories←v | vi→

Chapter 7

Pragmatic transfer

Chapter 8

Summary and conclusions

Bibliography

Filmography

Index←vi | vii→

Figures

Figure 1: Aspects of equivalence in directive and commissive speech acts based on House (1997, 2015).

Figure 2: Assessment of sociopragmatic variables in film scripts.

Figure 3: Proportions of the suggestory form in SL and original TL speech acts.

Figure 4: Proportions of the query preparatory form in SL and original TL speech acts.

Figure 5: Proportions of the contextual factor of willingness in translated and original speech acts.

Figure 6: Proportions of the contextual factor of ability in translated and original speech acts.

Figure 7: Proportions of hypothetic forms in translated and original speech acts.

Figure 8: Proportions of real forms in translated and original speech acts.←vii | viii→ ←viii | ix→

Tables