Mainstream Narrative Film Dialogue and Subtitling
A Case Study of Mike Leighâs âSecrets & Liesâ (1996)
ALINE REMAEL
Hogeschool Antwerpen, Belgium
Abstract. This article demonstrates the way in which subtitles that follow current subtitling norms in Flanders strengthen mainstream film storiesâ already streamlined narratives. The subtitles enhance but impoverish the characterization of the films, also enhancing their underlying ideology, while censoring a few critical voices in the process. A brief survey is offered of the method for dialogue analysis (taken from social psychology) which is used in this study. The article then examines the way in which the subtitles of the Flemish subtitled version of Mike Leighâs âSecrets and Liesâ maintain or modify the interplay of interactional, semantic and quantitative dominance that propels verbal exchanges and helps determine the progression of the narrative. The analysis also covers the information conveyed by the visual sign system of the film and the way in which it complements the dialogues.1
One of the defining features of mainstream film narrative is its teleological nature. In what follows I will attempt to demonstrate how subtitling enhances this fundamental feature of commercial narrative cinema, streamlining its already fast-moving stories and strengthening their core message or theme, but cutting out voices of dissent in the process. The manner in which subtitling rules and norms have evolved in Europe, and more specifically in Flanders where clarity appears to have become the prime concern, lies at the basis of this state of affairs. It has also on occasion led to the production of subtitles with a sequential structure of their own â one that almost disregards the interactive build-up of the source text dialogue.
This goes one step beyond Henrik Gottliebâs view that due to the intersemiotic redundancy of film narrative a full translation of the spoken discourse in films is seldom desirable. Indeed, Gottlieb states that a ââŚslight condensation will enhance rather than impair the effectiveness of the intended messageâ (1998:247; emphasis added), but crucial notions in this quote are slight, enhance and message.
The central concern of subtitling is to render different types of speech in two lines of concise and intelligible writing with a minimal loss of informative content. Additional concerns include synchrony with the filmic images and dialogue, the rendering of register, slang, linguistic idiosyncracies and, to some extent, the interactional features of dialogue.
Textbooks (e.g. Ivarsson and Carroll 1998, chapters 5 and 6) advise subtitlers to intervene actively in their renderings of the source text whenever technical constraints rule out full translation. Subtitlers are instructed to respect syntactic and semantic units when segmenting and distributing text, simplify both syntax and vocabulary, and eliminate whatever is irrelevant for a good understanding of the message. The compromises subtitlers are thus forced to make, negotiating between a speakerâs idiosyncracies and clarity, for instance, result in two typical subtitling âweaknessesâ: features bound to register on the one hand, and to the interpersonal dimensions of speech on the other, tend to get lost. Indeed, although Jorge DĂaz-Cintas rightly argues in his book on subtitling in Spain (2001:125, 127) that quantitative reduction does not necessarily have to result in rhetorical simplification, in practice it often does. Likewise, Irena Kovaèiè has discussed the need to include more of conversationâs interpersonal moves in subtitles (1996:297), but again, theory is one thing, practice another. In previous investigations into the Flemish subtitles of English language films or TV programmes (e.g. Remael 1995-96), I found that the dominant norm indeed appears to be that of clarity and conciseness, irrespective of genre. This has consequences for the type of target text that is produced and for its relation of equivalence with the source text.
It is important, however, to distinguish the scripted dialogue of fiction films or TV series, from the more or less spontaneous speech of, say, a live interview. In fictional dialogue both register and the interactional features of conversation are part of a carefully constructed narrative that also relies on other sign systems to communicate with the viewer. In other words, register and dialogical interaction form an integral part of the film story. The simplification of such features along with the paring down of âcontentâ to its bare essentials will enhance the main story line in the sense of speeding it along its way, but will also lead to the omission of conversational moves that may appear to be narratively redundant, but are not necessarily so.
Before examining this phenomenon more closely, making use of examples from Mike Leighâs Secrets and Lies (1996),2 a word of explanation about dialogue, and more specifically film dialogue, may prove helpful.
1. Screenwriting, film dialogue and concepts from dialogue studies
First of all, film dialogue differs from daily conversation in that it is meant for a third party. It is what Bakhtin (1986) has called a secondary speech genre, which derives some of its characteristics from the primary speech genre of daily conversation, but others from the text or context in which it occurs. A mainstream film story is highly organized and based on the blueprint of the film script, which in turn is a norm-bound narrative, typified by its character-centred, personal or psychological causality. Mainstream screenplays and films have a tight dramatic structure harking back to that of the well-made play, consisting of an Exposition, Development, Climax and Denouement. In the screenwriting process, dialogue writing constitutes one of the very last stages. The film theme and story are first laid down in the synopsis and subsequently expanded in the treatment. This order of things inevitably shapes the dialogue. Dramatic development is the highest hierarchical norm determining its functions, other norms bound to concerns with realism, genre or theme are subservient to it (Remael 2000). The screenplayâs overarching dramatic structure is repeated on sequence and on scene level, where it is to some extent constructed by the dialogue.
As Vanoye (1985:116) has pointed out, film dialogue, like theatre dialogue, always functions on two levels. The interaction between the characters is the âhorizontalâ level of communication, whereas the interaction between film and audience, the storytelling proper, constitutes the âvertical levelâ of communication. Vanoye adds that even dialogueâs interactional patterns and âles maximes conversationnellesâ are designed to communicate this interaction to the viewer. However, in spite of its many compositional functions, film dialogue does resemble daily speech, and can also be analyzed as such.
1.1 Research into dialogic communication
Conversation and other forms of dialogue have been the subject of study of a vast number of different scholarly fields, all with their own perspectives and interests. An approach that is very useful for the study of film dialogue has been developed by a group of scholars with a broad interest in interpersonal and social communication, working within the field of social psychology. It integrates crucial findings and concepts from, e.g. conversation analysis, but its focus is on interpersonal and social relations, not on linguistic analysis per se. The groupâs basic premise is that the symbolic nature of human communication is not only central to the study of language and speech, but also to the study of human social phenomena in general. The concepts they have developed are therefore most helpful for an analysis of the way in which character development and interaction propel the film story. The three publications on which I relied most in my research into film dialogue (Remael 2000) were MarkovĂĄ and Foppa (1990 and 1991), and MarkovĂĄ et al. (1995).3
The approach is âinteractionistâ, which in the relevant scholarsâ terminology means that a form of inter...
