Dear all,
I'm very pleased to join your group.
I am first-year a PhD student at the Centre for Translation and Intercultural
Studies, The University of Manchester.
My PhD focuses on the rendering of implicatures in Audiovisual Translation, and
I am considering Relevance Theory as a theoretical framework.
My MA dissertation (submitted to The University of Manchester in September 2005)
is a limited-scale investigation of implicatures in subtitling Disney animated
films for Greek viewers.
I would be more than grateful if you could inform me on any study of audiovisual
translation in the light of Relevance Theory (apart from Kovacic, 1994/1996)
and/or of any experimental research based on Relevance Theory.
Please, find my PhD proposal copied below.
Best wishes,
Louisa Desilla.
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Title: Towards a Pragmatic Approach to Audiovisual Translation; Implicature in
Film Subtitling for the Greek Audience
Translation and interpreting have increasingly provided a rich source of data
for pragmatic research, with an entire special issue of Journal of Pragmatics
(38/3, 2006) recently dedicated to this field. However, the pragmatics of
Audiovisual Translation (AVT) has attracted very little attention so far.
Within this limited volume of literature, not a single study has so far
addressed the issue of implicature (i.e. implicitly communicated meaning) in
audiovisual translation within the Greek context. Given the importance of the
concept of implicature within pragmatic enquiry and the fact that its use and
interpretation are significantly culture-bound, the current research focuses on
how it is cross-culturally relayed in interlingual subtitling. Subtitling is not
selected randomly as an area of investigation; audiovisual products exert
considerable influence on an audience's perception of foreign cultures and
values. Besides, there is a need for more research in AVT and, in particular,
for a more descriptive approach catering for the peculiarities of translating
audiovisual material.
The overarching research question pertains to whether the tendency towards
explicitation as realised through the spelling out of implicatures, which is
generally prevalent in translation, can be observed in subtitling, as well.
More specifically, the study sets out to address the following questions:
-How are different types of implicature handled by subtitlers?
-Given the polysemiotic nature of films, what variables are
relevant to the treatment of implicatures?
-Does the target-audience recover implicatures in the same way
as source-language viewers?
The last question requires the careful design and conduct of experiments. It is
worth pursuing because although the ultimate aim of subtitles is maximum
comprehension and enjoyment of the audiovisual product, there are very few
experimental studies on subtitle reception per se. The second year of the
project will be primarily devoted to the collection of experimental data.
In my first year of study, the following tasks have been accomplished: refining
research questions; elaborating a detailed chapter by chapter outline of the
thesis; delimiting and compiling a set of observational data (i.e. 140
instances of implicatures identified in five British romantic comedies
accompanied by their Greek renderings); writing a draft chapter for the second
research panel in May, consisting of a critical evaluation of the literature on
implicature. The plan envisaged for the remainder of this academic year involves
the synthesis of a sound theoretical framework for data analysis, which will be
based on Relevance Theory (Sperber & Wilson, 1986/1995).
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