Swedes read a lot - especially if you include film and TV subtitles. But does the subtitler themselves play any role? In search of an answer, researcher Lars Jämterud has looked at the translation of the classic British comedy series Fawlty Towers.
Lars Jämterud in a hotel environment in Linköping, reminiscent of the one in Falty Towers.Photographer: Charlotte Perhammar
A book translator can sometimes leave a distinct mark on a work. The original Swedish translation of The Lord of the Rings provides such an example. The translator took such great liberties that the author, JRR Tolkien, became extremely upset.
But when it comes to film and television translation, freedom is more limited. This is familiar to Lars Jämterud, lecturer at the Department of Culture and Society. He has spent many years subtitling from English into Swedish.
In search of the subitler's voice
“Translators in general, and subtitlers in particular, are largely invisible, even though they actually add a voice of their own alongside the one we as viewers hear through the actors’ voices. Translators receive very little recognition. So I began to think, well, what are we actually doing?”
This became the starting point for his doctoral thesis, In Search of the Subtitler's Voice. Lars Jämterud has reviewed the translation of the comedy series Fawlty Towers, which was shown in Sweden for the first time between 1976 and 1980. Since a couple of new translations were made in the 1990s, it was possible to compare the different versions.
The series is set in a seaside hotel in Torquay on the south coast of England. The hotel is run by the choleric Basil Fawlty (John Cleese) and his very assertive wife, Sybil (Prunella Scales). The show was a great success and has often been rerun on various channels over the years.
Subtitling is an expression of creativity, says Lars Jämterud.Fotograf: Charlotte PerhammarThe importance and history of subtitling
Subtitling may seem like a very narrow field of research, but Lars Jämterud argues that it is more important than we tend to realise. Data he has gathered shows that we spend more than 70 minutes per day reading subtitles and only just over 60 minutes on printed media (in either paper or digital form). Subtitles can, for example, be a helpful tool for immigrants learning Swedish, and have likely made all Swedes better at English. But the field remains largely unexplored.
As part of his research, Lars Jämterud delved into the archives to chart the history of subtitling in Sweden. Why is it that Sweden doesn’t dub films and TV shows the way they do in Germany, Italy or France? One reason is economic: subtitling is ten times cheaper. Some countries have at times also chosen dubbing as a way to censor content. But in Sweden, audiences seem to have been more sensitive from the very beginning to dubbing’s poor sound quality and unnatural tone. People wanted to hear the real voices speak.
This, of course, places special demands on the translator, especially when the audience also understands the original language. The limited space available for subtitles is a challenge, as is deciding how to handle different words and expressions. There are many possible solutions, and that is where Lars Jämterud has searched for the ‘personal voices’ of subtitlers.
Counting laughter
This has involved, among other things, counting how many words from the English dialogue were lost in the translation, how many complete lines were removed, and how many subtitles were used per minute. He has also looked at how subtitlers handle moments when the studio audience laughs. Do they attempt to find a joke similar to the original, or perhaps invent one themselves? This has also meant counting the total number of laughs in the series’ twelve episodes: 1,788, of which 698 resulted in subtitles. Finally, he interviewed two of the translators of Fawlty Towers.
A moose head plays a major role in one of the series' episodes. Photographer: Charlotte PerhammarSo, did he manage to identify a ‘voice’? The answer is yes. Most notably, the first translator was ahead of their time, using significantly more subtitle lines per minute than was typical in the 1970s. But that subtitler was very enthusiastic about using exclamation marks to emphasise jokes and about creating Swedish jokes when the English ones were a little hard to understand. The translators of the 1990s stayed closer to the original language and translated even more of the dialogue.
An expression of creativity
One question that arises is how these results should be used. For further research, is Lars Jämterud’s clear-cut answer. But the method of analysing voice profiles could also be used by those training to become subtitlers to reveal, for example, whether they have a tendency to omit lines spoken by women or by people of certain ethnic backgrounds. Lars Jämterud also hopes to further explore the history of subtitling.
“This is an expression of human creativity, so why not study it? The fact that we read so many subtitles makes it even more interesting,” he says.
Translation: Simon Phillips
Facts
Fawlty Towers
Fawlty Towers is a British comedy series from 1975 and 1979 by John Cleese and Connie Booth, starring Cleese, Booth, Prunella Scales and Andrew Sachs. The series was first broadcast in 1976 and 1980 in Sweden and has since been rerun many times.
