Tóth József (szerk.): Nyelv, kultúra, megértés: új kutatási módszerek a humán tudományok területén
›
2. Nyelvhasználat és interkulturalitás
›
Dialects on screen. Display of dialectal significance in the series Poldark • Nóra Estélyi-Tala, Ildikó Hortobágyi
›
10. Translating the Poldark series – Hungarian dubbing

10. Translating the Poldark series – Hungarian dubbing

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

In the abovementioned Poldark series, as it was pointed out, dialectal differences play an essential role in the social (nobles vs. commoners) and regional (Cornwall) distinction between the characters, as well as the temporal alienation of the viewers from the 18th-century setting of the plot, therefore, the indication of some of these differences in the translation of the series is essential.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

Nevertheless, in the case of Poldark, some kind of marking of the dialectal differences was necessary, and in the dubbing, the translator, as well as the actors succeeded to convey the difference. In respect of non-standard dialects, the paper investigates how the characteristics of some of the main characters’ speech have been bridged by a non-standard dialect in the Hungarian dubbing of the movie.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

The characters using a Cornish accent with most screen time are Prudie and Jud Paynter, Ross Poldark’s two drunkard and lazy servants, but all the miners, as well as initially the female protagonist Demelza, all speak a non-standard dialect. In the translation, the non-standardness of their speech is present at all linguistic levels: phonological, morphological, and lexical. (Syntactic differences are not frequent due to the fact that in Hungarian, the word order is far less strict than in English, so a potential variation is less prominent or alienating.) It is worth noting that this study does not aim to analyse all the dialectic features in detail, provide an exhaustive list of the occurrences of non-standard variations, or give a quantitative analysis of the translation; rather it draws attention to the phenomenon by listing the most frequent features as displayed by the characters in general.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

As the structure of English and Hungarian is very different, and so are the markers of different varieties, there is no point in attempting to find a one-to-one correspondence between the elements of dialectal characteristics at any level. Instead, local or global compensation – the attempt to “smuggle” back some of the humour, characteristics, information necessarily lost in translation at the same place or elsewhere in the work – are the primary tools for providing the viewers with a sense of the dialectal differences. Below, a list of the most frequent and prominent examples of markers of dialectal differences is provided.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

At the phonological level, there are several methods applied for the Hungarian dubbing, not always consistently used, but rather occasionally.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

  • vowel lengthening in certain contexts (irtom (‘I kill [the weed]’): /irtom/ pronounced as ‘írtom’ /iːrtom/),
  • difference in tongue height of the sound a /ɒ/ into á /a/ (barát (‘friend’): /baːraːt/ instead of /bɒraːt/), present for example in the Upper-Hungarian region (in the native speakers of Hungary in Slovakia), or its reverse (háború (‘war’) pronounced as /hɒːboruː/ instead of /haːboruː/) and of the sound e /ε/ into é /e/ (tehettünk (‘we could do’): /tehettynk/ instead of /tεhεttynk/);
  • vowel diphthongisation (changing ó /oː/ into /ou/), which, among others, is a characteristic of the speakers in the north-eastern regions of Hungary,
  • the rounding of the sound /e/ into ö /ø/, a common feature of the Szeged region (kell (‘need to’): /kεll/ into /køll/),
  • the fronting of ó /oː/ into ú /uː/ (often in suffixes like -ból or -tól) and of ő /øː/ into ű /yː/.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

At morphological level, the dropping of the morpheme-final consonants and the lengthening of their preceding vowels is observable (‘-tú’’ /tuː/ instead of -tól /toːl/; or elmegy (‘leave’) /ε:mεɟ/ instead of /εlmεɟ/); the use of the sound gy /ɟ/ in the first-person-plural ending -juk /juk/, becoming /ɟuk/, or the affix -zik /zik/ becoming /d͡zik/.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

At the phonological level, there are less frequently or rather regionally used lexemes instead of the more standard ones: mán instead of már, itten instead of itt, úrfi instead of uram, messzi instead of messze, gyün instead of jön, berezelt instead of megijedt, falka instead of csapat, okul instead of tanul.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

The nobles speak the standard dialect, the non-standard variations are restricted to the lower class. Although the Cornish regional characteristics of the dialect are of significance in English, the Hungarian dubbing cannot be connected to a certain geographical region.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

The examples taken from the Poldark series show the fact that in Hungary the attachment of non-standard linguistic variations to certain geographical regions is not widely known by the average native speaker. Referring to Sáfár’s (2015) findings quoted earlier in the article, a regional equivalence is not usually recommended in audiovisual translation, therefore Hungarian dubbing scarcely applies a single, ‘pure’ variation. Instead, a mixture of non-standard forms is used, as a reminder of the differences, but often with no consistency. There might be several explanations of this phenomenon, namely: the voice actors of a series spend much less time investigating the characteristics of a certain dialect than the actors in the original film; the translators are not aware of the differences in the regional, temporal and/or social variations; the Hungarian audience does not require any specificity in the matter, as opposed to the Anglo-Saxon audience; the translator attempts to avoid the inclusion of a target-language-specific dialect, as this might alienate the target audience from the source culture.
 
chevron_left
chevron_right
Tartalomjegyzék navigate_next
Keresés a kiadványban navigate_next
A kereséshez, kérjük, lépj be!
Könyvjelzőim navigate_next
A könyvjelzők használatához
be kell jelentkezned.
Jegyzeteim navigate_next
Jegyzetek létrehozásához
be kell jelentkezned.
    Kiemeléseim navigate_next
    Mutasd a szövegben:
    Szűrés:
    Kiemelések létrehozásához
    MeRSZ+ előfizetés szükséges.
      Útmutató elindítása
      delete
      Kivonat
      fullscreenclose
      printsave