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Translation Strategies of Discourse Markers in the Dubbed TextBog'liq aaaaaaaaa3. Translation Strategies of Discourse Markers in the Dubbed Text
This paper selects the official English-Chinese dubbed version of the animated film The Croods as
the analysis corpus, calculates the frequency and percentage of discourse markers in the source text
(Table 1), sorts out different translations of discourse markers in the dubbed text and analyzes the
translator's translation strategies. The film tells a story about the Croods, a prehistoic family of cavemen,
who survived by living accordingly to a strict set of rules. But they were forced to leave their home of
shelter and security to find a new home because their home was destroyed by a disaster known as "The
End".
It can be seen from Table 1 that twelve discourse markers are mainly used in the English dialogues
of the film: Okay, And, Well, So, Now, Yeah, Oh, You know, All right, I mean, Then and Look. These
discourse markers occurred 127 times. Okay is the most frequently used while Look is the least. Although
the total number of discourse markers in the film is much less than that in real dialogues, these carefully
planned and intentionally used discourse markers play an indispensable role in producing coherent
fictional languages and increasing the naturalness and orality of film dialogues.
Table 1: Frequency and Percentage of discourse markers in The Croods
Number
Discourse
Marker
Frequency/
Percentage
Number
Discourse
Marker
Frequency/
Percentage
1
Okay
33 / 25.98%
7
Oh
8 / 6.30%
2
And
24 / 18.90%
8
You know
8 / 6.30%
3
Well
12 / 9.45%
9
All right
4 / 3.15%
4
So
11 / 8.66%
10
I mean
3 / 2.36%
5
Now
11 / 8.66%
11
Then
3 / 2.36%
6
Yeah
9 / 7.09%
12
Look
1 / 0.79%
By comparing the English discourse markers and the Chinese dubbed translation, we find that the
translator mainly uses translation methods such as omission, literal translation and free translation. As
for literal and free translation, there are different choices of words for one discourse marker, and the same
discourse marker is translated into different versions with completely unrelated meanings in different
dialogues. Thus, this paper focuses on different free translations of discourse markers, and finds that the
translator not only pays attention to the discourse itself but also takes into account the dubbing constraints.
That is to say, the translator matches the translation with visual images and sounds. In order to reproduce
the naturalness and orality of the dubbed dialogues while taking into account the dubbing constraints, the
translator uses five different translation strategies, including change of personal pronoun, use of sense
verbs, conversion to mental process, conversion to specific actions and syntactic transformation.
Frontiers in Educational Research
ISSN 2522-6398 Vol. 6, Issue 1: 139-143, DOI: 10.25236/FER.2023.060122
Published by Francis Academic Press, UK
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