The translation of oh in a corpus of dubbed sitcoms

Abstract This article aims to study the functions of the interjection oh in a corpus of English sitcoms and their translation in the Catalan dubbed version. After defining the functions and patterns of this unit in the original English corpus and attempting a classification, the translation strategies used are analysed taking into account different factors such as frequency and specific constraints inherent to this type of audiovisual translation (i.e. lip synchronisation). This article will explore whether oh is translated by interjections, omitted or translated by non-interjective structures. Attention is also paid to combinations in which this unit appears. Key-words: interjections, audiovisual translation, orality, oh, Catalan, English. 0. Introduction Conversations in English are full of units such as oh, which due to their elusive nature are sometimes denied their own identity and rather neglected in the literature. Although apparently insignificant, these units add semanticopragmatic meaning to discourse. However, their systematisation is hindered by their often ambiguous and polysemic nature. This article aims to study the functions and patterns of the English interjection oh in an audiovisual corpus of English sitcoms as well as their translation in the Catalan dubbed version. First, a general overview of the bibliography on the English interjection oh will be presented (§1) and the category “interjection” as well as the corpus of study will be described (§2). Then, the various functions and contexts of oh in our corpus will be systematised (§3) and an analysis of the strategies implemented in the translation of this unit into Catalan will be offered (§4). Catalan Journal of Linguistics 6, 2007 117-136 The translation of oh in a corpus of dubbed sitcoms Anna Matamala Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona 08193 Bellaterra (Barcelona). Spain [email protected] Table of Contents 0. Introduction 1. The interjection oh in the literature 2. Defining interjections and the corpus of study 3. Corpus analysis: oh, its function, position and structure 4. Translation strategies 5. Conclusions References Cat.Jour.Ling. 6 001-172 18/10/07 10:39 Página 117 1. The interjection oh in the literature Oh has been analysed in the literature by various authors, although not always under the same heading. James (1973) undertakes the syntactic and semantic analysis of a few interjections (oh, ah, uh, say and well) in the framework of generative semantics and identifies two main types of usages of oh, which she summarises in figure 1 (James 1973: 38). Thus, according to James, oh1 indicates that one has become aware of something in general, of something one should do, or even of a strong emotion, either with an added element of pleasure or not. When it indicates pleasure, ah is also used as an alternative to this oh. On the other hand, oh2is used to indicate awareness in all the three previous contexts, transmitting casualness or a decision process at the same time. Later on, James improves this initial classification by adding that oh1can indicate any emotion (or none), can be used before echoes and stands easily by itself. Likewise, Heritage (1984: 229) believes that this unit “is used to propose that its producer has undergone some kind of change in his or her locally current state of knowledge, information, orientation or awareness”. A year later, Schourup (1985) analyses common discourse particles in English conversation and, although not central to his study, some remarks are also made regarding oh, which is considered an evincive1often encountered in turn-initial and quotation-initial positions 118 CatJL 6, 2007 Anna Matamala 1. Schourup (1985: 18) defines an evincive as “a linguistic item that indicates that at the moment at which it is said the speaker is engaged in, or has just then been engaged in, thinking; the evincive item indicates that this thinking is now occurring or has just now occurred but does not completely specify its content”. Figure 1. Usages of oh according to James (1973). (indicates that one has) just become aware of information (can) indicate pleasure/significance Need not indicate pleasure/significance indicates “casualness” indicates a decision process Oh2 Oh1 Oh1Oh1 Oh1ah Oh1Ah Oh1Ah Oh (Oh2) just become aware of a strong emotion just become aware of something one should do Cat.Jour.Ling. 6 001-172 18/10/07 10:39 Página 118 that expresses that some thought has occurred despite not specifying the nature of that thought. Adapting James’ differentiation, Schourup also proposes to distinguish between oh1—indicating that the speaker has become aware of something and wishes to show it—, oh2 —evidencing that the speaker has paused to make a decision or choice between alternatives— and oh3—included by James in the second group but given their own identity by Schourup, being more casual and evincing introspection in a similar way to well. Tshomba (1986) adopts speech act theory to analyse the interjective forms oh, ah and well, and considers that oh can express a deliberate hesitation, can show that the speaker has just remembered something and can even denote surprise or compassion. In isolation oh usually stands for a proposition and is considered to be a reaction and, at the same time, a response to a fact or situation. Stress, intonation, facial expressions and the relationship between the speaker and the hearer will also shape different values of oh, as it is always context-bound. In 1987, Schiffrin published her seminal book on discourse markers and devoted a whole chapter to the analysis of oh as a marker of information management. In spite of traditionally being viewed as an exclamation or an interjection expressing strong emotional states when used alone —a view recurrently found in traditional grammars—, Schiffrin considers its additional use in initiating utterances and focuses on its information management tasks, especially when used in repairs (repair initiation, repair completion and repairs achieved through clarification sequences), in question/answer/acknowledgement sequences, as a recognition display, as information receipt or as a marker of shifts in speaker orientation. Fischer (2000) also distinguishes between various functions of the English interjection oh: as a signal of perception and understanding of the previous speaker’s utterance (usually turn-initially and followed by a statement directly related to the previous utterance), and as a back-channel signal —usually in combination with yes or yeah. Examples are also presented where oh introduces an evaluation or assessment, and where it is used turn-medially before quoted speech. Finally, highlighting the large number of pragmatic values discourse particles can be associated with, Aijmer (2002) presents a linguistic description of a selection of these units which includes oh, considered an interjection which has developed via a process of grammaticalisation into a discourse particle. Oh is described as a response (or reception) marker used in discourse regulation (coming to a realisation, clarification sequences, self-repair, assertion and emphasis, reaction or objection) —a view shared by Jucker and Smith (1998: 174)— and also as a unit used to index affect and emotion (intensification, upgrading, downtoning), presenting respectively backwards-looking and forwards-looking functions in discourse. Due to the lack of propositional meaning and to the fact that its varied discourse functions depend on context (collocations, position, prosody, text type and position in the text), defining its core meaning presents a challenge. Aijmer considers that this core meaning derives from its origin as an interjection meaning surprise or unexpectedness. No monographic studies on the interjection oh exist in Catalan and references to their functions are made very rarely in grammars and other studies. Such referThe translation of oh in a corpus of dubbed sitcoms CatJL 6, 2007 119 Cat.Jour.Ling. 6 001-172 18/10/07 10:39 Página 119 ences are made in Torres Vilatarsana (1999) —who considers it to convey an expressive function (surprise and complaint, prototypically)— and, especially, in Matamala (2005a: 336-340), whose conclusions will be partly portrayed in section 3. 2. Defining interjections and the corpus of study Oh has traditionally been defined as an interjection, albeit other labels such as discourse particle or discourse marker have been attributed to this unit once its function in discourse has been recognised. In this article I will consider oh to be an interjection, not just in the traditional sense of a unit of exclamatory nature only transmitting expressive values but in the sense proposed by Cuenca (2000, 2002a): consequently, adopting a prototype approach to categories, interjections are considered a context-sensitive peripheral class of the category “sentence” that typically encode pragmatic meanings and can sometimes present anomalous phonetic patterns. Interjections tend to be morphologically invariable and constitute a semi-open class in which primary interjections (oh, ouch, hey, etc.) and secondary interjections (sorry, Good Lord, damn, etc.) can be distinguished on the basis of their formal and ethymological characteristics: whereas primary interjections are simple and fixed forms with an exclusively interjective value, secondary interjections are units belonging to other word classes that have become interjections by means of a grammaticalization process. In reference to their meaning, the linguistic functions of Jakobson, with the exception of the poetic function, are used to differentiate referential, expressive, conative, phatic and metalinguistic interjections. Hence, interjections are not simply units of an expressive nature but also units that can be used as discourse markers, since the term “interjection” refers to a grammatical category, whereas “discourse marker” (or “discourse particle”) refers to a functional category. In this broad context, oh is considered a prototypical primary interjection whose meaning goes beyond the traditional expressive function and ventures into the realm of discourse, as will be shown in section 3. Taking into account this theoretical framework, I will analyse the instances of the interjection oh found in a relevant section of the audiovisual corpus of sitcoms developed by Matamala (2005a), namely the bilingual subcorpus. This subcorpus includes one episode of the British sitcom Coupling, one episode of the American sitcom Working and one episode of the American sitcom Normal, Ohio, both in their original and dubbed version. The subcorpus includes the English transcription of the sitcom aligned with video excerpts, and also aligned with the transcription of the Catalan dubbing and its video excerpts. Although this subcorpus is rather limited in size (approximately 10,000 words in Catalan and 10,000 words in English), it includes 362 interjections in English and 296 interjections in Catalan, of which 53 correspond to the English interjection oh. These instances will be analysed bearing in mind two important issues: a) the limited number of occurrences will only permit the description of tendencies which should be further confirmed in a wider study, and 120 CatJL 6, 2007 Anna Matamala Cat.Jour.Ling. 6 001-172 18/10/07 10:39 Página 120 b) the corpus corresponds to a genre which imitates oral language but which is not real spontaneous language and which is moreover constrained by the restrictions imposed by dubbing (Matamala 2005b). Nevertheless, some authors have acknowledged the utility of using the dialogues in playwrights or film scripts as typical interactions (Tannen and Lakoff 1994, Fischer 2000: 204). 3. Corpus analysis: oh, its function, position and structure The multifunctional nature of this type of units is a recurrent topic in the literature (Bazzanella and Morra 2000, Aijmer 2002) and oh is a prototypically polysemic unit, a typical feature of words with a weak phonological entity easily modifiable by intonation (Matamala 2005a). In this case, the prototypical values of oh are linked to the fact of realising something and to its expressive nature, either positive (admiration, pleasure, surprise, etc.), neutral (calm, etc.) or negative (anger, annoyance, etc.), even though additional layers of meaning can be added. The expressive nature of oh can be visualized in the following examples. In (1) the audience hears a home porn video of Sally having sex with Patrick and there is no doubt that oh depicts pleasure, the same feeling transmitted by Tim when he is given a massage in (2) and represented graphically with an extended vowel. In all these cases oh is in an utterance-initial position and followed by a vocative in most examples. (1) Sally: Oh, oh, Patrick. Oh, yes. Oh, baby. (Coupling) (2) Tim: Ooh, do that again, do that again, do that again. (Working) With a change of intonation, oh in (3) expresses disappointment because Pamela has prepared a yam soufflé but, unfortunately, her brother has not turned up for dinner, and in (4) it is used to manifest pain when burning herself. (3) Pamela: I made a yam soufflé. Ooh! It puffed up and everything. (Normal, Ohio) (4) Pamela: Oh!// My hands! Watch out! (Normal, Ohio) However, the main value is that which could be called “realisation of something”, i.e. becoming aware of something and reacting to it either with no special emotion (5, 6) or adding a feeling of surprise (7), moan/complaint (8) or other values such as pity, annoyance or admiration. In (5) Patrick reacts to what Jane has uttered while in (6) Jane reacts to an unexpected situation (finding Patrick surrounded by friends when she wanted to be alone with him). On the other hand, in (7) Butch is delighted because her sister has prepared a pumpkin soup, which he was not expecting, and in (8) the same character is talking to his son after a man has insulted him. The translation of oh in a corpus of dubbed sitcoms CatJL 6, 2007 121 Cat.Jour.Ling. 6 001-172 18/10/07 10:39 Página 121 (5) Jane: I sense absolute terrible tragic loneliness. Patrick: Oh, so you came round here for a bit of company? Good decision. I’m pleased you did that. (Coupling) (6) Patrick: Jane. Jane: I’m very worried about the size of your loneliness. Oh, you trying to deal with your loneliness by surrounding yourself with friends, huh? (Coupling) (7) Pamela: No, do… don’t you dare fork that. Butch: Sorry, ma’am. Oooh, pumpkin soup. Pamela: No, get… get your spoon outta here. Butch: Well, if I use my tongue it’ll burn it. (Normal, Ohio) (8) Charlie: Didn’t you want to kill that guy? Butch: Yeah. And in the past, I would have. Charlie: Oh, don’t start about the whole fighting doesn’t solve anything. (Normal, Ohio) Sometimes this function can be combined with a phatic function, being the final meaning equivalent to “yes, of course, I agree”, as in (9), or “no, I disagree”, as in (10). However, the meaning can also be completely altered by the functional tenor, easily noticeable thanks to intonation and body language: in (11) it is obvious that Sally is not having heaps of fun watching porn videos about her and in (12) Delaney wants to express just the opposite, i.e. that the legal department will not like Matt’s idea of establishing a four-day work week. (9) Pamela: Wasn’t this a good idea? Butch: Oh, the best. (Normal, Ohio) (10) Pamela: Are you blaming my street for Detroit losing? Bill: No. I’m just saying you live on an unlucky street. I mean, look at your life! Joan: Oh, Bill, there’s no such thing as bad luck. She brought it on herself. (Normal, Ohio) (11) Jane: Anyway, what are you all doing here and why wasn’t I invited, huh? Is it something fun? Sally: Oh, heaps of fun. We’re watching porn videos about me. (12) Hal: The legal department wants to talk to you about your idea. Matt: You think they like it? Delaney: Oh, I’m sure they love it! That’s why they became lawyers. They need to be around love all day long. (Working). The permeability of oh to various values can be verified when it reinforces an utterance which incites the hearer to do something, generally by means of a vocative or an imperative, establishing at the same time a link between two consecutive sentences (13). 122 CatJL 6, 2007 Anna Matamala Cat.Jour.Ling. 6 001-172 18/10/07 10:39 Página 122 (13) Steve: Patrick, you don’t get to see my girlfriend naked, that’s the rules. Oh, Jeff, tell him the naked rules. (Coupling) Finally, there is even one instance (14) in which two values clearly overlap: oh, oh, oh is used as an indication that the hearer has become aware of what the speaker has just said, but at the same time works as a representative or onomatopoeic interjection imitating laughter. (14) Elizabeth: Didn’t you hear, honey? Counter-clockwise! Danny: Oh, oh, oh, everything smelled so good. I went into vapour lock or something (Normal, Ohio) Figure 2 summarises the values attributed to various occurrences of oh in our corpus as well as their graphical variants. The translation of oh in a corpus of dubbed sitcoms CatJL 6, 2007 123 Figure 2. Values of oh. Cat.Jour.Ling. 6 001-172 18/10/07 10:39 Página 123 As for the analysis of their position and patterns, three different instances can be clearly distinguished: when oh is found isolated —being an intervention on its own (Briz 2001:53)—, when oh is followed by various linguistic units and when oh is followed by other interjections. a) Oh in an isolated position In the whole of our corpus only one isolated instance of this interjection exists: an oh shouted by Pamela after burning herself with a hot plate and reproduced in example (4) above. This tendency was previously detected by Hernanz (2002: 1011), Cuenca (2002a: 3213) and Matamala (2005a: 261), and is explained by the second linguist in terms of lexical information: since interjections are characterised by their semantic imprecision, the speaker feels the need to complement this initial interjection by means of further units with more lexical content. b) Oh followed by various linguistic units Regarding their position, all instances present the interjection oh at the beginning of an utterance. As far as the speaking-turn is concerned, most instances present an oh right at the beginning, although in 15% of the cases (six occurrences) this interjection is found in the middle of a speaking-turn, maintaining nonetheless its utterance-initial position (15). (15) Patrick: Biggest come on I’ve ever had. Jeff: Oh, you’ve had more than one come on. Oh, that’s brilliant. (Coupling) Concerning their combination with other units, there is no doubt that the combination of oh plus a sentence is the most frequent one, comprising 47.5% of the examples, which mainly correspond to the meaning “realisation of something” (see 16). In Matamala (2005a: 259), where a wider selection of interjections were analysed, the structure [primary interjection + sentence] was the second most frequent pattern, after [secondary interjection + sentence], both in English and in Catalan. (16) Tim: Why is the sky blue, why is the grass always greener on the other side, why can you lead a horse to water and cannot make him… Matt: Oh, I follow. I know exactly what you’re saying. Tim: You do? Matt: Yeah. You’re not man enough to make a decision. (Working) In 12.5% of instances the structure presents a slight variation and includes a vocative between the interjection and the sentence (17), and 10% presents only a vocative after oh (18). In 2.5% of instances this vocative is followed by formulaic units such as “please” or “Happy Thanksgiving” (19). (17) Jane: You’re the only one who hasn’t been steved. Sally: Oh, Jane, Steve’s nice but Patrick’s enormous. (Coupling) 124 CatJL 6, 2007 Anna Matamala Cat.Jour.Ling. 6 001-172 18/10/07 10:39 Página 124 (18) Pamela: Okay, fine, I’ll yell at you! I worked so hard to make a nice dinner. Butch: Oh, honey… (Normal, Ohio) (19) Elizabeth: Suppose you want to go too? Danny: I hear there’ll be cranberry sauce. Butch: Oh, honey, please. Elizabeth: Fine. We’ll go. (Normal, Ohio) Other patterns are those of oh plus a sentence-equivalent item (15%), plus yes or no (7.5%) or even plus yes/no and sentence (5%), variations illustrated in (20), (21) and (22). (20) Steve: What was in the cupboard? Patrick: Sharon, of course. Jeff: Oh, Sharon Stone! (Coupling) (21) Patrick: She’s mad, isn’t she, Jane? Steve: Oh, yeah. (Coupling) (22) Patrick: Full backal’s really annoy me, it’s like unfinished work Jeff: Oh, yeah, but it does leave something to your imagination, though. (Coupling) c) Oh followed by other interjections Again, in these cases all interjections are found sentence-initially, even though there is one example which includes them in the middle of a wider speaking-turn. A common pattern is the combination of one or more interjections after oh, either isolated (18.2%), followed by a sentence (27.2%) or followed by a vocative (18.2%), as in examples (23), (24) and (25), respectively. (23) Jeff: The thing about Jane, right?, the thing that you’ve got to understand. Steve: Oh God! Jeff: No, this is relevant. (Coupling) (24) Butch: Oh, darn, I’m out of popcorn. I’ll be right back. (Normal, Ohio) (25) Butch: Okay, I’m home! We can eat! You can all yell “surprise” now. Pamela: Oh, hello, Butch. (Normal, Ohio) When oh is followed by an interjection —except for those spoken units where oh is duplicated—, it is always a secondary interjection (God, damn, right, sure, thank you, look and hello) and never another primary interjection. In fact, as pointed out by Matamala (2005a: 260), the pattern [primary + secondary interjection] is the most frequent combination of interjections found both in English and Catalan. The translation of oh in a corpus of dubbed sitcoms CatJL 6, 2007 125 Cat.Jour.Ling. 6 001-172 18/10/07 10:39 Página 125 (35) Oh, God, please don’t tell me you have a plan> Sisplau, no em diguis que tens un pla…(‘Please, don’t tell me you have a plan’) (Working) Although it could seem that the intensity is not the same (see the first example), in Catalan the usage of an oh before Senyor is not as frequent as in English and could be easily regarded as a calque, the proposed translation being the most appropriate one. On the other hand, dubbing also allows the omission of the interjection and the inclusion of vocal sounds which are not proper interjections and which are represented by the symbol “(G)”, meaning “vocal gesture”. This is why “Oh, thank you” becomes “(G) Gràcies” (i.e., a non-linguistic sound plus the literal translation of the interjection ‘thank you’) in the sitcom Normal, Ohio. b) Translation of all interjections by means of other interjections Finally, in two instances, the interjection oh is translated by means of another interjection with a different form (oh>ah) (36), whereas one opts for a literal translation (37). (36) Oh, hello, Butch.> Ah, hola, Butch. (Normal, Ohio) (37) Oh, sure, yeah, absolutely> Oh, sí, sí, esclar. (Coupling) The second example is particularly interesting because it reflects an improvisation by the dubbing actor. In fact, the translator had written “Ah, sí, sí, esclar” (‘Oh, yes, yes, of course’), a proposal maintained by the adaptor —in charge of lip-synch— and the linguist —who revises the linguistic quality of the text—, but in the recording stage of the dubbing process the actor changed the interjection ah and said oh, a less appropriate option taking into account the frequency of these units in the source and target language, as already pointed out in previous studies. Figure 5 summarises all the translation strategies concerning repetitions and combinations in which oh is present. Focussing exclusively on the translation of oh in combinations and repetitions —and considering the two instances of reductions as occurrences of both omission and translation by the interjection ah—, the resulting percentages can be applied to the translation strategies established in section 4.1 (Figure 6). A review of the results of translating oh when it is followed by other linguistic units (Figure 4) and in the few examples when is found in combinations (Figure 6), allows one to conclude that omission is the main strategy in Catalan, this is especially true for the former group. The translation of oh by means of ah is also a frequent strategy, although used much more commonly for combinations, whereas literal translations of oh are generally avoided in our corpus. The most significant difference is the translation of oh by means of various interjections in noncombined interjections: this occurs in 19.51% of cases and is not used as a strategy at all in the other group. The data presented in this section coincide approximately with Cuenca’s analysis (2004: 13) of the movie Four Weddings and a Funeral, who identifies six strate132 CatJL 6, 2007 Anna Matamala Cat.Jour.Ling. 6 001-172 18/10/07 10:39 Página 132 gies4when translating interjections into Spanish and Catalan and concludes that, while primary interjections are literally translated or omitted in Spanish, in Catalan they are generally omitted or translated by means of interjections with dissimilar forms but the same meaning. As for combinations, Spanish translators usually choose a literal translation or omit the combination, whereas in Catalan using a combination with a dissimilar form but the same meaning or omitting the interjections are again the most common strategies. Chaume (2004) also analyses the translation from English into Spanish of various discourse markers in three different versions of the movie Pulp Fiction —written translation, dubbed version and subtitled version—, and concludes that from the sixteen units found in the source text, thirteen appear in the written transThe translation of oh in a corpus of dubbed sitcoms CatJL 6, 2007 133 4. The six strategies (based on Baker’s proposal) are: literal translation (strategy a); translation by using an interjection with dissimilar form but the same meaning (strategy b); translation by using a non-interjective structure with similar meaning (strategy c); translation by using an interjection with a different meaning (strategy d); omission (strategy e); addition of elements (strategy f). Figure 5. Translation strategies in combinations and repetitions. Figure 6. Translations strategies of oh in combinations. Omission 6 46.15% Oh > Ah 6 46.15% Literal translation (oh> oh) 1 7.7% Cat.Jour.Ling. 6 001-172 18/10/07 10:39 Página 133 lation (81%), eleven finally find their way in the dubbed version (68%) and only one in the subtitled version (6%). Although Chaume states that the lack of discourse markers could make audiovisual translations less cohesioned texts, the audience can repair the possible misunderstandings thanks to their linguistic and textual competence, to the presence of the visual text which makes audiovisual texts often redundant, and also thanks to their knowledge of the genre of audiovisual translation. As far as translation strategies in the dubbed version are concerned, literal translation is used in more than 50% of the cases (6 occurrences), whereas the rest correspond to various interjections (3 instances of mmm, 1 of ah and 1 of uh). The comparison of this data with the data from my previous analysis reinforces the idea that Spanish translations tend to be more literal than Catalan translations, which opt for more dynamic translations which imitate more faithfully real spontaneous oral language (cf. also Cuenca 2006).5 5. Conclusions In conclusion, this article has hopefully shed some light on the usage of the interjection oh in English and its translation in Catalan. Taking into account a corpus of sitcoms, different functions have been identified and some remarks have been made concerning their position and their combination with other units. On the other hand, the translation of the interjection oh —both alone and in combinations— in a corpus of dubbed sitcoms has been described and, despite the presence of a homograph form in Catalan, it has been demonstrated that omission is the main strategy, along with translation by means of other interjections with dissimilar forms (especially ah), strategies which do not generally affect meaning and which respond to the differentiated behaviour of these units in both languages. Dubbing constraints have also been taken into account, as well as frequency issues. All in all, this article has demonstrated that, even though two languages can share a same written form, their usages differ and good translations such as those analysed should bear this in mind. References Aijmer, Karin (2002). English Discourse Particles: Evidence from a Corpus. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 10. 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