Translation of Culture-Specific References in Asterix Animated Films Dubbed into Sinhala
Samanthi JayawardenaCulture-specific references (CSR) in audiovisual texts are countless. Their identification, classification as well as translation pose numerous challenges to translators and scholars. The objective of the study is to identify the strategies used to translate them in audiovisual texts and to examine the effect created by the choices of the translators. Three Asterix animated films and their Sinhala dubbed versions are chosen: Asterix in Britain (1986), Asterix Conquers America (1994) and Asterix and Cleopatra (1968). Peter Newmark’s classification (1988) is employed to select the CSRs. To identify and analyse the translation strategies used in the dubbed film, the taxonomy proposed by Tomaszkiewicz (1993) is applied. A sample of fifty examples is selected and then compared with the solutions provided by the translators. The findings indicate that the dubbed version is overwhelmingly domesticated with strategies such as omission, adaptation, generalization and equivalence being used frequently. Foreignization strategies such as borrowing was employed only once. The domestication strategies bring the dubbed versions closer to the target audience, popularizing it in the target language. At the same time, the dubbed audiovisual texts are simplified making them easier to understand to a young audience.
