Subtitling Cookery Programmes from English to Traditional Chinese: Taiwan as a Case Study

Within translation studies, the topic of food and translation is still underresearched and the understanding of subtitling cookery programmes is also very limited. This research hopes to bridge the current research gap, by providing an overview of the classification of food-related texts and their embedded linguistic characteristics, thus expanding the knowledge in regard to this matter. // The research also sets out to understand the nature of two specific linguistic items, sensory language and culture-specific references, as well as the translation strategies used in subtitling them. The methodological foundation of the thesis builds upon the framework of the Toury’s(1995) notion of translation norms, realised by Pedersen’s analytical model. In addition, the framework of product experience is also consulted to help contextualise sensory language and its classification. // The analysis is carried out on a corpus of 480 minutes which includes two cookery programmes and represents two formats: the modern format, Jamie’s 15-Minute Meals (Channel 4, 2012) and the cooking competition format, The Taste (Channel 4, 2014). All sensory language and culture-specific references present in the corpus have been identified and their translation from English into Traditional Chinese analysed from both quantitative and qualitative viewpoints in an attempt to reveal the prevalent translational trends

Quality in subtitling: theory and professional reality

The issue of quality is of great importance in translation studies and, although some studies have been conducted in the field of subtitling, most discussions have been limited to aspects such as how to become a good subtitler and how to produce quality subtitles. Little research has been carried out to investigate other potential factors that may influence the quality of subtitling output in practice. In recent years, some subtitling courses at postgraduate level have attempted to bridge the gap between academia and industry, not only by incorporating the teaching of linguistic and technical skills into the curriculum but also by informing students about ethics, working conditions, market competition, and other relevant professional issues. This instruction is intended to prepare them for promising careers in the subtitling industry, where a progressively deteriorating trend has been observed by some professional subtitlers. The main aim and objective of this study is to explore both theoretical and practical aspects of subtitling quality. The study aspires to call attention to the factors influencing the quality of subtitles and also to provide suggestions to improve the state of affairs within the subtitling industry in terms of quality. In order to examine the potential factors that influence the perception of subtitling quality, particularly in the professional context, two rounds of online surveys were conducted to establish the working conditions of subtitlers. Despite the fact that the participants in the first survey were based in thirty-nine different countries, the data collected is more representative of the situation in Europe, where subtitling is a relatively mature industry compared to other parts of the world. The second survey targeted subtitlers working with the Chinese language in an attempt to study the burgeoning Chinese audiovisual market. This thesis provides a systematic analysis of the numerous parameters that have an impact on the quality of subtitling, both in theory and in professional reality, and offers a detailed insight into the working environment of subtitlers. At the same time, it endeavours to draw attention to the need to ensure decent working conditions in the industry. The general findings are discussed in terms of their implications for the development of the profession as well as for subtitler training and education.Open Acces

THE USE OF SEGMENTATION CUES IN SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNERS OF ENGLISH

This dissertation project examined the influence of language typology on the use of segmentation cues by second language (L2) learners of English. Previous research has shown that native English speakers rely more on sentence context and lexical knowledge than segmental (i.e. phonotactics or acoustic-phonetics) or prosodic cues (e.g., word stresss) in native language (L1) segmentation. However, L2 learners may rely more on segmental and prosodic cues to identify word boundaries in L2 speech since it may require high lexical and syntactic proficiency in order to use lexical cues efficiently. The goal of this dissertation was to provide empirical evidence for the Revised Framework for L2 Segmentation (RFL2) which describes the relative importance of different levels of segmentation cues. Four experiments were carried out to test the hypotheses made by RFL2. Participants consisted of four language groups including native English speakers and L2 learners of English with Mandarin, Korean, or Spanish L1s. Experiment 1 compared the use of stress cues and lexical knowledge while Experiment 2 compared the use of phonotactic cues and lexical knowledge. Experiment 3 compared the use of phonotactic cues and semantic cues while Experiment 4 compared the use of stress cues and sentence context. Results showed that L2 learners rely more on segmental cues than lexical knowledge or semantic cues. L2 learners showed cue interaction in both lexical and sublexical levels whereas native speakers appeared to use the cues independently. In general, L2 learners appeared to have acquired sensitivity to the segmentation cues used in L2, although they still showed difficulty with specific aspects in each cue based on L1 characteristics. The results provided partial support for RFL2 in which L2 learners' use of sublexical cues was influenced by L1 typology. The current dissertation has important pedagogical implication as findings may help identify cues that can facilitate L2 speech segmentation and comprehension

Chinese subtitles of English-language feature films in Taiwan: A systematic investigation of solution-types

Subtitling differs from the traditional idea of translation – from a written source text to a written target text. The transference is from a source text which consists of verbal information and non-verbal information from audio and visual channels, to a written target text which is constrained by the limited time and space on the screen. Subtitling involves not only transfer across languages but also a change of mode, from the spoken mode to the written mode and sometimes from the mode of moving images or sound effect to the written mode. Given the multimodal nature of film text, subtitling are expected to utilise different filmic signs and produce subtitles that fit into the montage of the film, taking into consideration the technical constraints and target viewers‟ processing effort. With the prevalence of translated audiovisual products, subtitling has drawn a considerable amount of scholarly attention. However, most of the research in this field focuses on the European scene and the language pairs studied are closely related. Given the lack of research into Chinese subtitles and the fact that the Chinese language and culture are very different from the English language and culture, the present study has aimed to investigate the way verbal elements in English-language feature films are translated into Mandarin subtitles in Taiwan. It looks at subtitling in general, subtitling extralinguistic cultural references and subtitling humour. Being descriptive in nature, it describes current translation practice by comparing the source text segment with its corresponding target text one and explores different types of solutions applied. By quantifying the frequency of each solution-type, some trends of subtitling are also generalised. The results show that subtitles of English-language feature films in Taiwan are source- text-oriented, as most of the source-text segments are closely rendered to the target text by source-language-oriented solutions, in which the source-text item undergoes minimum changes. Target-language-oriented solutions are seldom applied and extreme target-language-oriented ones are rarely found. The high percentage of source-language-oriented solutions indicates that Taiwanese subtitlers are reluctant to alter the source text; subtitling, as the preferred method of film translation in Taiwan, is seen as a means to bring the exotic experience to target viewers. It also suggests that most of the source-text elements can be transferred directly as the need to employ content-changing solutions is low. This study also compares its findings with those of other studies which are based on similar methods but focus on Scandinavian subtitling. Contrary to what might be expected, since the linguistic and cultural relatedness and the target audience‟s proficiency in the source language are different in these studies, the results are very similar. The trend towards source orientation in subtitling is observed in recent years across different languages, and it is largely due to globalisation, the influence of US popular culture and information boom that break cultural and linguistic boundaries. It appears that cultural influence is a more important factor than cultural affinity in determining a subtitles choice of solutions

Full Issue, Special Issue 2, Fall 2018

essay: critical writing at pomona college is an online, open-access journal published in Scholarship@Claremont. essay is an initiative of the Pomona College Writing Program and is part of a larger network of online, open-access publications supported by the Claremont Colleges Library. Pieces that appear in essay are peer-reviewed by Pomona College faculty and Writing Partners

Universal and language-specific processing : the case of prosody

A key question in the science of language is how speech processing can be influenced by both language-universal and language-specific mechanisms (Cutler, Klein, & Levinson, 2005). My graduate research aimed to address this question by adopting a crosslanguage approach to compare languages with different phonological systems. Of all components of linguistic structure, prosody is often considered to be one of the most language-specific dimensions of speech. This can have significant implications for our understanding of language use, because much of speech processing is specifically tailored to the structure and requirements of the native language. However, it is still unclear whether prosody may also play a universal role across languages, and very little comparative attempts have been made to explore this possibility. In this thesis, I examined both the production and perception of prosodic cues to prominence and phrasing in native speakers of English and Mandarin Chinese. In focus production, our research revealed that English and Mandarin speakers were alike in how they used prosody to encode prominence, but there were also systematic language-specific differences in the exact degree to which they enhanced the different prosodic cues (Chapter 2). This, however, was not the case in focus perception, where English and Mandarin listeners were alike in the degree to which they used prosody to predict upcoming prominence, even though the precise cues in the preceding prosody could differ (Chapter 3). Further experiments examining prosodic focus prediction in the speech of different talkers have demonstrated functional cue equivalence in prosodic focus detection (Chapter 4). Likewise, our experiments have also revealed both crosslanguage similarities and differences in the production and perception of juncture cues (Chapter 5). Overall, prosodic processing is the result of a complex but subtle interplay of universal and language-specific structure

Chinese Territorial Assemblages & The Politics Of Spatial Governance

Ph.D. Thesis. University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa 2018

Spoken word recognition

Sum Kwok-wing.Thesis submitted in: December 2003.Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2004.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 73-79).Abstracts in English and Chinese.Abstract --- p.iiChinese Abstract (論文摘要) --- p.iiiAcknowledgements --- p.ivTable of Contents --- p.vList of Tables --- p.viList of Figures --- p.viiChapter Chapter 1 - --- "Significance of Onset, Rime and Tone in Monosyllab Words" --- p.1Chapter Chapter 2 - --- General Methods --- p.19Chapter Chapter 3 - --- Experiment 1 --- p.28Chapter Chapter 4 - --- Experiment 2 --- p.35Chapter Chapter 5 - --- Experiment 3 --- p.41Chapter Chapter 6 - --- Comparison and Summary of the First Three Experiments --- p.47Chapter Chapter 7 - --- Experiment 4 --- p.53Chapter Chapter 8 - --- General Discussion --- p.59References --- p.72Appendix I --- p.79Appendix II --- p.87Appendix III --- p.95Appendix IV --- p.103Appendix V --- p.111Appendix VI --- p.112Appendix VII --- p.11

The Pragmatic-Discursive Structure of Chinese Compliments in Naturally Occurring Conversation

Studies across different languages over the past three decades have claimed that compliments are formulaic in nature, realized by only a few syntactic and semantic formulae. Much of the research employs elicitation or ethnographic field notes data, which biases the analysis to single utterance, explicit and formulaic compliments. However, my observations of Chinese compliments in naturally occurring conversation paint a different, much more sophisticated, picture. The current study investigates the realization of spontaneous Chinese complimenting behavior in the speech communities of Shanghai and other cities in China. Over 200 speakers from different walks of life were audio-recorded in a vast array of natural settings. Three hundred compliment-response sequences were selected for analysis. Adopting a combination of the pragmatic speech act analytic approach and the discursive pragmatic analytic approach, the current study examines the pragmatic-discursive structure of Chinese complimenting in conversation sequences over multiple turns involving two or more parties. Results of the study reveal that Chinese compliments and compliment responses are not isolated, single utterance acts, but rather multi-turn discursive events. Chinese compliments operate as pragmatic-discursive strategies working together over the discourse in a core and support relationship. Among the 3,835 compliment strategies identified, 525 are core strategies and 3,310 are support strategies. The core compliment strategy is normally the first general summative statement initiating a compliment topic. Seven major support compliment strategies—agreement, comment, example, repetition, intensification, quote, and comparison—fulfill three major pragmatic-discursive functions: to align with, to elaborate, or to emphasize the core or another support strategy. The seven major support compliment strategies are further realized by a wide variety of substrategies and linguistic forms with no formulaicity and predictability in lexical or syntactic distribution. The different pragmatic-discursive strategies interact such that the participants negotiate and “co-construct” the compliment event. The analysis indicates that context, both interaction-external and interaction-internal, is crucial in the construction and interpretation of a compliment action