On norms and taboo: An analysis of professional subtitling through data triangulation

Catarina Xavier
University of Lisbon

Within Audiovisual Translation Studies, many studies have been dedicated to the subtitling of taboo words. Most of this research has been restricted to quantitative and qualitative data about translation strategies, with comparably less attention given to translation norms. As norms cannot be directly observed, their investigation raises methodological challenges for empirical studies. This paper proposes a model for the investigation of translation norms by triangulating data on observed regularities in the English to Portuguese subtitling of taboo words in a corpus of movies broadcast on Portuguese FTA (free-to-air, open-signal) television between 2001 and 2015, with questionnaire data on subtitlers’ attitudes towards the subtitling of taboo words on television. The results enable the identification of the most frequent subtitling strategies, their possible motivations, and the relevance of two contextual variables (time period and channel typology). Using the results, a (potential) norm regarding the subtitling of taboo words in Portugal is formulated. However, some of the data, both textual and extratextual, raise the question of whether there is also a competing norm at play.

Publication history

Date received: 13 January 2020

Date accepted: 14 April 2021

Published online: 25 May 2021

Table of contents

Taboo words can be broadly defined as words associated with censored, culture-related topics such as sex, scatology, the body and its effluvia, sacred beings, food, and death (Allan and Burridge 2006, 1), and which are regarded as forbidden and/or offensive due to the specificities of the context in which they are uttered. Due to their multifunctionality, swear words and taboo words have been increasingly incorporated into cinematic discourse by screenwriters as a linguistic resource (Bednarek 2019). Against this backdrop, subtitlers are then compelled to recreate, adapt, or omit these words which provide important details that go beyond the image – for example, they provide information on emotive situations and the hierarchical position of the characters or their sociocultural status. Subtitlers also deal with other issues related to the use of taboo language, such as the representation of idiolects or sociolects, humour, or ideological implications (e.g., the portrayal of villains). In subtitling, problems arising from the translation of taboo words are magnified due to the (prototypical) formality of the written mode of the target text, space restrictions, the redundancy of taboo words in audiovisual fiction, the shared act of watching a movie with others, industry guidelines or instructions, and the expectations of a very unspecific audience, to name a few. Thus, audiovisual translation scholars initially tended to suggest that (some of) these words should be omitted, as exemplified in Ivarsson and Carroll (1998, 127), who state that “floods of obscenities should be toned down,” or Díaz Cintas (2003, 252), who suggests these words should be translated in “small doses.”

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Filmography

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. dir. Another Day in Paradise 1998 USA: Chinese Bookie Pictures.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
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Waller, Andrew
. dir. American Pie: Beta House 2007 USA: Rogue Pictures, Neo Art & Logic, Higher Learning Productions, Universal Pictures.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar

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