A three-layered typology for the subtitling of taboo

Abstract

The translation of taboo words has attracted scholars’ interest in studying it in the audiovisual context over the last decades. The surge of research on this predominant form of translation in everyday life has brought to light the communicative, pragmatic, and semiotic aspects as well as the technical constraints for subtitling taboo words. Previous research has primarily taken a quantitative method, discussed issues that justify their results, and suggested possible outcomes from a potential receiver’s point of view. While contributing to existing related literature, this paper argues that there is a need for a thorough, detailed examination of translation options in subtitling taboo words. The paper presents a three-layered typology of methods, strategies, and techniques, which provides a comprehensive description of audiovisual translators’ options. Following a bottom-up/top-down approach, the proposed typography is then put to the test in a corpus-based case study comprising six movies and their professional subtitles broadcast on Portuguese televisions.