Challenges and Limitations in Film translation form Kinyarwanda into English in subtitle mode. Case study of the film 'Urugamba' of Mwizerwa J. Hervé.

Abstract

It could be argued that audio-visual translation is nowadays one of the most modes of translation encountered in the real lives of people. Therefore, a need for proper audio-visual translation has emerged together and questions of quality are posed with great acuity. Although the translation has been the one of the subjects that are of concern to Rwandan researchers, audio-visual translation seems to be a subject extremely relevant but far from being a constant concern in their research. Focused on film translation in subtitle mode, the purpose of the proposed research is to go over challenges and limitations translators are facing in this endeavour. Those hindrances are not only limited to the translators but gradually extending to film viewers in this digital world. This research might contribute to the increase in the quality of subtitled films from Kinyarwanda into English and open path of reflection to professional translators in this field. The research was carried out in Kigali City and with the following objectives: Highlight effects of the subtitles on the translation’s quality in the target language. Bring out the challenges translators are facing in film translation. Suggest recommendations and strategies for the purpose of improved translation in subtitle mode. To deal successfully with this phenomenon, the researcher used dialectic, systemic and comparative methods. Fours techniques have been utilised to collect data: The corpus, documentary technique, the questionnaire and the interview. The research found out main challenges involved in audio-visual translation which include among others; lack of sufficient knowledge of target language (88.9%), inability to compress subtitles (77.8%). The results of the survey mentioned other challenges namely slow reading speed, slow thinking and memory related issues, low comprehension skills and misinterpretation especially to the viewers. For translators, lack of appropriate understanding of jargon words, lack of modern equipment and high linguistic illiteracy. In subtitling process, the translators also emphasized a big challenge of bringing to light the emotions and the body language that are almost impossible to demonstrate. In addition, there is a limitation of space and the translators must fit the required text into a limited space and thereby some words of the text may be omitted. Finally, some recommendations were formulated towards the end of this research. They propose concrete actions to be taken and advocate for more proper audiovisual translation in general.