⊙ By Nina Porzucki ⊙ 翻譯：丁一

聽力難度

英美發(fā)音 適合泛聽語(yǔ)速：155詞/分鐘

學(xué)習(xí)指南針這一篇講述電影字幕發(fā)展的文章原本是一個(gè)電臺(tái)節(jié)目。全文分兩個(gè)部分，前半部分介紹電影字幕的誕生，并強(qiáng)調(diào)了字幕翻譯的專業(yè)性，為后半部分作鋪墊，后半部分是重點(diǎn)，講述字幕翻譯在互聯(lián)網(wǎng)時(shí)代的發(fā)展。文章內(nèi)容并不復(fù)雜，聽時(shí)只要把握這條主線就不會(huì)有太大的問(wèn)題。

文章的關(guān)鍵詞當(dāng)然是subtitle，文中還有不少相關(guān)的衍生詞：

subtitle n. 字幕 subtitle v. 翻譯字幕

subtitler n. 字幕翻譯者 sub v. 翻譯字幕

subber n. 字幕翻譯者

一年一度的奧斯卡盛典又到了，正忙著看獲獎(jiǎng)電影和提名電影的你是否留意過(guò)影片的字幕呢？你知道嗎，其實(shí)外語(yǔ)電影字幕的誕生并不比電影本身晚多少，而默片的字幕還更早些。在當(dāng)今的互聯(lián)網(wǎng)時(shí)代，電影字幕也與許多事物一樣，正發(fā)生著天翻地覆的變化。

In the beginning there was light, a little music and subtitles, technically called1)intertitles. I’m talking the beginnings of the 20th century, during the silent era of moviemaking, when an image really spoke a thousand words and intertitles were used2)sparinglyto explain action, and dialogue,and3)exposition.

And then, the4)talkiescame. But while Al Jolson’s voice in The Jazz Singer did away with the need for the intertitle to do all of that explaining, The Jazz Singer became the first film to need translating. In fact, it was the first film to officially use foreign language subtitles when it opened in Paris in 1929.

And in the 80-plus years since, subtitling has gone from a necessity to an art.John Miller(Subtitler): People aren’t supposed to notice subtitles, if we’re doing our job properly. The ideal situation is when they are not even aware that they’re reading subtitles.

John Miller makes a living as a subtitler in Paris, where he went to school to learn the art of subtitling. And he’s been at it for 20 years translating French films into English.

1) intertitle [?ntз?（r）?ta?t（?）l] n. 間幕

2) sparingly [?spe?r??l?] adv. 節(jié)儉地，保守地

3) exposition [eksp???z??（?）n] n. 說(shuō)明，講解

4) talkie [?t??k?] n. <口>有聲電影

“People can read an average of 12 characters a second,” says Miller. And a subtitler has about two or more seconds to5)relayeverything being said to the audience and within those 24 characters, the subtitler not only has to translate what’s being said, but all of the complexities of everyday speech:6)puns, jokes, word play.Sometimes you get lucky and expressions easily translate from one language to another. But sometimes, says Miller, an expression gets lost in translation. This happens all the time.

So like I said, subititling is an art and a profession, but increasingly this art is7)undergoinganother8)evolution,or should I say revolution, of its own. Just like when sound came and turned moviemaking upside down, the9)digitizationof film and TV has10)upendedthe subtitling industry. Digital media has allowed people from around the world to access more content, more quickly. And more content means more subtitles, right?

Enter VIKI, just one of several online11)crowd-sourcedsubtitling platforms.Subtitlers submit translations for12)peerreview, the crowd13)evaluates the translations,voting things up and down.

VIKI14)licensedTV shows and movies from around the world—Korean dramas,Colombian soaps, Japanese15)anime—and then put them online so fans from around the world can subtitle them.

Razmig Hovaghimian(VIKI CEO): I got now into 200 languages, about 700 million words translated by fans—for free.

16)Catchthat? Subtitles translated for free. So just who are these fan subbers doing the work for free? They’re teachers, doctors,lawyers, grandmothers, people like you and me, says Razmig.

Patricia Pon: My name is Patricia Pon. I am an early17)retiree.

And a Cantonese speaker and the translator of more than 200,000 subtitles.

“Why?” I asked Patricia. Because she got fed up with bad translations.

Would a retiree translate a Hong Kong18)gangster 19)flickthe same way a teenager?Does it matter? No, according to Razmig,that’s the beauty of the crowd. Subtitles are20)vettedand21)editedby many. And then the content can quickly be consumed by many more. And these22)rapidtranslations have led the globalization of film and TV at23)hyperspeed in rather unexpected places.

Razmig: We had Egyptian movies that were doing great in24)Dutch. We have Korean movies that are doing25)phenomenal in Saudi Arabia.It’s actually our number one country for it.

While professional subtitler John Miller isn’t worried about being “crowded out” of his profession26)per se,he and his fellow English-language subtitlers in Paris have felt the squeeze from27)studios.

John:It is a professional job. You wouldn’t necessarily want to have crowd-sourced28)surgeons or crowd-sourced29)mechanics.While what we do isn’t life or death, I think it is to the30)detrimentof the films that they’re being done by people who, they’re certainly not professionals.

Certainly, Patricia Pon and her fan-subbing31)palsaren’t claiming to be professionals. And the subtitles you’ll be reading at your local art house theatre aren’t the crowd-sourced kind—at least not yet.

5) relay [ri??le?] v. 傳遞，傳達(dá)

6) pun [p?n] n. 雙關(guān)語(yǔ)

7) undergo [?nd??ɡ??] v. 經(jīng)歷，遭受

8) evolution [ev??lu??（?）n] n. 進(jìn)化，演化

9) digitization [?d?d??ta??ze???n] n. [計(jì)]數(shù)字化

10) upend [?p?end] v. 顛倒

11) crowd-sourced [?kra?d?s??sd] adj. 眾包的

12) peer [p??（r）] n. 同輩，同行

13) evaluate [??v?lj?e?t] v. 評(píng)價(jià)，評(píng)估

14) license [?la?s?ns] v. 許可，準(zhǔn)許

15) anime [??n?me?] n. （日本）動(dòng)畫片

16) catch [k?t?] v. 聽到，理解

17) retiree [r??ta???ri?] n. 退休人員

18) gangster [?ɡ??st?] n. 黑幫分子

19) flick [fl?k] n. <口>電影

20) vet [vet] v. 審查，修正

21) edit [?ed?t] v. 編輯，剪輯

22) rapid [?r?p?d] adj. 迅速的

23) hyper [?ha?p?（r）] adj. 過(guò)度的

24) Dutch [d?t?] n. 荷蘭語(yǔ)

25) phenomenal [f??n?m?n?l] adj. 出眾的

26) per se 本身，本質(zhì)上

27) studio [?stu?d???] n. 電影制片廠

28) surgeon [?sз?d?（?）n] n. 外科醫(yī)生

29) mechanic [m??k?n?k] n. 機(jī)械工，機(jī)修工

30) detriment [?detr?m?nt] n. 損害，傷害，破壞

31) pal [p?l] n. 伙伴參考譯文

一開始有了光，后來(lái)有一點(diǎn)點(diǎn)音樂(lè)和幾行字幕，嚴(yán)格來(lái)說(shuō)叫“間幕”——我講的是20世紀(jì)初無(wú)聲電影的時(shí)代。那個(gè)時(shí)候真的是一圖勝千言，只有為數(shù)不多的間幕對(duì)片中人物動(dòng)作、對(duì)話和內(nèi)容作說(shuō)明。

隨后，有聲電影出現(xiàn)了。盡管影片《爵士歌手》中阿爾·喬爾森的歌聲使得作各種說(shuō)明的間幕毫無(wú)用武之地，該片成了第一部需要翻譯的電影。事實(shí)上，該片1929年在巴黎上映時(shí)，成了第一部正式使用外語(yǔ)字幕的影片。

在隨后的80多年里，字幕從一種必需品發(fā)展成了一門藝術(shù)。

約翰·米勒（字幕翻譯員）：如果我們的字幕翻譯確實(shí)做得出色，觀眾是不該注意到字幕的。最理想的狀態(tài)是觀眾并沒(méi)有意識(shí)到自己在看字幕。

生活在巴黎的約翰·米勒以翻譯字幕維生，他曾在巴黎上學(xué)，專門學(xué)習(xí)字幕翻譯這門藝術(shù)，至今，把法語(yǔ)電影翻譯成英語(yǔ)這活計(jì)，他已經(jīng)干了20年了。

“人平均可以在一秒鐘內(nèi)讀12個(gè)字，”米勒如是說(shuō)。一個(gè)字幕翻譯員要在大概兩秒鐘內(nèi)把演員的臺(tái)詞傳達(dá)給觀眾，而就在這24個(gè)字里，字幕翻譯員不僅要把臺(tái)詞翻譯出來(lái)，還要把日常對(duì)話中的復(fù)雜性體現(xiàn)出來(lái)，包括雙關(guān)語(yǔ)、笑話、文字游戲等。有的時(shí)候，譯員會(huì)很幸運(yùn)地碰上可以輕易從一種語(yǔ)言譯成另一種語(yǔ)言的詞語(yǔ)。但米勒說(shuō)，有時(shí)候，一個(gè)詞組會(huì)在翻譯時(shí)失去了本意。這種事經(jīng)常發(fā)生。

所以正如我說(shuō)，字幕翻譯這個(gè)工作是一門藝術(shù)、一項(xiàng)專門技能。不過(guò)，這門藝術(shù)正經(jīng)歷著一場(chǎng)巨變，或者應(yīng)該說(shuō)是它自身的一場(chǎng)革命吧。正如當(dāng)初有聲電影的出現(xiàn)給電影業(yè)帶來(lái)了一場(chǎng)天翻地覆的變化一樣，電影和電視的數(shù)字化也正顛覆著字幕翻譯這一行當(dāng)。數(shù)字媒體讓全世界的人可以更快地獲得更多的內(nèi)容，而更多的內(nèi)容就意味著對(duì)更多字幕的需求，對(duì)吧？

維奇網(wǎng)站出現(xiàn)了，它只不過(guò)是多個(gè)采取在線眾包字幕翻譯模式的平臺(tái)之一。字幕翻譯員在此提交翻譯稿供同行評(píng)估，網(wǎng)民對(duì)翻譯進(jìn)行點(diǎn)評(píng)，投支持或否決票。

維奇網(wǎng)站從世界各地獲取電視節(jié)目和電影的授權(quán)——包括韓劇、哥倫比亞肥皂劇和日本動(dòng)畫片等——然后把它們放到網(wǎng)上，讓全世界的粉絲為它們配字幕。

拉茲米格·霍瓦吉米安（維奇網(wǎng)總裁）：我們這兒現(xiàn)在已經(jīng)有粉絲們用200種語(yǔ)言翻譯的約七億字的內(nèi)容，全部是免費(fèi)的。

聽明白了嗎？字幕翻譯員是免費(fèi)進(jìn)行字幕翻譯的。那免費(fèi)干活的都是些什么人呢？拉茲米格說(shuō)，他們是老師、醫(yī)生、律師、眾多奶奶外婆等，許許多多跟你我一樣的人。

帕特里夏·鮑：我叫帕特里夏·鮑，我是一名提前退休人員。

她講粵語(yǔ)，已經(jīng)翻譯了20萬(wàn)行字幕。

“你為什么這么做呢？”我問(wèn)帕特里夏，因?yàn)樗軌蛄四切┓煤軤€的字幕。

一名退休人士與一個(gè)青少年會(huì)用同樣的方式翻譯一部香港黑幫電影嗎？這種區(qū)別重要嗎？按拉茲米格的說(shuō)法，這并不重要，因?yàn)檫@正是眾包的美妙之處。大家一起審查、修改字幕，然后內(nèi)容迅速地被更多的人享用。這種快速翻譯模式以極快的速度，給許多人們意想不到的地方送去了電影和電視節(jié)目的全球化。拉茲米格：有些埃及電影的荷蘭語(yǔ)版很受歡迎，有些韓國(guó)電影在沙特阿拉伯取得驚人的成績(jī)——在我們的網(wǎng)站上，沙特阿拉伯實(shí)際上是韓國(guó)電影最受歡迎的國(guó)家。

盡管像約翰·米勒這樣的專業(yè)字幕翻譯員并不擔(dān)心自己被眾包的翻譯模式擠出市場(chǎng)，但他與其他在巴黎的英語(yǔ)字幕翻譯員確實(shí)也感覺(jué)到了來(lái)自電影廠的壓力。約翰：這是一項(xiàng)需要專業(yè)技能的工作。你不會(huì)愿意接受眾包的外科醫(yī)生或者機(jī)械工。盡管我們做的不是什么生死攸關(guān)的工作，但如果字幕翻譯由一些顯然沒(méi)有專門技能的人來(lái)做，這就會(huì)給電影業(yè)帶來(lái)?yè)p失。

毫無(wú)疑問(wèn)，帕特里夏·鮑與她那些給字幕做翻譯的伙伴們并不認(rèn)為自己是專業(yè)的字幕翻譯者。而你在本地電影院里看到的外國(guó)影片的字幕翻譯肯定不是由眾包模式完成的——至少目前還不是。