Mediating Filmic Discourse. The Case of Subtitling

Abstract

Contemporary culture is consensually defined in terms of its being dominated by audiovisual communication, which is intermedial and functions along the multimodal coordinate and the multimedial coordinate. The filmic text, as audiovisual communicative enterprise and complex semiotic event, uses utterances, gestures, background noises, captions, pictures and music to shape meaningful contexts which address the viewer and allow individual responses, whose multiplicity reinforces the openness of the cultural message. Consequently, for the receiver and, especially, for the translator, film poses numerous difficulties, which range from linguistic choice to cultural equivalence, mediation requirements, translation strategies, technical confines and computer literacy. The paper looks into these difficulties, as obvious in the subtitling of Horaţiu Mălăele’s Nuntă mută [Silent Wedding].