The Importance of Downtoners in English Writing and Translation - With Reference to Chinese Movie Subtitle Translations

Dahui Dong

The Importance of Downtoners in English Writing and Translation – With Reference to Chinese Movie Subtitle Translations

Dahui Dong * §

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Chang Jung Christian University

The Importance of Downtoners in English Writing and Translation – With Reference to Chinese Movie Subtitle Translations

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Abstract

This paper reports on a study of the use of downtoners, an important hedging device, by Chinese translators when translating Chinese subtitles into English. The study was carried out by making a corpus-based analysis of patterns of using downtoners in a Chinese subtitle corpus and an English subtitle corpus. Features of overuse and underuse of downtoners in subtitle translation by the Chinese translators were also classified and further examined. The Chinese subtitle corpus consisted of the English subtitles of four Chinese movies produced by translators from the main Chinese-speaking areas: Hong Kong, the mainland China, and Taiwan. The English one contained the English subtitles of four authentic English movies. The study finds that compared with authentic English movie subtitles, the English subtitles of Chinese movies tend to overuse most of the downtoners except for diminishers, which leads to non-nativelikenss. In light of the corpus-based evidence, the paper argues for the importance of incorporating corpusbased findings into subtitle translation programs and general English writing programs and suggests ways to improve the translation and writing quality.

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Funding

No external funding was declared for this work.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

No ethics committee approval was required for this article type.

Data Availability

Not applicable for this article.

How to Cite This Article

Dahui Dong. 1970. "The Importance of Downtoners in English Writing and Translation – With Reference to Chinese Movie Subtitle Translations". Global Journal of Human-Social Science - G: Linguistics & Education GJHSS-G Volume 13 (GJHSS Volume 13 Issue G5).

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GJHSS Volume 13 Issue G5

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Journal Specifications

Crossref Journal DOI 10.17406/GJHSS

Print ISSN 0975-587X

e-ISSN 2249-460X

Keywords

chinese into english translation downtoner hedge intensifier subtitling

Classification

GJHSS-G Classification FOR Code: 200399p

Submission ReceivedDecember 16, 2012
Peer Review Double Blind
Handling Editor
Accepted December 31, 2012
Published January 15, 2013

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v1.2

Language

English

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Article Matrices

Total Score: 142

Country: Taiwan

Subject: Global Journal of Human-Social Science

Authors: Dahui Dong, Andrew Chiu (PhD/Dr. count: 0)

View Count (all-time): 297

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Publish Date: 2013 01, Tue

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Total Views: 4.2K

Total Downloads: 277

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