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