Translating Animated Musical Films: An Analysis of the Turkish Translation of Corpse Bride

Abstract

Owing to the advances in technology, animated films have a significant part within the film industry. Although most of them are intended for children, some animated movies can be enjoyed by the whole family. To make it possible, film companies usually use dubbing as the translation method. This study focuses on the challenges of dubbing the spoken and musical text in an animated musical and aims to analyze the strategies adopted by the translator while translating the animated film Corpse Bride into Turkish for dubbing. For the analysis, the challenging areas in Corpse Bride are identified; and a comparison between the original film and the Turkish dubbed version is made. The translation challenges such as the translation of figurative language, humor, and songs are analyzed in terms of the translation strategies. Within this context, figurative language and idioms are analyzed in the light of the strategies put forward by Mona Baker (1992). The translation of humor is analyzed in the light of Anne Schjoldager’s microstrategies (2008). Furthermore, the translation of songs is analyzed in the light of Pentathlon Principle proposed by Peter Low (2003) and John Dryden’s translation strategies (1680) as used by Johan Franzon (2009). Ultimately, the study concludes that paraphrasing is the preferred strategy for the figurative language. Mostly, wordplays are not recreated in the target text. Although direct translations can recreate the visually expressed humor, adaptation is another preferred strategy to recreate humor arising from the relationship between the image and the text of the film. For dubbing the songs, in order to provide singability and to convey the semantic content at the same time, the lines are paraphrased. Ultimately, imitation is another preferred strategy to preserve the performability of the song even though the strategy leads to changes in the semantic content of the lyrics.