Introduction

• Omissions are unavoidable in subtitling, as shown in many of the

examples involving mostly reformulation.
• Omission and reformulation go hand in hand.
• Omission is acceptable when a word, or phrase, is repeated in the same or
the previous or following subtitle.
• It is acceptable if the image can be enough.
• But subtitlers must ask themselves: will the viewers still be able to
understand the message or scene without too much of an effort, and will
they not misunderstand it?
Omission of tag questions
• When translating from English it may not always be necessary to translate
question-tags.
• If the tag has a function(politeness), it can be rendered through a linguistic
feature of the target language.
Example: ‘close the door, will you?’ [Will you close the door please?]. ‫اغلق‬
‫الباب من فضلك‬
Omission of Modifiers
• Omission of adjectives and adverbs is possible because they do no more
than modify the information carried by the verb or noun.
• But the question is: how important is the modification?
• In the following subtitle, the context will fill in the missing ‘brightly-
coloured’ as they actually appear on screen.
No. No, I get nervous when brightly coloured fish are staring at me face-to-
face, you know.
‫ فإنني اتوتر‬،‫كال‬
.‫ي هذا السمك‬
ّ ‫حين ينظر ال‬
 Omission of Phatic Words
• Omission of such words is acceptable as they tend to disappear from
subtitles because they do not advance the action.
• In mainstream cinema, ‘action’ refers to the events or the actions
undertaken/words spoken by characters to reach their goal or convey an
important point of view.
• In documentary film the action may refer to informative content.
In heaven’s name, Norah, one does not abandon a baby, just like that, for
hours!‫ال أحد يترك الرضيع وحيدا‬
‫لساعات طويلة‬
Omission of Interpersonal Elements
The elements that may signal power and social relations between
interlocutors can be deleted.
• Examples are greetings, interjections, vocatives, formulas of courtesy,
politeness markers, pragmatic markers, etc.
• Such interpersonal features do not contribute much to propositional
content.
A cup of coffee, please. .‫ممكن قهوة‬
You know, why don’t you get some plates?
‫ممكن تحضر اطباق‬
Omission at clause / sentence level
• It is not advisable to omit entire turns, sentences or even clauses, but it can
sometimes be unavoidable.
• In a noisy crowded scene that is meant to create an atmosphere rather than
anything else, some interventions may not have to be subtitled.
• In other cases, the music may be too loud for a dialogue turn to be audible,
or several people may be talking at the same time. In such cases one could
say that the dialogue is part of the setting.
 Scene from the Musical My Fair Lady
• The protagonist Eliza is seen dancing and singing in the living-room, but
the servants want to take her to the bathroom to get her ready for bed.
• While Eliza keeps on singing, the servants are singing along, saying that
she needs to sleep.
• Their interventions are so short and quick that the subtitler could not fit
them in between Eliza’s lines.
• In other words, the subtitling gives priority to the protagonist and the
viewer must rely on the scene to understand what exactly is going on.
Eliza: I could have danced all night.
Servants: You’re tired out.
Servants: You must be dead.
Eliza: I could have danced all night.
Servants: Your face is worn.
Servants: Your eyes are red.
Eliza: And still have begged.
Servants: Now say good night, please.
Servants: Turn out the light, please.
Eliza: For more.
Servants: It’s really time for you to be in bed.
When to Omit?
• If the utterance do not convey new information, it can be deleted.
• Clauses or phrases that carry less propositional content are often those that
express a point of view or introduce an argument, i.e. have a
presentational function.
• If deletion is required, these introductions are the clauses that tend to go
first.
Why did she leave? ‫لماذا رحلت‬
If she left, it’s because she had some reasons!‫البد ان لديها أسباب‬
I was struck during the apartheid years that you always managed to keep
your sense of humor.
، ‫طوال سنوات الفصل العنصري‬
‫حافظت دوما على روح الدعابة‬
Hold, hold on, for a second.
We don’t know this is all true. This is just a theory.
.‫ النعلم ان هذا حقيقي‬، ‫تمهل‬
.‫إنها مجرد نظرية‬
Cohesion and Coherence in Subtitling
• Coherence is a characteristic of texts that are well written, and helps the
message come across, whereas the term cohesion refers to the techniques
writers have to promote such coherence.
• In Subtitling, there is intersemiotic cohesion, which refers to the way it
connects language directly to the soundtrack and to images on screen,
making use of the information they supply to create a coherent linguistic-
visual whole.
Scene from the American Beauty
A lady is referring to the movers who are carrying furniture into the
neighboring house. Both film dialogue and subtitle rely on visually conveyed
information to make sense of her first sentence.
So, we’ve finally got new neighbors. You know, if the Lomans had let me
represent them, instead of ‘The Real Estate King’, that house would never
have sat on the market for six months.
‫أخيرا لدينا جيران‬
‫إن كنت توسطت لبيعه آلل لومانز‬
‫لكنت بعته من ستة أشهر‬