Five Important Factors To Consider For Film Translation

Translating film content is vital to releasing films and movies globally. A lot of film markets including Hollywood and Bollywood have their film markets in particular regions more than others. Therefore, the companies have to do either translation or subtitles to gain more viewership and make more sales.

During the translation and remake of a film, naturally, the source material is going to remain the same as the original. However, a few adjustments have to be made according to the new market and viewers. Translating the content and script of a film is not easy and a lot of factors translators have to consider while translating a film for a foreign audience. This content falls under the film and media translation services.

Five important factors are

1. Cultural differences

A translation is a lot more than grammar, sentence structure, and vocabulary. It has to be according to the cultural patterns of the target audience. It needs to be culturally appropriate to avoid controversies and problems. A film shares a direct connection with the emotional quotient of the audience, the characters, and the plot lines. Therefore, filmmakers and producers to strike the right chord with their audience have to be considerate of cultural appropriateness and they should ensure that there is no controversy sparked by adding inappropriate dialogues or scenes.

An American film portraying a vivacious, rebellious independent woman as a protagonist may not go well with audiences of middle eastern countries that have conservative values. Therefore, to avoid the outrage of the audience and controversies, it is always better to translate the content after thorough research on the target audience. It is also significant to take care of the factor while promoting and marketing the film and offering marketing translation services.

2. Nuances and original tone

The tone is another important factor in the process of translation. It is the essence of the content and professional translators always ensure that the original tone of the text does not vanish in the translated version. Therefore, it is an important factor to consider while translating film content. Multiple cultural differences make maintaining the nuances and tone quite tough. Translating expressions, idioms, sarcastic remarks and phrases could be a real challenge particularly.

American humor and sarcasm, for instance, are popular all over the globe for their heavy predicament of nasty and notorious content, the same could not be the scenario in other cultures. Original humor and jokes in English as I love this man could be interpreted in their literal sense in other cultures, whereas the joke may imply how one loves someone for his humor or sarcasm. Nonetheless, the translator has to consider it as well as should go the extra mile to make a relevant search on the given topic and phrase before putting his two cents on it. Moreover, professional media translation services are different and challenging.

He might have to look for the appropriate, relevant, and best possible translation that doesn’t ruin the joke or idiom, and conveys what it is meant for. Many times it gets tough and near impossible to find the exact match, however, tackling such a situation is what brings the best out in a translator. On the whole, media and film translation services are undoubtedly challenging. 

3. Translation of multiple film scenarios 

Translation of a film script is quite tough and it requires a competent language vendor who can offer professional film script translation services. It asks for a vigilant team who can cope with the changing expressions, overlapping dialogues, flashback scenes, and voiceovers. Coping with a variety of scenarios could be troublesome for some. However, this is what script translation is all about.

4. Transliterate words

The translation is relatively easy when it requires a word-to-word translation, though it is a rare case. However, many times there are certain words in the languages that have no replacement or translated word in the target language. One of the examples includes the Yiddish word “Shilmazi”. It refers to a person who happens to stay unlucky for long, unfailingly. Similarly, the Scottish verb ‘to tartle’ stands for someone’s reluctance while remembering a person’s name. Conveying such words and their translation is not possible in single words rather a whole phrase does the job.

Taking the word ‘love’, it has different words in different languages, and that too with more spellings. It also gets a problem when multiple words from the source language get translated into English or other languages within single words.

5. Marketing of the film

Marketing of a film that has been made and released in a foreign land is another serious issue. A layman or an ordinary translator can not deal with the technicalities, which are required in marketing translation. Therefore, companies should consider hiring professional marketing translation services for this task, so that a proper and foolproof marketing strategy can tempt more viewers to watch the film.

Final words

Translating a film or film script has its own challenges. There are minute details and concerns that translators should always try to address to offer a quality product to the target audience, tempting them to be a consumer. A few considerations have been shared that translators can try to be mindful of while working on the translation of media content and film scripts.