Methodological Foundations of Film Speech Analysis Using Corpora: Technical, Social, and Cultural-National Aspects
https://doi.org/10.24224/2227-1295-2024-13-2-199-225
Abstract
The aim of this study is to describe the possibilities and limitations of the corpus approach to the analysis of film subtitles, taking into account their technical, social, and culturalnational features. It offers a review of existing film content corpora accompanied by their critical interpretation, firstly from the perspective of subtitle quality as empirical data for linguistic research, and secondly from the perspective of corpus quality as an environment for quantitative analysis of empirical material. Furthermore, based on established subtitling practices, the author proposes her own viewpoint on subtitles as material for studying film speech, considering technical (line length, screen size adaptation), social (subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing), and cultural-national (subtitling countries vs dubbing countries) aspects of subtitling in different languages and countries. In the course of the work, it was found that the largest number of subtitles available in open repositories are translated equivalents of cinema speech. It is noted that subtitling is preferred in the USA, UK, India, China, and Japan. The features of subtitling in countries such as Serbia, Finland, and Russia are described. The author concludes that these features are important for the quality of linguistic research on the basis of translated movie speech represented by subtitles.
Supporting agencies: The study is supported by Russian Science Foundation, project number 23-78-01208
About the Author
Ya. M. Alyunina
Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia named after Patrice Lumumba
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
Yulia M. Alyunina, PhD in Philology, Ph.D. in Lexicology and Multilingual Terminology and Translation, Assistant Professor, Department of Foreign Languages, Faculty of Philology
Moscow
References
1. Alyunina, Yu. M. (2022). Where do the wild things live? Corpus method to detect anglicisms and their derivatives on Russian Internet. Bulletin of Tomsk State University. Philology, 80: 5—29. DOI: 10.17223/19986645/80/1. (In Russ.).
2. Anisimov, V. E., Borisova, A. S., Kalinnikova, E. D. (2022). Images of Traditional and Modern Tuva in Ethnographic Cinema (based on the film of S. Rodnina and A. Menshov “Tyva Planet”). New studies of Tuva, 1: 183—197. DOI: https://doi.org/10.25178/nit.2022.1.12. (In Russ.).
3. Anisimov, V. E., Borisova, A. S., Conson G. R. (2019). Linguocultural Localization of Movie Titles. Russian Journal of Linguistics, 23 (2): 435—459. DOI: 10.22363/2312-9182-2019-23-2-435-459. (In Russ.).
4. Astashina, D. A., Borshchevsky, I. S., Gaidash, N. V. (2021). Specialist in translation and media accessibility: a framework of competencies. Kazan: Publishing house “Buk”. 46 p. ISBN 978-5-00118-752-3. (In Russ.).
5. Bednarek, M. (2023). Language and Characterisation in Television Series: A corpus-informed approach to the construction of social identity in the media. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 279 p.
6. Bednarek, M. (2018). Language and Television Series: A Linguistic Approach to TV Dialogue. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 321 p.
7. Cintas, J. D., Remael, A. (2007). Audiovisual Translation: Subtitling. London: Routledge. 284 p.
8. Kozloff, S. (2000). Overhearing Film Dialogue. Berkley — Los Angeles — London: University of California Press. 335 p. ISBN 0-520-22138-9.
9. Lukić, N. (2016). Audiovisual Translation in Serbia: History and Professional Considerations. Hieronymus, 3: 64—89.
10. Makhov, A. E. (2018). “Close reading” in the face of “big data”: the problem of method in modern English-language literary criticism. Social and humanitarian sciences. Domestic and foreign literature, 3: 11—32. (In Russ.).
11. Malenova, E. D. (2021). Audiovisual translation in the USSR and Russia: a brief historical retrospective. Vestnik NGLU. Language and culture, 3 (553): 61—83. DOI: 10.47388/2072-3490/lunn2021-55-3-61-83. (In Russ.).
12. Malenova, E. D. (2017). Theory and practice of audiovisual translation: domestic and foreign experience. Communicative research, 2 (12): 32—46. (In Russ.).
13. Moretti, F. (2016). Distant reading. Moscow: Publishing House of the Gaidar Institute. 352 p. ISBN 978-5-93255-446-3. (In Russ.).
14. Perego, E., Laskowska, M., Matamala, A. (2016). Is Subtitling Equally Effective Everywhere? A First Cross-national Study on the Reception of Interlingually Subtitled Messages. Across Languages and Cultures, 17 (2): 205—229.
15. Smolan, R., Erwitt, J. The Human Face of Big Data. Filmplatform. Available at: https://www.filmplatform.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/FINAL_HFOBDStudyGuide-1.pdf. (accessed 04.01.2024).
16. Sukhaya, E. V. (2010). Types of sources of film speech as the basis of linguistic research. Questions of modern linguistics, 2: 68—74. (In Russ.).
17. Tröhler, M., Kirsten, G. (2018). Christian Metz and the Codes of Cinema. Film Semiology and Beyond. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. 484 p.
18. Urtmintseva, M. G., Skachkova, V. N. (2022). Voice-Over Text in Documentary Film Discourse. Nauchnyi dialog, 11 (6): 334—349. https://doi.org/10.24224/2227-1295-2022-11-6-334-349 (In Russ.).
Review
For citations:
Alyunina Ya.M. Methodological Foundations of Film Speech Analysis Using Corpora: Technical, Social, and Cultural-National Aspects. Nauchnyi dialog. 2024;13(2):199-225. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.24224/2227-1295-2024-13-2-199-225
Views:
463
Email this article 