Chapter 9. (Im)politeness and plot advancement in screen translation

Abstract

This contribution explores the workings of linguistic (im)politeness in plot advancement in the context of audiovisual translation with a focus on English-Korean film subtitling, which represents a transfer between considerably remote linguacultures that rely on very different pragmalinguistic means of expressing interpersonal meanings. Challenges of interlingual subtitling are associated with cultural asynchrony both between the source and target cultures and between the verbal component recreated in a different language and the original semiotic system. The discussion is based on examples from relatively recent mainstream fiction films that demonstrate some of the solutions deployed by screen translators in order to capture and re- or co-create the interpersonal effects of the original that have direct bearing on the general plot development.