On the Translation Strategies of Movie Dubbing and Subtitling: A Frequency Analysison Explicitation in Translation

Dubbing, also known as voice-overs, is the most common way of presenting the audience with the materials in a movie. As this process requires time, budget, and a team of translators, voice-overs, voice recorders, etc., producers sometimes tend to release the movies in other languages through subtitling. This is a rather easier procedure, presenting the audience with the written translated text of the material being spoken and happening in a movie. Several movies are then being processed through these common procedures in different countries. However, the question still remains as to what strategies make up the most important issues in movie translation. Explicitation vs. implicitation, domestication vs. foreignization, etc., are just some of these strategies. In this regard, many models have been presented by translation theorists (e.g., Klaudy 2008, Venuti 20004, Larson 1998, etc.). In line, the present study tended to investigate the explicitation strategies pointed out by Klaudy (2008) while dealing with the act of dubbing on the one hand, and subtitling on the other. In this regard, “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” was selected as the corpus of the study. Using Klaudy’s (ibid.) model of translation explicitation, the cases were detected and further placed within the corresponding categories. Having a frequency analysis on the collected data, the results revealed statistically significant differences among the frequencies of the strategies in the dubbed and subtitled versions of the movie. The results also revealed that ‘obligatory explicitation’ was the most frequent strategy used in both versions by Iranian translators.