Intercultural Reconceptualization of Interpersonal Relationships in Audiovisual Translation

Abstract

In conversation, the participants’ language use manifests their strategies when negotiating and maintaining interpersonal relations: seeking for the aimed distance between conversation partners and setting up a suitable hierarchy. It is a constantly dynamic process expressed with various linguistic tools. This research is based on a Hungarian satirical film, “A tanú (The Witness)”, and its Japanese and Slovene subtitles. The three languages in comparison are typologically diverse. Based on our overview of language-specific linguistic tools for interpersonal relationships (IPR), the most prominent are: • predicate forms: The choice between V- and T-forms, pronouns and other elements in Hungarian and Slovene, because of the person and number distinction. Both Hungarian and Slovene have an additional semi-formal choice. Corresponding distinction in Japanese is the choice among several predicate forms, formal / informal with addition of honorifics. • greetings and forms of addresses: Their use is usually conventionalized in each society or community. The gender distinction is particularly present in Slovene. The use (or non-use) of various titles in addressing is important in all three languages. The language in the original film in Hungarian and the subtitles in Japanese and Slovene are linguistically analysed, and the analyses further compared. We can observe the development of constructing IPR in several situations: negotiation, establishment and maintenance of IPR in personal and public environment. Both cases of development confirm our previous overview of linguistic tools, and lead to further findings. The findings are to be utilised in the theory and methodology of translation and subtitling, cross-cultural pragmatics, and foreign language teaching.

Keywords

• interpersonal relationships
• cross-cultural pragmatics
• subtitling
• translation
• cultural conceptualization